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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato, this is "Remember Them," that is Jacqui Tricarico.

And, today, Jacqui, we remember someone who many consider to be the greatest baseball player of all time, the "Say, Hey" Kid, Willie Mays.

Book over my shoulder written by James Hirsch, the author of "Willie Mays: The Life The Legend."

You're into sports, you played basketball, he was the greatest baseball player of all time in the eyes of many.

Even though, I said in the interview I was a Mickey Mantle guy as a kid growing up, but I always knew he was, that Willie was the best.

What struck you from that interview with Hirsch?

- You and James Hirsch talk about the connection between Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays Down in Atlantic City, which is interesting.

- You know, this is crazy because 99% of the book is about what made Willie Mays so great, not just as a player, but as a person who came up in the segregated south, from Alabama.

He comes up, plays in Trenton for a minor league team.

He was the only African American player on the team, is one of the only African American players who played major League baseball at that time.

We'll talk about race and Willie Mays, and complicated issues of segregation.

But, also, here's the other thing.

One of the things that hit me, it was this event, this incident that happened at Bally's Resorts in Atlantic City, where Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, they retired, Jacqui, but they're trying to make some money, and they're greeters at Bally's.

They're greeting people as they come in.

But baseball, according to Hirsch, had been so burned by the gambling scandal of the 1919 White Sox team that threw the World Series, and became called the Black Sox, that baseball's commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, freaked out, and banned Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from baseball.

Crazy stuff.

- Yeah.

And they said, "Hey, we're just down here in Atlantic City, "just shaking hands "and helping to promote Atlantic City casinos."

- But they were not gambling on baseball.

They were not gambling on anything.

- No.

- But that was just... It wasn't a black mark on Willie Mays, by the way.

- Oh, no.

And James Hirsch was the perfect person to bring on to talk about Willie Mays because he dedicated so much time into writing this book.

He spoke with people from Bill Clinton to his former players, and worked with Willie Mays directly.

So he really was the perfect person for you to have a conversation with to learn more about the great Willie Mays.

- And Hirsch also talks about the fact that it was very hard to gain Willie May's trust, it was not easy, but he did.

- He won him over.

- He got him to talk extensively.

It really made a difference.

Let's check out the great "Say, Hey" Kid, Willie Mays.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Born May 6, 1931 in Westfield, Alabama, the man who would become the "Say, Hey" Kid took New York by storm when he debuted with the Giants in 1951.

Showing a rarely before seen combination of speed, power, and flare, Mays powered the Giants' improbable run to the pennant that summer before missing most of the next two seasons while serving in the Army.

Back on the field in 1954, Mays began a string of seasons that saw him evolve into the game's most versatile performer.

That season, Mays led the National League with a .345 batting average en route to league most valuable player honors, while helping the Giants win another pennant.

Off the field, May's infectious enthusiasm for the game won the hearts of a generation of fans who were the first to experience baseball through television.

First in New York City and later in San Francisco, Mays embodied the youthful zest for a children's game that had become a nation's pastime.

In baseball history, Mays is the only player with at least 500 home runs, 3,000 hits, 2,000 runs scored, and 300 stolen bases.

"Mays," said Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, "is the greatest baseball player that ever lived."

(gentle music) - We now remember someone who many consider the greatest player ever in Major League Baseball, Willie Mays.

We're joined by James Hirsch, who's the author of "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend".

Jim, good to have you with us.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- That is Jim's book over my left shoulder.

Jim, let me ask you this.

Many do argue that Willie Mays was the greatest, because he could do so many different things.

Make the case for Willie being the greatest ever.

- Willie redefined the game of baseball.

Before he came into the league in 1950, there was no such thing as the five-tool player.

That phrase didn't exist.

Players were typically very good in one or two things.

They specialized as a home run hitter or as an on-base and stolen base guy, you know, so Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were the two archetypes for greatness on the field.

What changed with Willie was that he could in fact do everything.

He could hit home runs.

He could hit for average.

He could throw the ball.

He could run.

He was great defensively, and so no one had ever seen that before and he played the game with so much flair and style and bravado that he just brought an electricity to the game that you couldn't take your eyes off of him.

So for all those reasons, aside from what all the numbers say, you know, the 660 home runs, the 302 batting average, et cetera, you know, he just, he brought a dimension of the game of excitement and he could do things that no one else had ever done.

That makes the case for him being the greatest player of all time.

- Jim, do this for us.

