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 Warren Spahn. 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 Giant victories. 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.
Mays was a popular figure in Harlem. Magazine photographers were fond of chronicling his participation in local stickball games with kids. It was said that in the urban game of hitting a rubber ball with the handle of an adapted broomstick, Mays could hit a shot that measured "six sewers" (the distance of six consecutive NYC manhole covers- nearly 300 feet).
The United States Army drafted Mays in 1952 and he subsequently missed most of the 1952 season and all of the 1953 season. Despite the conflict in Korea, Mays spent most of his time in the army playing baseball at Fort Eustis, Va. Mays missed about 266 games due to military service.
Mays returned to the Giants in 1954, hitting for a league-leading .345 batting average and slugging 41 home runs. Mays won the National League Most Valuable Player Award and the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year. In addition, the Giants won the National League pennant and the 1954 World Series, sweeping the Cleveland Indians in four games. The 1954 series is perhaps best remembered for "The Catch", an over-the-shoulder running grab by Mays in deep center field of the Polo Grounds of a long drive off the bat of Vic Wertz during the eighth inning of Game 1. Considered the iconic image of Mays' playing career and one of baseball's most memorable fielding plays, the catch prevented two Indians runners from scoring, preserving a tie game. The Giants won the game in the 10th inning, with Mays scoring the winning run.
Mays went on to perform at a high level each of the last three years the Giants were in New York City. In 1956, he hit 36 homers and stole 40 bases, being only the second player and first National League player to join the "30-30 club". In 1957, the first season the Gold Glove award was presented, he won the first of twelve consecutive Gold Glove Awards. At the same time, Mays continued to finish in the NL's top five in a variety of offensive categories. Mays, Roberto Clemente (also with twelve) , Al Kaline, and Ken Griffey, Jr. are the only outfielders to have ten or more career Gold Gloves. 1957 also saw Mays become the fourth player in Major League history to join the 20�20�20 club (2B,3B,HR). No player had joined the "club" since 1941. George Brett accomplished the feat in 1979; and both Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins joined the club in 2007. Mays also stole 38 bases in 1957; Mays was the second player in baseball history (after Frank Schulte in 1911) to reach 20 in each of those four categories (doubles, triples, homers, steals) in the same season. Both Jimmy Rollins and Curtis Granderson achieved the feat in 2007.
The Giants were not one of the top teams in the National League between 1955 and 1960; they never finished higher than third place or won more than 83 games in a season. After the 1957 season, the Giants franchise and Mays relocated to San Francisco, California. Mays bought two homes in San Francisco, then lived in nearby Atherton. 1958 found Mays vying for the NL batting title, down to the final game of the season, just as in 1954. Mays collected three hits in the game, to finish with a career-high .347, but Philadelphia Phillies' Richie Ashburn won the title with a .350 average. In 1959 the Giants led by two games with only eight games to play, but could only win two of their remaining games and finished fourth, as their pitching staff collapsed due to overwork of their top hurlers. The Dodgers won the pennant following a playoff with the Milwaukee Braves.
Alvin Dark was hired to manage the Giants before the start of the 1961 season, and named Mays team captain. The improving Giants finished '61 in third place and won 85 games, more than any of the previous six campaigns. Mays had one of his best games on April 30, 1961, hitting four home runs against the Milwaukee Braves in County Stadium. Mays went 4 for 5 at the plate and was on deck for a chance to hit a record fifth home run when the Giants' half of the ninth inning ended. Mays is the only Major Leaguer to have both a three-triple game and a four-HR game.
The Giants won the National League pennant in 1962, with Mays leading the team in eight offensive categories. The team finished the regular season in a tie for first place with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and went on to win a three-game playoff series versus the Dodgers, advancing to play in the World Series. The Giants lost to the Yankees in seven games, and Mays hit just .250 with only two extra-base hits. It was his last World Series appearance as a member of the Giants.
In both the 1963 and 1964 seasons Mays batted in over 100 runs, and hit 85 total home runs. On July 2, 1963, Mays played in a game when future Hall of Fame members Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal each threw 15 scoreless innings. In the bottom of the 16th inning, Mays hit a home run off Spahn for a 1�0 Giants victory.
Mays won his second MVP award in 1965 behind a career-high 52 home runs. He also hit career home run number 500 on September 13, 1965, off Don Nottebart. Warren Spahn, off whom Mays hit his first career home run, was his teammate at the time. After the home run, Spahn greeted Mays in the dugout, asking "Was it anything like the same feeling?" Mays replied "It was exactly the same feeling. Same pitch, too." On August 22, 1965, Mays and Sandy Koufax acted as peacemakers during a 14-minute brawl between the Giants and Dodgers after San Francisco pitcher Juan Marichal had bloodied Dodgers catcher John Roseboro with a bat.
