Louisville Slugger bat signed by the 1951 New York Giants including Willie Mays.
Eric Nathanson (@2outhits)
Check out Episode 302 that we recorded last week; a special tribute to Willie Mays.
This past Tuesday on June 18, 2024 in the early evening as I was getting ready to head to work, my wife called to me from the other room, where the Giants-Cubs game was on TV, to get in there quickly. She then hugged me and told me “Willie died.” It seemed incomprehensible. Willie Mays can never die, he’s going to live forever. But it was the truth, he passed away at age 93 and unfortunately after hearing this news I headed straight into work. No time to sit and absorb it, just the cold hard reality to smack me in the face. Such is life sometimes.
It was almost fitting in my world that the news broke during a Giants-Cubs game at Wrigley Field. For those that don’t know, I grew up near Chicago and Wrigley Field was my home ballpark. The only way that I could see the Giants was at the historic ballpark on the North Side, so that was my frame of reference while growing up. And how did a kid growing up in the suburbs of Chicago during the 1980’s and 90’ surrounded by Cubs fans find himself a San Francisco Giants fan?
Willie Mays of course.
Back in the early 1950’s when the Giants still played in New York, a young Barry Nathanson fell in love with watching the player wearing number 24 run around the spacious center field in the Polo Grounds. His father was a Giants fan, so naturally he followed suit. But there was just something different about the added connection with Mays on the team. The excitement he stirred in others just by playing the game so many of us love.
When the Giants abandoned their fans in New York for the west coast of San Francisco, it didn’t matter to my father. Willie was on the team so he was going to be a Giants fan from 3,000 miles away in The Bronx. Of course he went to Yankee and also Met games after they came into existence in 1962, but his heart was with Willie in San Francisco.
I’m not sure if they still do this, but back in the day Louisville Slugger would make bats for each league champion engraved with signatures of all the members of the team. Everyone in the organization got one and the bat boy for the infamous 1951 Giants squad lived in my dad’s building. When the Giants announced they were moving to California, that bat boy was so enraged that he was going to throw the bat in the incinerator. My 11-year old father convinced him to give it to him instead of destroying it. That bat became the first of his many Willie Mays related prized possessions.
Before the bat was encased in a nice display in the mid-90’s for my dad to show off his growing collection in the basement, he kept it under his bed in a case with a protective sleeve. I’d heard so many stories about those teams that I would often sneak into his room and pull the bat out from under the bed and just marvel at the names in gold on the black bat and dream of the things they must have accomplished. Did he catch me? Of course, but then it just turned into another Giants history lesson.
Just a quick side note. How freaking lucky was my dad to grow up in New York during that time? He literally lived down the street from Yankee Stadium and would often tell me stories of how as kids, they would allow them in the ballpark for free after the 5th inning. Then, if you stayed and helped clean up a section of the stadium after the game, you’d get a free ticket to the next Yankees game. He got to see Mickey Mantle for free and still chose to be a Willie Mays fan! How amazing is that?
In the early 70’s, my parents moved to Chicago so my dad could attend dental school at Northwestern University. They fell in love with the spacious midwest and my dad figured with the Cubs in town, at least he could still see the Giants play ball. I came along in 1979 (the year Willie was inducted into the Hall of Fame), and I’m pretty sure I was immersed with Willie Mays facts and Giants history from the moment I came home. At least, it feels that way looking back.
I have the strongest memory of my dad showing me the basket catch in one of our earliest games of catch. He had one of those old-time gloves, you know the one, with 4 fingers and it was small with no padding in the palm. His childhood glove. I learned the basket catch before ever learning how to raise my arms above my head for a flyball. My father even explained to me how Willie caught it that way because he felt that it was quicker for him to get the subsequent throw off. He is right, it’s only a half rotation of the arm instead of a full one when catching a ball up high. But not all of us are Willie Mays who can just shoot the ball from any position like a cannon firing during battle. We have to catch it like mere mortals.
I’m just going to pause here and acknowledge that this has become way more about my father than about Willie than originally intended. Honestly, I didn’t expect that and I’m going to just keep pushing forward with it.
Barry Nathanson passed away back in March of 2012 and I miss him every day. It always struck me that his baseball hero out-lived him, so it gave me a way to feel like a part of my father was still alive since then. I can’t feel that way anymore and it has hit me hard. That’s why it’s taken a few days to write anything about it. But tonight, while watching the Mets and Cubs at Wrigley on my TV, it became time to deal with it. Baseball is something, man.
During many years of my youth baseball career, my father was my manager. All those years but one, we were the Giants. Over time, the other managers understood to let my father have the Giants because his passion for them always showed. In fact, when I was playing for the Yankees as a 7-year old under a different manager, my dad coached the whole season at 3rd base wearing a Giants cap. The man refused to wear a Yankees one! He just couldn’t comprehend putting on anything related to the pinstripes. This one just makes me smile now. Those fights he used to get into with Yankee fans about who’s better between Mantle and Mays must have really stuck with him.
Everyone has seen “The Catch” by now. As a young child falling asleep at night, I didn’t have the luxury of pulling it up on YouTube and watching. All I had were the stories about that and other Giants moments from my father. He used to talk about a time he saw Willie throw a guy out at home flat footed from almost 400 feet away. The descriptions of Willie running out from under his cap to chase down a fly ball were so vivid, that when I did finally see video of it, I felt like I’d already witnessed Willie do it a million times. Mays played with so much joy, that even a young kid growing up many years after he retired was drawn to him.
I mentioned earlier that my dad’s memorabilia collection started to grow in the 90’s. He finally had money to get some of the things that represent his cherished moments but he still had one thing from his childhood. It was a postcard that he received from the Giants with Willie Mays and other signatures on the back. Again, back in the 1950’s you could do such a thing and actually get a response! Imagine doing that today?
That’s the through-line of my love affair with baseball. It all started with Willie Mays. He was the only person other than his own father who my dad ever spoke of with such esteemed reverance. Honestly, if we’re splitting hairs here, he probably spoke higher of Willie than his own father, and I probably do the same. That’s not a bad thing, it was just easier to see his own father’s flaws than Willie’s. Because to my father Barry, Willie Mays had no flaws. He was the perfect ballplayer and an even greater person.
I’m not the type to put other people on a pedestal. I don’t understand how people can deify others. We’re all humans. The one exception is Willie Mays.
That’s the lens through which I’ve always viewed Willie Mays, and it will probably stay that way forever. RIP Say Hey Kid. Thank you.
And thank you dad, this love of the Giants and Willie is one of the greatest gifts you ever gave me. Being able to share all these moments with other Giants fans is such a blessing and I’m grateful for all of them. I’m proud that you helped me become one of the many touched by the greatness of Willie Mays. I’m going to miss him, and I miss you.
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