There was a delightful review, by Pete Hamill, in last week’s NYT Book Review, of James Hirsch’s “Willie Mays: The Life and Legend.” Can’t speak for the book, but Hamill’s little love letter to baseball in New York in the Fifties is wonderful. There never was, and never will be, anything like baseball in New York in the Fifties – NY teams completely dominated the post-season highlight reels (8 championships in 9 years, the Dodgers’ great win in ’55, “The Catch” in ’54, The ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ in ’51, Larsen’s perfect game, . . . ) and the rivalry between the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees was life-and-death stuff to pretty much everybody in town. [The clearest evidence ever (though there's lots and lots more, mostly from the world of soccer) of how incredibly stupid the owners of US sports franchises are with their desperate "exclusive geographic area" strategies].
Hamill captures many things about the era, but what I liked best was his observation (that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen made before) that
“He [Mays] could hit, he could run, he could catch, he could throw. And he brought to the playing of baseball a mysterious, almost magical quality that has disappeared from the professional game. Willie Mays brought us joy. All of us.
Even those of us who from birth were fanatical acolytes of the secular church of the Brooklyn Dodgers. . . . Above all, I remembered Mays getting a thunderous round of applause when he first came to bat in games at Ebbets Field (the only other visiting player to hear such cheers was Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals). Even the most fanatical Dodger fans wanted Mays to go 3 for 4, steal two bases and make one astounding catch in center field, as long as the Dodgers won, 6-4.”
It’s so true – at least, I remember the same thing. I, too, like Hamill, had the “Dodgers in my DNA”, being a Brooklyn boy [Hamill, of course, is legendary in Dodger folklore - it was Jimmy Breslin and Hamill who were, the story has it, sitting in a bar one day, and talk turned to the question "who were the three most evil men in history?" Each pulled out a pen and paper and wrote down their nominees, and when they turned their lists face up, they were identical: Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley] , but the first game I remember going to was up at the Polo Grounds, ’56 or ’57; my uncle Mack was, for some inexplicable reason, a Giants fan, and he took me up there one afternoon to see the Giants play (I think) the Phillies. We sat on the third-base line, and I remember — the only thing I remember — is Mays. He got a triple at one point, and there he was, flying around second base and running right towards us! Willie Mays! . . . I can conjure it up in my mind to this day. There really was something about him that made everybody adore him . . . Thankfully, he never ended up playing for the hated Yankees, which would really have been too hard to take …
WhiteyC says:
Well, yes, but for those living in the rest of the country, particularly American League cities, baseball in the 50s sucked.
March 6, 2010, 7:43 pmIt was the last decade dominated by white players; the number of black stars was tiny compared to the number of players. It was the last decade that included the St. Louis Browns and the Philadelphia/Kansas City Athletics.
The next three decades, up to the start of the steroid era in 1990 or so, all featured more highly skilled, more exciting, better balanced baseball.
Mark Field says:
I second Whitey’s point. The NL was much better, in large part because it integrated faster, but the AL was pretty much a wasteland outside of the Yankees. It was station to station ball and the quality of play was poor to awful.
March 6, 2010, 8:04 pmSteve Lubet says:
Except, of course, for 1959.
March 6, 2010, 8:41 pmanonymous says:
The worst thing ever written, in any language, is Pete Hamill’s liner notes to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.
March 6, 2010, 10:41 pmDavid Nieporent says:
It was a very good review by Hamill, if you didn’t want to know anything about the book that Hamill was ostensibly reviewing, and you wanted to read rambling nostalgia which made absolutely no sense. (Hamill claims that because the Dodgers and Giants left NY, he didn’t follow baseball in the 1960s, and somehow never saw Mays play again, except that he admits that he did follow baseball once the Mets joined the league, which was in 1962. So how did he miss Mays?)
Combine that with Hamill’s ridiculously false claims about there not being performance-enhancing drugs when Mays played, and Candlestick costing Mays 100 HRs, and you pretty much have a drunk guy reminiscing about his past, which would be fine if he weren’t supposed to be reviewing a book.
March 6, 2010, 11:52 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Oh, and I want to third Whitey’s point. Baseball in the 1950s was great… if you lived in New York. For most of the country, it was terrible.
