CHICAGO — Willie Mays may not be in attendance this week when the Giants visit his hometown and first professional ballpark, but the oldest living Hall of Famer won’t be far from their minds during Thursday’s Rickwood Classic.
“Unfortunately I don’t think he’ll be able to go there,” manager Bob Melvin said, “but we’ll all be thinking about him when stepping on that field, saying ‘Willie Mays played here.’”
The Giants were selected to participate in the first major-league game at Birmingham, Alabama’s Rickwood Field due in large part to Mays, who grew up within spitting distance of the ballpark and called it home while playing as a teenager for the Black Barons, the town’s team in the Negro Southern League.
Mays, 93, released a statement Monday saying that, “I’d like to be there. But I don’t move as well as I used to. So I’m going to watch from my home (in the Bay Area).
“Rickwood’s been part of my life for all my life. Since I was a kid. It was just ‘around the corner there’ from Fairfield (where Mays grew up) and it felt like it had been there forever. Like a church. The first big thing I ever put my mind to was to play at Rickwood Field. It wasn’t a dream. It was something I was going to do. …
“I’m glad that the Giants, Cardinals and MLB are doing this, letting everyone see pro ball at Rickwood Field. Good to remind people of all the great ball that has been played there, and all the player. All these years and it is still here. So am I. How about that?”
Now in his 90s, Mays isn’t quite the consistent presence around the ballpark now as he once was in his post-playing days. It causes a stir whenever he drops by, typically holing up in former clubhouse manager Mike Murphy’s office while players and team personnel stop in, as he did to ring in his 92nd birthday last May.
It’s a different relationship for the current crop of Giants players than for their manager, who grew up watching Mays as a young baseball fan on the Peninsula and got to know him well after being traded to his hometown club after his rookie season.
“In ’86 when I showed up for the first time to Candlestick, his locker was next to mine and he was around some,” Melvin said. “That was when I first got to know him. And then over the years, had some conversations with him.”
Born three years after the Giants moved to California and 10 years old when Mays played his final game in San Francisco, Melvin had the unique opportunity to go from idolizing Mays to nurturing a relationship as a couple of baseball lifers.
Lockering next to him, Melvin said, “it was more just about questions I would have for him.” When the gnarly winds at Candlestick would switch directions, Mays told him, “‘When the wind blew in from left, I hit ’em out to right.’ And he would just show you this picture-perfect (form). He probably couldn’t explain it, but he certainly knew how to do it.”
One thing Mays was always cognizant of was the value and desirability of his signature, which was Bruce Bochy’s introduction to him when he joined the organization in 2007. Bochy intended to continue the tradition of hosting the Giants’ living Hall of Famers in spring training, and Mays showed up prepared.
“The first day of spring training, he walks in with a dozen baseballs signed. He goes, ‘You’re probably going to need these,’” Bochy recalled. “It was such a great gesture. The last thing you want to do is go ask him for a baseball. I just loved talking to the man.”
On those days when the likes of Willie McCovey, Gaylord Perry and Orlando Cepeda would stop by the Giants’ Scottsdale facilities, Mays “dominated” the conversation.
“It was great, too. He would get on these guys about not playing enough in spring training,” Bochy said. “His little office, so to speak, was across from my office. So we had a lot of daily chats. I loved talking baseball with him.”
Melvin said watching Mays “probably inspired me to play baseball and like it as much as I did,” so it was extra special when the Hall of Famer reached out after Melvin notched a meaningful milestone while managing across town. In 2017, he became the 64th MLB manager to win 1,000 career games.
“I got to speak with him for a while,” Melvin said. “More about the history, the legacy, the Bay Area and all that type of thing.”
More recently, Melvin connected again with Mays when he accepted the Giants’ managerial gig this offseason.
Together with the fact that Melvin spent a chunk of his minor-league career playing at Rickwood, he said, “I think we’re just the perfect team to go there.”