Willie Mays

Mays started his baseball career as a teenager with the Negro American League champion Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. When manager Piper Davis penciled in his name on his lineup card as the left fielder and seventh place batter for the Black Barons, the future superstar was a seventeen-year-old high-school student. During his tenure with the team, Davis became May's mentor and was lake a second father to the youngster.

Mays began playing sandlot ball as a shortstop with a team called the Fairfield Stars but quickly advanced to a semipro team, the Chattanooga Choo Choos, when Davis recruited him for the Black Barons. As a minor, Mays had to secure permission from his father, "Cat" Mays, who had been a center fielder in the industrial leagues around Birmingham, and who was reported to have played with the Black Barons for a short time.

At the time Willie began his professional career with the Black Barons, he was called "Buck" by his friends, and it was not until years later that he became the "Say Hey Kid." When he joined the team it was obvious that he could run and throw, but Davis saw beyond the basic raw skills. On his first day in a Black Barons' uniform, the team was playing a Sunday doubleheader at Rickwood Field in Birmingham. Mays sat out the first game but was inserted into the starting lineup for the second game, causing some grumbling among many of the veteran players. But Davis's support and Mays's performance dispelled any concerns about his ability. Although Mays had 2 hits in the game off a tough veteran pitcher, he was still the fourth-best outfielder on the team. Conveniently, Fate stepped in, and by the first of June he was the regular center fielder, taking over when starter Norman Robinson broke his leg. Neither of the fielders in the side pastures was noted for his range, and when a ball was hit to the outfield thy would yell, "Come on, Willie!"

In 1948, his first year with the Black Barons, he hit .262 with only 1 home run and 1 stolen base, but played well in the field during the regular season and in the ensuing Negro world Series in a losing cause. The youngster had difficulty hitting a curveball, but with Piper Davis's help, he began maturing as a hitter, and in 1949 he elevated his batting average to .311 and continued to raise his average in 1950, hitting .330 with good power (.547 slugging percentage) before being signed by the Giants and shipped to Trenton for the remainder of the season. There he continued to blister the ball, hitting .353 and slugging .510. That performance earned a promotion to Minneapolis in the AAA American Association, where he stayed for about a month, hitting .477 and slugging .799 before being called up to the New York Giants in 1951 at age twenty. 

Leo Durocher inserted him into center field and he hit .274 with 20 home runs as a rookie, and the Giants won the National League pennant. That was his last full season until 1954 when, after two years in the Army, he returned to lead the Giants to another National League flag and to a World Series victory over the Cleveland Indians in a Series most e\remembered for "the catch." He also led the league in batting with a .345 average and in triples with 13, while slugging 41 home runs and collecting 110 RBIs.

The rest of his career is well chronicled, finishing his twenty-two-year assault on major league baseball with a .302 lifetime average, 660 home runs, 1903 RBIs, 2062 runs, and 338 stolen bases. Along the way he won a batting title, three home-run titles (with a personal high of 52 in 1965), four stolen-base titles, hits, and runs.

In a career that started as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, he finished with election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Courtesy of  "The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues" by James A. Riley

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