“I was very cocky. When I say that, I mean that everything that went in the air, I thought I could catch. I was very aware of what was going on," Mays said of his signature moment from the 1954 World Series.
In 1954, his first full season in the majors, Willie Mays established himself as a supernova. He won his first MVP award by hitting a league-leading .345 with 41 home runs and 110 RBIs.
Then, in Game 1 of the World Series against the heavily favored Cleveland Indians, he delivered the most famous defensive play in baseball history.
It became known as The Catch.
With two runners on, nobody out, and the score tied 2-2 in the top of the eighth, the left-handed hitting Vic Wertz blasted a ball an estimated 460 feet to center field at the Polo Grounds. Turning his back to home plate, Mays sprinted toward the wall, caught the ball over his shoulder and whirled to deliver a powerful throw back to the infield.
Heralded as an all-time gem, Mays always insisted that the play was no big deal, with only a slight nod to his throw back to the infield.
“I was very cocky. When I say that, I mean that everything that went in the air, I thought I could catch. I was very aware of what was going on,” Mays said during a visit to AT&T Park in 2003. “When the ball was hit off Don Liddle, the pitcher, I’m saying to myself, ‘Two men are on.’ Yes, I’m talking to myself as I’m running — I know it’s hard to believe that I could do all this in one sequence.
“As the ball is coming, I’m saying to myself, ‘I have to get this ball back into the infield.’ In my mind, I never thought I would miss the ball. I didn’t think that at all.
“When you watch the play, look at the way I catch the ball. It’s like a wide receiver catching a pass going down the sideline, which is over the left shoulder, on the right side. I had learned about that playing in high school.”
Larry Doby, who was at second base, scrambled to tag up and advanced only as far as third. Al Rosen remained at first. Neither runner wound up scoring, and the Giants won the game in extra innings to kick-start a four-game sweep.
It was the only World Series triumph of Mays’ career.
Amazingly, one of the most exciting plays in sports history owes its roots to boredom.
Mays missed most of the 1952 season and all of ’53, a total of 274 games, after being drafted into the Army during the Korean War.
He spent much of his military service in Fort Eustis, Virginia. It was there — to pass the time — that Mays first developed his signature basket catch. As he later recounted for author Steve Bitker in “The Original San Francisco Giants”:
“I had a lot of spare time and said, ‘Well, let me do something different for the fans.’ And when I came out of the Army, I just did it. … It was easy for me to catch that way. I thought Leo (Durocher) would be the one to say, ‘No.’ But he said, ‘As long as you don’t miss it, I don’t care how you catch it.’ ”
Dan Brown is a former Bay Area News Group sports reporter.
