Willie Mays
Center fielder
Born: (1931-05-06) May 6, 1931 (age 81) Westfield, Alabama
Batted: Right	Threw: Right
MLB debut
May 25, 1951 for the New York Giants
Last MLB appearance
October, 1973 for the New York Mets
Career statistics
Batting average	.302
Home runs	660
Hits	3,283
Runs batted in	1,903
Teams
New York / San Francisco Giants (1951–1952, 1954–1972) New York Mets (1972–1973)
Career highlights and awards
24× All-Star (1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1959², 1960, 1960², 1961, 1961², 1962, 1962², 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973) World Series champion (1954) 12× Gold Glove Award winner (1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968) 2× NL MVP (1954, 1965) 1951 NL Rookie of the Year 2× MLB All-Star Game MVP (1963, 1968) 1971 Roberto Clemente Award Hit 4 home runs in one game on April 30, 1961 San Francisco Giants #24 retired Major League Baseball All-Century Team Major League Baseball All-Time Team
Member of the National
Baseball Hall of Fame
Induction	1979
Vote	94.7% (first ballot)

Willie Howard Mays, Jr. (born May 6, 1931) is a retired American professional baseball player who played the majority of his major league career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Most baseball fans and historians agree that Mays was the greatest all-around baseball player to have played in the Major Leagues.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]}

Mays won two MVP awards and tied Stan Musial's record with 24 appearances in the All-Star Game. Mays ended his career with 660 home runs, third at the time of his retirement, and currently fourth all-time. An outstanding center fielder, he won a record-tying twelve Gold Gloves starting the year the award was introduced six seasons into his career.^[8]

In 1999, Mays placed second on The Sporting News' List of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, making him the highest-ranking living player. Later that year, he was also elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Mays is one of five NL players to have eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, along with Mel Ott, Sammy Sosa, Chipper Jones and Albert Pujols. Mays hit 50 or more home runs in both 1955 and 1965. This time span represents the longest stretch between 50 plus home run seasons for any player in Major League Baseball history.

Ted Williams once said "They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays."^[9][10]

Early life[link]

Mays was born in Westfield, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. His father, who was named for president William Howard Taft, was a talented baseball player with the Negro team for the local iron plant.^[11] His mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a gifted basketball and track star in high school.^[12] His parents never married each other.^[12] As a baby he was cared for by his mother's younger sisters Sarah and Ernestine. Sarah became the primary female role model in Mays' life.^[13] His father exposed him to baseball at an early age, and by the age of five he was playing catch with his father.^[14] At age 10, Mays was allowed to sit on the bench of his father's Industrial League games.^[15]

Mays was gifted in multiple sports, averaging a high-for-the-era 17 points a game for the Fairfield Industrial H.S. basketball team, and more than 40 yards a punt in football. He also starred at quarterback. He graduated from Fairfield in 1950.

Early professional career[link]

Negro leagues[link]

Mays' professional baseball career began in 1947, when he was still in high school, when he played briefly with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos in Tennessee during the summer, after school had let out. Shortly thereafter, Mays left the Choo-Choos, returned to his home state, and joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. Mays helped the Black Barons win their pennant and advance to the 1948 Negro League World Series, where they lost 4 games to 1 to the Homestead Grays. Mays hit just .226 for the season, but his excellent fielding and baserunning made him a useful player. However, by playing professionally with the Black Barons, Mays jeopardized his opportunities to play high school sports in Alabama state competition, and this created some problems for him with high school administration at Fairfield, which wanted him on their teams, to sell tickets and help teams win.^[16]

Over the next several years, a number of Major League baseball franchises sent scouts to watch him play. The first was the Boston Braves. The scout who found him, Bud Maughn, referred him to the Braves, but they declined. Had the team taken an interest, the Braves franchise might have had Mays and Hank Aaron together in its outfield from 1954 to 1973. The Brooklyn Dodgers also scouted him, but concluded he could not hit the curve ball. Maughn then tipped a scout for the New York Giants, which signed Mays in 1950 and assigned him to their Class-B affiliate in Trenton, New Jersey.^[17]

Minor leagues[link]

After Mays had a batting average of .353 in Trenton, N.J., he began the 1951 season with the class AAA Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. During his short time span in Minneapolis, Mays played with two other future Hall of Famers, Hoyt Wilhelm and Ray Dandridge. Batting .477 in 35 games and playing excellent defense, Mays was called up to the Giants on May 24, 1951; he appeared in his first major league game the next day in Philadelphia. Mays moved to Harlem, New York, where his mentor was a New York State Boxing Commission official and former Harlem Rens basketball legend Frank "Strangler" Forbes.

Major leagues[link]

New York Giants (1951–57)[link]

Mays began his major league career with no hits in his first twelve at bats. On his thirteenth at bat, he hit a homer over the left field fence of the Polo Grounds off future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn.^[18] Spahn later joked, "I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out." Mays' average improved steadily throughout the rest of the season. Although his .274 average, 68 RBI and 20 homers (in 121 games) were among the lowest of his career, he still won the 1951 Rookie of the Year Award. During the Giants' comeback in August and September 1951 to overtake the Dodgers in the 1951 pennant race, Mays' fielding, and great arm were often instrumental to several important Giants victories.^[19] Mays ended the regular season in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World against the Brooklyn Dodgers, to win the three-game playoff by 2 games to 1, after the teams had tied at the end of the regular season.