March 6, 2010, 11:57 pmterrivus says:
how incredibly stupid the owners of US sports franchises are with their desperate “exclusive geographic area” strategies
Yes, it certainly was “stupid” for a business owner (Walter O’Malley) to move his team from a city where average home attendance in the last few years hovered around 13,000 (Brooklyn) to one where, within a few years, the average home attendance was 30,000 (Los Angeles). (Source: Baseball Almanac)
Also, ask the owners of the old Dallas Texans of the AFL if the presence of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys — established for the primary purpose of running the Texans out of business — had anything to do with the Texans’ move to Kansas City, to become the Chiefs (answer: yes, that was the only reason for the move).
Finally, anyone in DC can tell you that since the Nationals came on the scene, fewer people will go to Baltimore to watch an Orioles game, especially via big law firm/lobbyist trips (and both teams stink, so it’s not a matter of quality). That’s one of the reasons Peter Angelos customarily blocked the creation of a team in DC — and he was right.
March 7, 2010, 12:10 amorca says:
And yet…England manages to support 20 world class soccer teams in an area smaller than New York State.
March 7, 2010, 12:35 amU.Va. Grad says:
If Angelos gave two s**ts about putting on a team that was worth watching, he would be in a much better off. Instead, he seems “right” to claim that if there are two awful, uncompetitive teams within 50 miles of each other, nobody will much give a damn about either one.
March 7, 2010, 12:47 amRich Rostrom says:
Steve Lubet says: Except, of course, for 1959.
Well, yeah! And one should also acknowledge the 1954 Indians.
Orca: England has 2 1/2 times the population of NY state. In addition, soccer is the only significant pro team sport in England. In the U.S. there is baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
NY state has two MLB teams, three NFL teams, three NHL teams, and two NBA teams.
Thus NY state supports ten major pro sports teams; half as many as England, with only 40% of the population.
March 7, 2010, 3:07 amHarry says:
1 NFL team. Only the Bills play in NY. If you count the Giants & Jets, you need to count NJ’s population too. (And by that reasoning, there would be 4 NHL teams.)
March 7, 2010, 3:27 amTaxThePoor? says:
I liked this post, thank you. Willie Mays is my favorite player I never saw play. Cubs fan. The best baseball decade since the 1900s is yet to come. Wait ’til next year.
But the sentiment of routing for players like Willie Mays regardless still lives on, I would argue. Baseball fans that follow the game throughout their life still find some modern players to route for even when playing the Cubs, albeit never the caliber of Mays I presume, but nonetheless. We grab them year after year in our fantasy leagues.
Ichiro comes to mind as someone that nobody really routes against. Many others too, but its a personal thing.
Spring fever indeed. Baseball is the best. National League Baseball.
March 7, 2010, 4:17 amJ. Aldridge says:
Was baseball considered more of a game then a business in the 50′s?
March 7, 2010, 4:34 amShoot The Lawyers says:
The Dodger move to Brooklyn is one of American sports’ biggest myths. Before anyone tries to paint Walter O’Malley as a villain, read “Forever Blue” by Michael D’Antonio. The truth is that O’Malley was more pushed out by NY than pulled out by big bucks in LA. People always wax nostalgic about their childhood, especially when it comes to sports. This fact is doubly true when the mythmakers are scribes whose brains have been saturated in booze for the past fifty years and whose vision of reality is seen through the lense of a scotch glass.
March 7, 2010, 7:55 amerp says:
Like Hamill, we stopped following baseball when the Dodgers left Brooklyn. Baseball was over for those of who as kids took the el to Ebbets Field and cheered ourselves hoarse for our heroes.
As I remember it, every day at a Dodger’s game was a perfect day in June.
March 7, 2010, 8:13 amRob says:
And of course, the classic Peanuts:
http://comics.com/zoom/243200/
March 7, 2010, 8:50 amMitchell J. Freedman says:
I agree with the poster who defended O’Malley.
However, D’Antonio’s book is based upon the scholarly book “The Dodgers Move West” by Neil Sullivan from the 1980s. The real bad guys in the Dodgers moving out of Brooklyn (which was a risk for O’Malley as it was not at all clear people would come out to support the Dodgers in LA) were Mayor Robert Wagner and his architect-adviser Robert Moses. They refused to allow O’Malley to build a stadium in Brooklyn–with O’Malley’s own private funds, and paying for part of a train station stop at the stadium!–and demanded he move to Queens (Flushing). Of course, that is where eventually the Mets showed up, with a stadium named after a prominent lawyer-adviser to Wagner and Moses, William Shea. Hence, Shea Stadium. One can make a better argument that the Metropolitans were the ones born in the corruption of business and government, with the “beard” of Joan Payson as the kindly old lady owner.
