24 by Willie Mays

Author:Willie Mays
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

14.

YOUR FOE CAN BE YOUR FRIEND

The Story of a Heated Rivalry

“Try to avoid conflict, racially and otherwise, by being reasonable, being cool. I’ve heard it all. All the insults. Be bigger than that. Keep it clean on the field and off.”

—Willie Mays

JACKIE ROBINSON WAS traded to the Giants. Let that sink in for a moment.

The legendary and noble Robinson, the widely respected civil rights pioneer and American hero who broke baseball’s color barrier and became the heart and soul of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was dealt after the 1956 season.

For journeyman pitcher Dick Littlefield and $30,000.

Perhaps more stunning than the trade itself was the fact it involved, of all teams, the Giants. Or as Maury Wills calls them to this day, the “dreaded Giants.” Robinson wound up retiring, nullifying the trade.

Robinson in a Giants uniform would have been as peculiar and inappropriate as Willie Mays in a Dodgers uniform.

Man, I’d probably hit more home runs. They had a good ballpark over there in Brooklyn. It was pretty small. Duke was hitting 40 home runs every year. When they moved to Los Angeles, they played at the football stadium a few years, the L.A. Coliseum. I hit a couple home runs there. Wally Moon, man, he hit a lot of home runs there. Then, when they moved to Dodger Stadium, he couldn’t get it over the fence as much. That was bigger. A lot of memories with the Dodgers. Good memories.

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, one of their scouts, Wid Matthews, failed to endorse Mays and filed a report that the teenaged center fielder on the Birmingham Black Barons couldn’t hit a curve.

Shoot, I thought that was my best pitch. I could hit a breaking ball at seventeen. When I was in high school, not everyone threw hard. Most of the guys tried to throw a breaking ball, and I hit that. They slowed it up. It was easier to hit. They would’ve been better off throwing the fastball. I don’t know what the hell the Dodgers’ scout was talking about. He must’ve gotten out of there in a hurry. I hit a lot of home runs off breaking balls, a lot of them.

Nobody knows better than Tommy Lasorda, who has worked in the Dodgers’ organization a mind-boggling seven decades. Long before his 21-year Hall of Fame managing career, Lasorda was a left-handed pitcher who appeared in 26 big-league games in the mid-1950s. After the 1954 season, he played winter ball for the Mayagüez Indians in Puerto Rico and had an unforgettable start against the Santurce Crabbers, who featured Mays in the wake of his first National League MVP award and the Giants’ World Series championship.

“First time I saw Willie, he hit a home run off me,” Lasorda said. “He had gone back to the States to get an award and came back and homered off me. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Hey Willie, you think you’re a great hitter, huh? You just showed you are.’”

The pitch Lasorda threw?

“I hung a curveball,” he said.

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