On the night of April 29, 1961, at dinner in Milwaukee, Willie Mays ate some bad barbecue. He was up all night, sick to his stomach, and so wobbly the next afternoon he told Alvin Dark, the manager of the San Francisco Giants, to erase his name from the lineup. Lew Burdette was scheduled to pitch for the Braves.
“I didn’t know if I could even swing,” Mays said recently on a brief trip to New York. “But during batting practice, a kid named Joey Amalfitano, he come up to me and says, ‘Try this bat.’ And everything I hit was going out of the ballpark. So I said, ‘O.K., I can play.’ ”
Mays hit four home runs that day — “Two off Burdette, one off Seth Morehead, and one off a kid named Don McMahon,” he said — and he drove in eight runs, maybe the finest day at the plate in a career that has had few, if any, equals.
The story of Mays’s bellyache and Amalfitano’s lucky bat is one of many juicy baseball tales in ”Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend” by James S. Hirsch, to be published in February by Scribner. An exhaustive accounting of Mays’s life, it is the first time Mays has cooperated with a biographer, and its imminent appearance has sent Mays on the promotional trail, an occasion for him to reminisce about his exploits and buff them. That day in Milwaukee, he said, he was robbed by Hank Aaron, who was not even playing his regular position.
“I should’ve had five,” Mays said. “Aaron caught one ball that was going over the center-field fence.”
bobm
Posted: January 31, 2010 at 02:53 AM |
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My guess is that they're making a distinction between biography and autobiography. The Einstein book was an "as told" autobio. This book sounds like a bio with which Mays agreed to cooperate, much like Jane Leavy's bio of Koufax. My guess is that Mays didn't have right of final approval over this one.
And I'm sure most of the fine minds here know this, but Joey Amalfitano was a ballplayer, three years younger than Mays.
One would think a newspaper article about the game would mention if the fly out was snagged over the wall and that Mays might have had 5 HR.
Moe Drabowsky was the only Brave pitcher who retired Mays; in the next half inning they promptly removed him for pinch hitter Billy Martin.
He gave so many of us awesome memories.
There's another Willie Mays anecdote (a funny one) over at weird baseball that recounts a time when Rollie Fingers,
as a kid, collected his autograph.
Their strategy against Davenport dropped his batting average to .438 that day.
He could recognize him from the handlebar mustache
Paul Harvey told that story on his radio show. Per usual, the dénouement was the best part.
My guess is that they're making a distinction between biography and autobiography. The Einstein book was an "as told" autobio.
Don't forget Einstein's excellent, impressionistic 1979 book Willie's Time. A very good overview of Mays' career.
At least it's not "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend of Baseball's Most Beloved Superstar Centerfielder, Known to Millions in New York, San Francisco, and Around the World As That Guy Who Caught That Ball and The Announcer Went Crazy and Who Grandpa Phil Always Said Was Better Than Those Young Overpaid Whippersnappers Today Who Don't Know The Meaning of Respect Like Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds (Coincidentally, Willie's Godson) Before Falling Asleep in The Recliner" or some of the other stupid ####### overblown book titles out there.
Or "How Willie Mays Changed America Forever"
--those two most glittering statistics in this era of the slugger, the livlier ball, the juicier bat (did I hear someone say the shorter fences?)
...In 1961 Mays stopped hitting triples, struck out more often, hit into more double plays, and not only stole fewer bases, but was being thrown out more often in the try. Mays stole 17 bases in 1961, the fifth year in succession his base-stealing figure has dropped.
There are some reasons, of course. For one thing, with the fences moved in at Candlestick and the quieted winds, balls that might have landed over fielders heads for three bases in '60, were now gone in '61, for home runs. Sure Mays hit fewer triples: he also hit more home runs. Which, of course, does not explain away the paucity of triples on the road.
"Willie Mays Should Never have Written this Book"
"Behold, Willie Mays"
"Willie Mays Should have his Children taken Away"
"Red Juice: Is it Even Legal?"
"Stickball: The New Market Inefficiency"
"It's a Trap: The True Story of the 1954 World Series"
"Willie Mays: Not the Biggest Idiot Ever"
Or:
How Willie Mays Saved Civiliation: The Amazing, True Story of a Talented, Handsome, and Positive Young Man Brought Hope to the World, Inspired Millions, and Oversaw Man Landing on the Moon, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Emergence of Derek Jeter (and It Isn't How You Think)
Jesus, I hope no publishers are reading this thread. That toxic combination of a bad pun and a colon would be too much for them to resist.
And the follow up:
"It's a Tarp: The True Story of the 1985 National League Championship Series"
Yes, because it meant his segment was over.
However, this glowing article from the Rock Hill Herald called "Mays was first Giant to bash four home runs in one game" is a little more descriptive: "Willie wasn't very far from becoming the first major leaguer ever to hit five home runs in one game. In the only time at bat in which he failed to hit a homer, Mays sent a screaming liner deep to center field. That was in the fifth inning."
Sounds like he wasn't exactly robbed over the fence, but it was certainly pretty close. That's actually more than I expected. Must've been quite the game that day (10 hrs in the game, 2 by Hank, 4 by Mays, 2 by Jose Pagan - the first two of his career).
B-R box calls it a liner to deep RF
According to the Times, Gehrig homered in his first four at bats, grounded out in the 8th, and then in the ninth "he pointed a terrific drive which Simmons captured only a few steps from the furthest corner of the park. A little variance to either side of its actual line of flight would have sent the ball over the fence or into the stands." In 1932 that "furthest corner of the park" was 468 ft. from the plate. Talk about bad placement.
And to add insult to injury, Gehrig's feat didn't even rate a headline the next day, since it came on the same day that John McGraw suddenly resigned as the Giants' manager.
It's a good read.
Paul Harvey told that story on his radio show. Per usual, the dénouement was the best part.
Howard Stern told a funny anecdote about working at a radio station where an engineer once edited Paul Harvey's segment to make the final pause between "now you know the rest..." and "...of the story" several minutes long.
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