Yes, ironies abound. And guys like Hamill and Breslin, who know the true story for the past 20 or more years, continue to peddle the attack on O’Malley.
The other story I have heard from the likes of Hamill and Breslin is if you had two bullets in your gun, and you were standing face to face with Hitler, Stalin and O’Malley, what would you do? The answer was shoot O’Malley twice to make sure he was dead. As much as I like Hamill and Breslin for other reasons, they should be ashamed of themselves for their attack on a business man that many today should see as an far more sympathetic to communities than most other modern owners.
March 7, 2010, 10:49 amstashy says:
I saw Mays play countless times, both at the Polo Grounds and later on TV from the coast. He was a truly great all-around player, to be sure, but he was also a great showman (or showboat or hotdog, depending upon your aesthetic preferences). It is hard to separate the joy from the showmanship.
March 7, 2010, 11:05 amorca says:
NBA and NHL teams have such low attendance numbers that they really shouldn’t be considered first tier “Pro” sports. They are more comparable to lower tier “Pro” soccer clubs in England.
March 7, 2010, 11:12 amSyd Henderson says:
Before you get too nostalgic for the Giants, you might want to look at their attendance in the mid fifties:
1954: 1,155,067 (2nd of 8: their last World Series)
1955: 824,112 (6th of 8: finished third)
1956: 629,179 (8th of 8, finished 6th)
1957: 653,923 (8th of 8, finished 6th)
It’s hard for me to reconcile baseball fanaticism with a defending World Series champion finishing sixth in league attendance, then finishing last in attendance for two years despite being in the biggest metropolitan area in the US. I don’t blame Stoneham for moving the Giants.
March 7, 2010, 11:35 amimk says:
It was not 8 out of 9 years that NY teams won the World Series.
NY teams won the World Series in 9 out of 10 years-’47,’49,’50,’51,’52,’53,’54,’55,’56.If you count 1958,-with the Giants and Dodgers gone, it was 10 out of 12 years.
March 7, 2010, 11:47 amSyd Henderson says:
The 1950 pennant wasn’t resolved until the last day of the season. If the Dodgers had defeated the Phillies (they had bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game), there would have been a playoff and possibly five all-New York World Series in a row.
March 7, 2010, 12:35 pmVisitor Again says:
I saw Willie Mays play live a few times and on television many times in the 1950s and 1960s, although I was a Yankee and Mickey Mantle fan from afar (first Canada and then California). Mays was indeed a bit of a showman, but a moment in time I remember is watching him on the television in an all-star game played at Candlestick Park in 1961, when I was nearing 18, and being awed by his power and grace while running the bases. Few ballplayers have had his capacity to thrill the fans.
It was a true privilege to watch Mays play live, even from the grandstand at Candlestick Park on a midsummer evening, although that meant enduring icy winds blowing in from the waters beyond the outfield, which–whatever the comments above may claim–surely cost Mays a considerable number of home runs.
March 7, 2010, 1:58 pmVisitor Again says:
I just checked and found the outfield bleachers at Candlestick Park were not replaced by big stands until 1971, at the behest of the San Francisco 49ers. That reduced the winds blowing in from the outfield, but it also was about the time Mays left the Giants for the Mets.
March 7, 2010, 2:06 pmSyd Henderson says:
Mays must have picked up a fair number of home runs playing in the Polo Grounds, although that was shorter than his time in San Francisco.
March 7, 2010, 2:13 pmMark Field says:
While I’m inclined to agree with DMN about Hammil’s review, the book itself is well worth reading. I’m about the biggest Willie Mays fan on the planet, but there were things I read in Hirsch’s book that I’d never seen before. I did catch a few factual errors, but it’s a 600 page book.
And Mays was the best to watch. I once saw him score from 1st on a single to left to beat the Dodgers. I was there when he homered in the 8th inning on the last day of the 1962 season to win the game and let the Giants tie the Dodgers for 1st. Not many players could have done both of those things.