We know that there's a strong Trenton, New Jersey connection to Willie Mays.

Talk about how he grew up, where he grew up, and then his coming to Trenton.

- So Willie was born and raised in rural Alabama, born in 1931 in the Deep South, segregated, Jim Crow, but he was a phenomenal athlete in multiple sports, not just baseball, but he was taught at a very young age that, if you as a black man are going to be successful in this country, regardless of how good you are as an athlete, you had to keep your head down and your mouth shut, or else you're gonna end up arrested, incarcerated, lynched, or have your home bombed, and so he instilled those ideas at a very young age and adhered to them literally his entire life.

Now, what was noteworthy about his introduction to organized baseball, to Major League Baseball is that the New York Giants signed him in 1950 and they put him with the Trenton Giants at that time.

- The Trenton Giants were a minor league team affiliated with the New York Giants.

- Correct.

They were a double A team and- - Based in Trenton, right?

- Based in, and so after Willie graduated high school, he took a bus north from Alabama- - Right.

- And he joined the Trenton Giants in Hagerstown, Maryland and that's where they were playing and he actually joined the team after the game had started, and so he's sitting in the dugout and it's really the first time in his life that he's by himself.

Previously, when he was playing baseball for the Birmingham Black Barons, he always traveled with his teammates and they would go all over the south, all over the country, but now he was basically by himself playing with white teammates for the first time.

- Was he the only black player?

- He was the only black player on that team and he was the first black player to play in white baseball in that ballpark, in Hagerstown.

So Willie effectively integrated baseball in that city and Hagerstown in Maryland, deep confederate roots.

They had monuments to the old Confederacy, a cemetery for Confederates.

So he's there and he's anxious and he's nervous, and after the game, the team leaves the ballpark and go on the bus and all the players were gonna stay in one hotel, but first, the bus drives Willie to the segregated part of Hagerstown and drops Willie off at a hotel for black patrons.

Now, this was a well-known hotel in Hagerstown.

It was where Ella Fitzgerald had stayed and other black luminaries, but now Willie is there by himself and all of his other teammates go to the white hotel, and so again, he's extremely nervous.

He's 19 years old, and at midnight, he hears a knock on his window and he looks up and he sees three of his teammates are there.

They had climbed up the fire escape and they knock on the window.

Willie opens the window and his teammates say, "We're not gonna let you stay here by yourself.

We're gonna stay here with you."

And they slept on the floor that night with Willie and this was a story that Willie shared many, many times over the years, because it was a very important and kind of a central theme in Willie's life.

Willie trusted very few people, but he trusted three groups.

He trusted baseball players, children and household pets, but he told that story about his teammates, because he always knew that he could trust baseball players and that was a lesson that he- - But Jim, there's obviously a whole 'nother side to this, you know, the fact that those three white players climbed up, opened the window and stayed with him, that's a piece of it, but here's the thing that has always perplexed me.

I was a Mickey Mantle guy and you know what that means.

I mean, even though you can appreciate Willie Mays, they couldn't be your two favorite players.

They just weren't.

I was a Mickey Mantle guy, a little kid growing up.

I knew of Willie Mays's greatness.

We'll talk about "the catch" in a minute, which is a chapter in Jim's book, in the eyes of many, the greatest catch ever over the shoulder in center field, but we'll talk about that in a second.

But here's the thing that I'm perplexed by.

So Jackie Robinson breaks the color line, the barrier in baseball in the late 1940s and Jackie Robinson and some other African-American players didn't understand and didn't appreciate that Willie Mays was not actively engaged and involved in the civil rights movement and didn't seem particularly angry from a public point of view and fighting against the segregation you just described.

Why?

Explain Willie Mays's view on race and racism and segregation in this country and clearly in baseball?

- Because as I mentioned a moment ago, Willie was told when he was a child, you cannot speak out, because if you do speak out- - But he wasn't a kid.

Jim, I'm sorry.

He wasn't a kid.

I'm not trying to be negative.

I'm just saying he wasn't a kid at that point and there were other African-American players who were speaking out and Jackie Robinson was talking about this and he was one of the greatest players and there were many who wondered, why can't he be with us on this?

- But Steve, in fact, there were very few African-American players who were speaking out.

Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Bill Russell, they were the aberrations of that- - Jim Brown.

- Jim Brown, but most black players did not speak out, because they were fearful of the repercussions.

