Happy Birthday to the Say Hey Kid
Hall of Famer Willie Mays turns 81 years old today. Happy Birthday Willie.Why do I remember Mays' birthday when I didn't grow up a Giants' fan and only saw him play on television (although I do have an All-Star game program from 1999 with his autograph - courtesy of my brother)? Because Willie shared a birthday with a classmate of mine who was hit and killed by a car in 1968.
Neal would have been 56 today. May his memory be blessed.
Labels: birthday, personal stuff
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:00 PM
3 Comments:
I know a guy who was born and raised in northern Calif. He loves baseball and, as a kid, attended many San Francisco Giants games in the old Candlestick Park. His most cherished possession is a home run ball hit by Willie Mays, that he got. Willie Mays hit this ball over the center field wall!
Candlestick Park was laid out in such a way that from the plate to the center field wall was very long, supposedly the longest in major league baseball stadiums. In addition Candlestick Park was notorious for it's heavy and fluctuating right-off-the-ocean winds. The outfield was closer to the nearby ocean than the infield, so balls hit had to also fight these off-the-ocean winds. When someone hit a home run over the center field wall at Candlestick, he'd hit probably the toughest home run to achieve in major league baseball.
Willie Mays did it and my old friend has the ball. It's mounted and sits in his den, his most cherished possession.
While I greatly admire the Sey Hey Kid and many others of the modern era, I also remember that players "back in the day" played a much shorter season than do today's players. The latter day players have a lot more games in which to break old, shorter season records.
For instance, in the 1960's, Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's home run record of 60 home runs in a season, playing in a 160 game season. Babe Ruth established his 60 home run record in the 1920's, in a 125 game season. If, in all fairness, you cut off Maris' home runs after game 125, he didn't even come close to Ruth's record. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of the old-time records still stand, for this reason.
Any comments, Carl?
Captain.H,
Maris played a 162-game season (I think it was actually 161 that year because of a rain-out that wasn't made up).
Ruth played a 154-game season, so the difference was not as significant as you made it sound.
I don't believe any of the homerun records after Maris. I think they were all on steroids.
Wow! You know your baseball, Carl! I stand corrected on the Maris/Ruth thing.
Yeah, steroids and other "performance enhancer" drugs have corrupted pro baseball, other pro sports too.
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