Mays played in over 150 games for 13 consecutive years (a major-league record) from 1954 to 1966. In 1966, his last with 100 RBIs, Mays finished third in the NL MVP voting. It was the ninth and final time he finished in the top five in the voting for the award. In 1970, the Sporting News named Mays as the "Player of the Decade" for the 1960s.
Willie hit career home run No. 600 off San Diego's Mike Corkins in September 1969. Plagued by injuries that season, he managed only 13 home runs. Mays enjoyed a resurgence in 1970, hitting 28 homers and got off to a fast start in 1971, the year he turned 40. He had 15 home runs at the All-Star break, but faded down the stretch and finished with 18. Mays helped the Giants win the West division title that year, but they lost the NLCS to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
During his time on the Giants, Mays was friends with fellow player Bobby Bonds. When Bobby's son, Barry Bonds, was born, Bobby asked Willie Mays to be Barry's godfather. Mays and the younger Bonds have maintained a close relationship ever since.
In May 1972, the 41-year-old Mays was traded to the New York Mets for pitcher Charlie Williams and $50,000 ($262,490 in current dollar terms). At the time, the Giants franchise was losing money. Owner Horace Stoneham could not guarantee Mays an income after retirement and the Mets offered Mays a position as a coach upon his retirement.
Mays had remained popular in New York long after the Giants had left for San Francisco, and the trade was seen as a public relations coup for the Mets. Mets owner Joan Whitney Payson, who was a minority shareholder of the Giants when the team was in New York, had long desired to bring Mays back to his baseball roots, and was instrumental in making the trade. On May 14, 1972, in his Mets debut, Mays put New York ahead to stay with a fifth-inning home run against Don Carrithers and his former team, the Giants, on a rainy Sunday afternoon at Shea Stadium. Then on August 17, 1973, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds with Don Gullett on the mound, Willie hit a fourth inning solo home run over the right center field fence. This was the 660th and last of his illustrious major league career.
Mays played a season and a half with the Mets before retiring, appearing in 133 games. The New York Mets honored him on September 25, 1973, (Willie Mays' Night) where he thanked the New York fans and said good-bye to America. He finished his career in the 1973 World Series, which the Mets lost to the Oakland Athletics in seven games. Mays got the first hit of the Series, but had only seven at-bats (with two hits). He also fell down in the outfield during a play where he was hindered by the glare of the sun; Mays later said "growing old is just a helpless hurt." In 1972 and 1973, Mays was the oldest regular position player in baseball. He became the oldest position player to appear in a World Series game.
Mays retired after the 1973 season with a lifetime batting average of .302 and 660 home runs. His lifetime total of 7,095 outfield fielding putouts remains the major league record.
After Mays stopped playing baseball, he remained an active personality. Just as he had during his playing days, Mays continued to appear on various TV shows, in films, and in other forms of non-sports related media. He remained in the New York Mets organization as their hitting instructor until the end of the 1979 season. It was there where he taught future Mets' star Lee Mazzilli his famous basket catch.
On January 23, 1979, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He garnered 409 of the 432 ballots cast (roughly 95 percent); referring to the other 23 voters, acerbic New York Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote, "If Jesus Christ were to show up with his old baseball glove, some guys wouldn't vote for him. He dropped the cross three times, didn't he?"
Mays took up golf a few years after his promotion to the major leagues, and quickly became an accomplished player, playing to a handicap of about 4. After he retired, he played golf frequently in the San Francisco area.
Shortly after his Hall of Fame election, Mays took a job at the Park Place Casino (now Bally's Atlantic City) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While there, he served as a Special Assistant to the Casino's President and as a greeter; Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle was also a greeter during that time. When Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn heard of this, he suspended both men from involvement in organized baseball for violating the league's rules on gambling. Peter Ueberroth, Kuhn's successor, lifted the suspension in 1985.
Since 1986, Willie Mays has served as Special Assistant to the President of the San Francisco Giants. Mays' number 24 is retired by the San Francisco Giants. AT&T Park, the Giants stadium, is located at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. In front of the main entrance to the stadium is a larger-than-life statue of Mays. He also serves on the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro League players through financial and medical difficulties.
In May 2009, Mays gave the commencement address to the graduating class of 2009 at San Francisco State University.
Gaylord Jackson Perry (born September 15, 1938) is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a right-handed pitcher for eight different teams from 1962 to 1983. During a 22-year baseball career, Perry compiled 314 wins, 3,534 strikeouts, and a 3.11 earned run average. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his third year of eligibility in 1991.