Jackie Robinson grew up in Pasadena, California.

He went to UCLA.

He had a completely different orientation than Willie Mays had, who, as I said, grew up in the Deep South.

Jackie Robinson had the confidence to speak out- - Right.

- On issues, believing that that would not cost him in his professional and personal aspirations.

Willie Mays could not be Jackie Robinson, because of how he was raised.

However, what's important and what I wrote about in some detail in the book was that Willie believed in his own way he was a positive force for the civil rights movement- - How so?

- Because of what he did on the field and how he was able to change the perceptions of white Americans and just to be very personal for a moment, I'm a bit younger than you are, but I grew up in a white suburb in St.

Louis basically in the 1970s and I was a huge sports fan and all of my heroes happened to be black, because they were the best players in St.

Louis teams at that era, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, et cetera.

- Lou Brock, Curt Flood.

- Curt Flood, precisely, and so to me, long before I knew anything about race or racism, to me, like, it would've never dawned on me that racism could exist, because I grew up cherishing and idolizing these black athletes.

So I took that idea with the book about Willie- - Okay.

- And I asked people what Willie Mays meant to America at that time, and so one person I interviewed was Bill Clinton.

Now, Clinton and Willie are friends, but that wasn't why I spoke to Clinton.

I asked Clinton, what was it like to be growing up in Arkansas in the 1950s and Willie Mays being on the scene?

And Clinton immediately understood what I was getting at and he said, "Yes, Jim."

He said, you know, "During the week, I was with kids and adults who would fight tooth and nail to preserve Jim Crow, but then on Saturday afternoon, they would cheer for Willie Mays on the game of the week."

And that, even on a subconscious level, changed the people that I was with, changed their views of black players, and so that was the contribution that Willie made and Willie knew that.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- Can we do the catch, describe the catch over the shoulder looking at center field.

So, where were his eyes?

Was he looking at home plate as he was running straight playing center field and caught over his shoulder?

Where was he looking?

How the heck did he catch that ball, Jim Hirsch?

- Okay, so just... It's 1954, the first game of the World Series against the Cleveland Indians, and it's in the Polo Grounds.

And that's important because the Polo Grounds was basically built like a horseshoe and straight- - Describe where the Polo Grounds was.

- The Polo Grounds was in Harlem, and it was, you know, right along the Harlem River.

And so center field, at its furthest distance, was more than 500 feet from home plate.

And so, it was a perfect venue for Willie 'cause he was so fast.

He made a lot of great catches in this outfield.

So, the catch occurs when a powerful left-hand hitter, Vic Wertz, hits this line drive, deep line drive straightaway center field, runners are on first and second base, and there's... I think there's one out.

And as soon as the balls hit, everyone in the Polo Grounds thinks, "Oh, this ball is gonna be over Willie's head 'cause it's gonna be 500 feet away, and it's gonna clear the bases, and the Indians are gonna win the game."

But Willie spins around and starts sprinting for it.

And what he will tell you is that he knew as soon, as the ball was hit, he was going to catch it, even though his back was to home plate.

But he was able to catch it over the shoulder.

- And then how did he just spin around and throw it all in one motion?

- And then, and what he would say is that, "The catch was never the problem."

The throw was the problem because Larry Doby was on second base, and he could turn- - Larry Doby, who broke the color line in the American League in baseball?

- [James] Very good.

- In 1947, '8?

- Yeah, he was a year after Jackie, so he- - I'm sorry, pick it up, Jim.

- Yeah, and so anyway, so the brilliance of the play wasn't so much the catch, according to Willie, it was his ability to catch, pivot, and throw back into the infield and keep Doby from tagging up and scoring the second base umpire, at the time, a guy named Jocko Conlan said it was the greatest throw he had ever seen.

So what made the catch so memorable was not just how much distance Willie had to cover to catch it, but then spinning around and making the perfect throw back into the infield.

And that iconic image of Willie, you know, catching the ball over his shoulder, I would argue that's the most iconic image in all of sports.

You can go out on a Little League lot today and watch, you know, 10-year-olds play baseball, and someone catches a ball over his shoulder, and one of the parents will say, "A Willie Mays catch."

- Jim, you know what's so weird about this as you're talking about it?

I remember as a little, little kid, even though I was a Mickey Mantle fan, and I want to ask you about the relationship 'cause we only have a few minutes left.

I remember building a model.

They used to have these models with glue and you have to stick them together.

It was "The Catch".

