Malcolm Gauld
Cannot find the words to describe what Willie Mays’ passing yesterday means to me. (And that’s coming from a writer known never to settle for a sentence when a paragraph will do!) Let’s just say that a little piece of me died yesterday.
Fifteen years ago, I posted the following on (what was then called) Malcolm’s Blog:
Out for a run along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, I rounded the AT&T Ballpark and came face-to-face with a statue of my very first boyhood sports idol: Willie Mays. If you are a Baby-Boomer or older, you may not require any explanation of Willie’s greatness. If you’re asking, “Who’s Willie Mays,” well, these three quotes (from three L.A. guys!) engraved on the base of the monument capture it pretty well:
– “He should play in handcuffs to even things out a bit.” – Jim Murray, L.A. Times sportswriter
– “Willie Mays and his glove: where triples go to die.” Frescoe Thompson, L.A. Dodger executive
– “Willie has two weaknesses – a pitch thrown behind his back and a fly ball 20 rows into the stands.” – Leo Durocher, Dodgers manager
Baseball heroes no longer loom as large in our national psyche as they did 60+ years ago. This evolution occurred at such a slow pace that we neither realize nor appreciate it. Hard to believe that more than a half-century has passed since Simon & Garfunkel (My kids: “Who’s that?”) inquired about the whereabouts of Joe DiMaggio. The notion of someone yelling “Hank just hit 715!” across the mid-70s nighttime Bowdoin College quad and being met with cheers from all corners of the dark might seem quaint, but I would submit that we did not suffer from “lonely eyes.” (That could have something to do with the fact that they weren’t glued 24-7 to a handheld plastic godhead.)
Full appreciation of Willie Mays’ place in the national psyche demands that we enter, understand, and appreciate the frame of reference corresponding with his time. As a history major and longtime teacher of the subject, frame of reference is probably the lesson I emphasize most of all. Santayana’s assertion that “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” deserves our attention, but what about the good stuff? What about those elements of the past we long to repeat? Over and over again, in fact. Stuff like:
Ice cream… roads & bridges (thanks Eisenhower)… miracle doctors (Looking at you, Dr. McGovern at MGH)… ski lifts… the printing press… Chuck Taylors… indoor plumbing… the town meeting… submarines… rock & roll… movies… bermuda shorts… air-conditioning… the 14th Amendment (and others)… eyeglasses… sunglasses… the Emancipation Proclamation… non-stop flights… AA… the right to vote… comic books… chess… the Goodyear Welt (If you didn’t know, I’m a shoe guy.)… pizza… fishing poles… the Salk vaccine (Fun Fact: Setting aside its contributions to fighting polio, without it there would be no Hyde School – Bath, Maine)… national parks… The 3 Stooges… and, yes, baseball.
Hey, I’m sure glad those things happened. And make that double when it comes to Willie Mays.
Onward, Malcolm Gauld