Perry, a five-time All-Star, was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in each league, winning it in the American League in 1972 with the Cleveland Indians and in the National League in 1978 with the San Diego Padres. He is also distinguished, along with his brother Jim Perry, for being part of the second-winningest brother combination in baseball history—second only to the knuckleball throwing brothers, Phil Niekro and Joe Niekro. While pitching for the Seattle Mariners in 1982, Perry became the 15th member of the 300 win club.
Despite Perry's notoriety for doctoring baseballs (e.g. throwing a spitball), and perhaps even more so for making batters think he was throwing them on a regular basis – he even went so far as to title his 1974 autobiography Me and the Spitter – he was not ejected for the illegal practice until August 23, 1982, in his 21st season in the majors.
Perry played semi-professionally in Alpine, Texas at Kokernot Field in the early 1950s for the Alpine Cowboys. Bobby Biedermann was his catcher and roommate.
Perry was signed by the San Francisco Giants on June 3, 1958, for $90,000, which was a big contract at the time. He spent 1958 with the St. Cloud Rox team in the Class A level Northern League, compiling a 9–5 record and a 2.39 ERA. In 1959 he was promoted to the Class AA Corpus Christi Giants, where he posted a less impressive 10–11 record and 4.05 ERA. He remained with the team as they became the Rio Grande Valley Giants in 1960, and an improved ERA of 2.82 earned him a promotion to the Class AAA Tacoma Giants for the 1961 season. At Tacoma, he led the Pacific Coast League in wins and inning pitched in 1961.
He had a brief call-up to the Major Leagues in 1962, making his debut on April 14 against the Cincinnati Reds. He appeared in 13 games in 1962, but had a 5.23 ERA and was sent back down to Tacoma for the remainder of the year. With the addition of Perry, Bill James called that 1962 Tacoma squad, which featured numerous future major-league players, the best minor league lineup of the 1960s.
After his brief call-up in 1962, Perry joined the Giants in 1963 to work mostly as a relief pitcher that year, posting a mediocre 4.03 ERA in 31 appearances. Nevertheless, in 1964 he was given the opportunity to join the starting rotation, finishing with a 2.75 ERA and a 12–11 record, both second-best for the Giants that year behind Juan Marichal. In 1965 his record was 8–12, and with two full seasons as a starter, his 24–30 record attracted little national attention.
Perry's breakout season came in 1966 with a tremendous start, going 20–2 into August. Perry and Marichal became known as a "1–2 punch" to rival the famous Koufax/Drysdale combination of the Los Angeles Dodgers. While Marichal was NL Player of the Month in May, Perry was so named in June (5–0, 0.90 ERA, 31 SO). He played in his first All-Star game, but after August, he slumped the rest of the season, finishing 21–8, and the Giants finished second to the Dodgers. Marichal missed much of the 1967 season with a leg injury, and Perry was thrust into the role of team ace. While he finished the season with a disappointing 15–17 record, he had a low ERA and allowed only 7 hits per 9 innings pitched.
Perry had similar numbers in 1968: he posted a 16–15 record, but with a then-career-best 2.45 ERA on a Giants team that finished second to the St. Louis Cardinals. On September 17 of that year, two days after his 30th birthday, Perry no-hit the Cardinals and Bob Gibson 1–0 at Candlestick Park. The lone run came on a first-inning home run by light-hitting Ron Hunt—the second of the only two he would hit that season. The very next day, the Cardinals returned the favor on the Giants on a 2–0 no-hitter by Ray Washburn—the first time in Major League history that back-to-back no-hitters had been pitched in the same series.
Like most pitchers, Perry was not renowned for his hitting ability, and in his sophomore season of 1963, his manager Alvin Dark is said to have joked, "There would be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry would hit a home run." There are other variants on the story, but either way, on July 20, 1969, just an hour after the Apollo 11 spacecraft carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, Perry hit the first home run of his career.
In 1969, Perry led the league in innings pitched, but the Giants finished second in the pennant race for the fifth straight season. Perry took over as the Giants' ace in 1970, and led the league both in wins (23) and innings pitched (328). Perry's strong 1970 performance salvaged the Giants' season, helping them finish above .500 but in third place. In 1971, the Giants finally won their division, with Perry posting a 2.76 ERA. In what would be his only two postseason appearances, Perry won one game and lost the other against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Before the 1972 season, the Giants traded the then 33-year-old Perry and shortstop Frank Duffy to the Cleveland Indians for 29-year-old flamethrower Sam McDowell, the ace of the Indians' staff. After that trade Perry went on to win 180 more games in his career while McDowell won only 24 more.