March 7, 2010, 2:16 pmMark Field says:
We had a discussion about this point at baseballprimer. Without going into the whole debate, Mays played in roughly neutral parks, taking his career as a whole. While Candlestick didn’t cost him HRs in one sense (and certainly didn’t cost him 100), most players do about 10% better at home. Mays did about the same at Candlestick as on the road. In that sense, it did cost him. I now wonder how Mays would’ve been perceived if he had had the chance to play in a park like Pac Bell (or whatever its name is today), which probably would have highlighted both his defensive and offensive strengths.
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March 7, 2010, 3:16 pmMatt says:
NBA teams play in arenas that only hold about 19,000 people, so of course their attendance is going to be lower. The NBA is incredibly popular and generates a lot of money. Attendance at games is not the only metric.
The NBA generates more in revenue than the Premiere League. Is that a “lower tier “Pro” soccer league”?
March 7, 2010, 4:01 pmstu says:
As a child in southeastern Virginia I attended many games in my Baby Dodger T shirt, the wearing of which allowed me to attend the games of the class C Newport News Baby Dodgers for free. The 50′s was a wonderful era of American optimism and baseball was still the national game. My loyalty to the Dodgers was fixed for life and I luxuriated in their success in that decade and the one that followed.
March 7, 2010, 4:18 pmorca says:
The NBA and the English Premier soccer league both generate about $3 billion of revenue a year.
America’s population is more than 6 times England’s…so yes, I’d call the NBA (and the NHL) a 2nd tier sport.
March 7, 2010, 5:35 pmIP98 says:
The myth that Candlestick cost Mays 100 home runs is one that won’t die.
After the first year at Candlestick, the fences were moved in so that the power alleys went from 397 feet to 365 feet. Home runs doubled (as you would expect)and SF had one of the best HR parks in baseball at the time.
In the five years prior to 1961 when the fences were moved in, Mays hit 163 HRs. In the 5 seasons after the fences were moved in Mays hit 226 Hrs, 118 of them at home so it doesn’t seem Candlestick hurt him. Even after 1965 he hit more HRs at home than on the road. If Candlestick cost Mays 100 home runs he must have lost them in that first year before the fences were moved in.
A player of Mays stature doesn’t need anything to enhance his legend.
March 7, 2010, 7:13 pmMatt says:
I always enjoy the Mays could have hit more if he wasn’t in Candlestick talk. As if 660 home runs wasn’t nearly enough.
March 7, 2010, 8:08 pmShoot The Lawyers says:
The 1950′s were probably the best years America ever had. Here is what was born: rock and roll, the V8 engine, the modern civil rights movement, Holiday Inn, McDonald’s, Playboy, and TV. You can check it all out in the best book ever written about the era: The Fifties by David Halberstam.
March 7, 2010, 10:30 pmRichard Atwood says:
Anonymous: You got it right about Hamill’s liner notes on the Dylan album.
March 8, 2010, 12:22 amNo wonder he gave up drinking.
Anonymous says:
Thanks, Richard Atwood. This discussion has gone off in the wrong direction. Who cares about the Giants leaving New York, when Hamill has left such a reeking cow-plop of arts writing in the middle of the dining room table?
March 8, 2010, 12:31 amVisitor Again says:
No one on this thread questioned Mays’ greatness or suggested that his home run total was not big enough. I’ve never thought about Mays’ home run production being affected by Candlestick Park until the issue came up here. Someone said playing in Candlestick Park cost him home runs. Someone else questioned that. My response was that I think the wind from the outfield at Candlestick surely cost him home runs. That is undoubtedly correct. The wind cost him home runs whatever the outfield measurements were.
March 8, 2010, 5:56 pmPaulB says:
I don’t think anyone questions that Candlestick was a tough park for right handed power hitters like Mays, (Bobby)Bonds, and Cepeda. Mays’ numbers in San Francisco were partially offset by his first two years there when the Giants played at the old minor league stadium, Seals Stadium, where Joe DiMaggio played prior to going to the Yankees. However, the small size of the outfield made it difficult for San Francisco fans to appreciate his defensive skills. Nothing like playing in the Polo Grounds with 250 foot foul lines and a 485 foot center field to showcase the skills of a player blessed with both extraordinary power and speed.
When you look at Mays’ career numbers, don’t focus so much on Candlestick as on the fact that he missed two full seasons in the Army (1952-53). Like Williams who missed almost five seasons to military service, when you “fill in” those lost years, you see careers that look like that of the Babe.
March 8, 2010, 7:04 pm