There was a model of Willie Mays making that catch over his shoulder, and I remember working for days on that.

- That's good.

- It was the model of Willie Mays.

Anyway, you just brought back that memory.

Hey, how much of a rivalry was there between Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Willie Mays of the Giants, A, and B, did they get along?

- Willie got along with Mantle.

They were never close friends.

I mean, frankly, Mantle's lifestyle was very different from Willie's in the 1950s.

You know, Willie was living in a boarding home in Harlem with two older... With an older Black couple to kind of keep Willie out of harm's way.

And Mickey Mantle obviously lived a very different life in the 1950s in Manhattan.

And so they didn't hang... - Did he respect Mickey Mantle?

- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

As well as... -How much did Mantle respect Willie Mays?

- Oh, tremendous mutual respect, as well as Duke Snider, the center field.

- The Duke Snider who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Those are Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

The Duke Snider- - Willie- - Hey, but fast forward, 'cause I'm managing time here.

So what the heck happened down in Atlantic City, Jim, and by the way, you can find in Jim Hirsch's book right there, "Willie Mays: The Life and Legend."

And Jim spoke extensively with Willie Mays.

But how about this?

So they're down at Bally's, as I'm not mistaken, right, Atlantic City.

What's the year?

Do you know the year?

- It was after they... After Willie retired?

'74, '75.

- No, I think it was after that because legalized gambling happened in '77 or '78, so I don't know what year it was, but he's at Bally's.

- Yes.

- And baseball had this thing where the commissioner said, "There can't be any gambling in baseball together."

Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays go to Bally's, if I'm not mistaken, as greeters, to say, "Hello," to people and shake hands.

I don't know if they were signing autographs.

And Willie Mays got banned from Major League Baseball.

What?

Help us understand that real quick, Jim.

Well, the amazing- - The great Willie Mays.

- So the Commissioner Bowie Kuhn banned Mickey and Willie because recall in the 1970s, baseball was still haunted by the Black Sox Scandal.

- The 1990 Black... 1919 Black Sox Scandal.

They were the White Sox who threw the World Series, we're doing something on Arnold Rothstein, who was perceived to be the mastermind in the mind of many, who set up, who arranged for the gambling in the World Series, or the gambling, the baseball to be fixed.

Several of the players who played for the White Sox were indicted and convicted, and baseball's still dealing with that.

What does that have to do with being at Bally's saying, "Hello," to people?

- They were fearful of anything having to do with gambling tainting the game of baseball.

And so even something as harmless as being a greeter at a casino in New Jersey was seen as crossing a line that baseball didn't wanna cross because they were fearful that somehow, that would be a cloud over the game of baseball.

But the amazing thing is, and perhaps this is where you're going for this conversation is how things have changed, whereas now Major League Baseball is in bed with the gambling companies, with FanDuel, and DraftKings, and all the rest.

But just to finish with Willie and Mickey, it wasn't until Peter Ueberroth came back as... Was named Commissioner- - Peter Ueberroth came.

Did they come?

They were unbanned and back in baseball, right?

Okay, got a minute left.

Your personal interaction, give me a minute or less.

What was he like when you spoke with him?

- It took a long time to gain his trust because he doesn't trust outsiders.

And it only came about through being very straightforward with him, being honest with him, talking to other friends and relatives of his.

And they knew that I was doing my job with fairness and integrity.

And he gradually opened up and gradually allowed me to see parts of him that no one else saw.

But it was not an easy task.

And I write at the end of the book about that relationship and how I got him to be able to trust me in order to write this book.

- It's a great book, and I've learned... I thought I knew, as a baseball fan, I thought I knew about Willie Mays, but he was much more complex.

Not just a great athlete, a great baseball player, but a fascinating human being a book is worth reading.

James Hirsch, author of "Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend."

Jim, I wanna thank you so much for allowing us to better understand Willie Mays who had a connection to New Jersey, but his impact was not just around the country, but around the world.

Jim, thank you so much.

- You're welcome.

Thank you.

- You got it.

On behalf of Jacqui Tricarico, our executive producer and co-anchor of "Remember Them," I'm Steve Adubato.

We honor, we remember the greatest of all time, even though I was a Mickey guy, it was Willie Mays, the greatest of all time.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Newark Board of Education.

Johnson & Johnson.

United Airlines.

Atlantic Health System.

Kean University.

And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by NJBIA.

And by BestofNJ.com.