Perry went 24–16 in 1972 with a 1.92 ERA and 1 save, winning his first Cy Young Award. He stood as the only Cy Young winner for Cleveland until 2007 (CC Sabathia). He was named AL Player of the Month in June 1974 with a 6–0 record, 1.00 ERA, and 39 strikeouts, thus becoming the first player to win the award in both leagues (the AL had only begun to issue the award in April of that season). Perry continued as Cleveland's staff ace until 1975. He went 70–57 during his time in Cleveland, but the team never finished above 4th place. He started four consecutive Opening Day games for the team, the first Indians pitcher to do so since Bob Feller from 1946 to 1949. Perry accounted for 39% of all Cleveland wins during his tenure. Tensions between him and player-manager Frank Robinson led to Perry's trade to Texas in June 1975. Gaylord Perry remained as Cleveland's last 20-game winner (21 wins in 1974), until Cliff Lee in 2008.
On June 13, 1975, at the start of a three-game series with the Texas Rangers, the Indians traded Perry to the Rangers in exchange for pitchers Jim Bibby, Jackie Brown, and Rick Waits. Perry was feuding with Indians player/manager Frank Robinson. Perry would win nearly 80 more games in his career than the three combined. With the Rangers, Perry formed a one-two punch with Ferguson Jenkins, with Perry earning 12 wins, and Jenkins 11, during the remainder of 1975. However, the Rangers, who had finished 2nd in the AL West in 1974, slipped to 3rd place that year.
The next year, with Jenkins moving to Boston, the 37-year-old Perry became the staff ace, winning 15 games against 14 defeats. The Rangers, however, slipped to 4th place in the AL West. But then, in 1977, the Rangers surged to 2nd place in the AL West, winning 94 games, a total that the franchise would not surpass until 1999. Perry again won 15 games, this time against only 12 defeats, in a rotation that included double-digit winners Doyle Alexander, Bert Blyleven, and Dock Ellis.
Before the 1978 season, San Diego acquired Perry from Texas in exchange for middle reliever Dave Tomlin and $125,000. The 39-year-old Perry wound up winning the Cy Young Award going 21–6 for San Diego while the 29-year-old Tomlin never pitched for Texas and pitched barely 150 innings the rest of his career. Perry's 21 wins in 1978 accounted for 25% of the club's victories all year long, and he became the first pitcher to win Cy Young Awards in both leagues. In this season he became the third pitcher to strike out 3,000 batters, accomplishing the feat two weeks after his 40th birthday.
In 1979, Perry posted a 3.05 ERA and a 12–11 record before quitting the team on September 5, saying he would retire unless the club traded him back to Texas. The Padres traded Perry to the Texas Rangers on February 15, 1980.
In 1980, Perry posted a 6–9 record and 3.43 ERA in 24 games with Texas before being traded to the Yankees on August 13, 1980, for minor leaguers Ken Clay and a player to be named later (Marvin Thompson). Many Yankees players had complained about Perry during his stints with the Rangers, and the club even used a special camera team to monitor his movements during one of his starts at Yankee Stadium. Perry finished the season with a 4–4 record for the Yankees.
Perry's contract was up after the 1980 season and he signed a one-year, $300,000 contract with the Atlanta Braves. During the strike-shortened 1981 season, Perry, the oldest player at the time in Major League baseball, started 23 games (150.2 innings) and had an 8–9 record. The Braves released Perry after the season, leaving him three victories short of 300.
After being released by the Braves, Perry was unable to find interest from any clubs, and missed his first spring training in 23 years.
He eventually signed with the Seattle Mariners, where he acquired the nickname "Ancient Mariner." Perry won his 300th game on May 6, 1982, becoming the first pitcher to win 300 games since Early Wynn did so in 1963. On August 23, he was ejected from a game against the Boston Red Sox for doctoring the ball, and given a 10-day suspension. It was the second time Perry had been ejected in his entire career, and it was his first ejection for ball doctoring.
After starting the 1983 season 3–10, Perry was designated for assignment by Seattle on June 26 and the Kansas City Royals picked him on a waiver claim 10 days later. In August, Perry became the third pitcher in history to record 3,500 strikeouts. In the final months of the season, Perry experimented with a submarine delivery for the first time in his career and took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the first-place Baltimore Orioles on August 19.
Also in 1983, he became the third pitcher in the same year to surpass longtime strikeout king Walter Johnson's record of 3,509 strikeouts. Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan were the others. Also in 1983, Perry was involved in the Pine Tar Game against the New York Yankees. The game originally ended when the umpires called Brett out for too much pine tar on his bat, negating his home run and drawing a vehement protest from him and the Royals. Perry absconded with Brett's bat and gave it to a bat boy so he could hide it in the clubhouse, only to be caught by Joe Brinkman. When the Royals won the protest, Perry was retroactively ejected for doing this.
He announced his retirement on September 23, 1983.