“Books on Deck” is using the time during a delayed start to the baseball season to showcase many of the great baseball books that are being released in the spring and summer of 2020. Next up is longtime San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Shea, who has profiled the great Willie Mays with a book titled “24: Life Stories and Lessons from The Say Hey Kid."
Appropriately, the book covers 24 chapters and dives into several different themes over the course of Mays’s life. There’s a chapter about Willie’s time in the Negro Leagues, a chapter entirely dedicated to his famous catch in the 1954 World Series and a chapter about playing for the Mets in 1972 and ’73.
Mays got his last career hit in the 1973 World Series off of fellow Hall of Famer, Rollie Fingers. Fingers wasn’t on the mound though for the final out of that seven-game Fall Classic. Left-hander Darold Knowles closed out game seven for the A’s against Wayne Garrett as Yogi Berra elected to keep the right-handed Mays on the bench, making Willie’s final moment a wish for one more at-bat.
“Game 2 was the biggie for Willie. He fell down pursuing a ball that he lost in the lights. He was on his knees arguing a call,” Shea said. “Those are the images people remember, but he was on his knees arguing for his teammate on the Bud Harrelson play.”
On that play in the 1973 World Series, Harrelson tried to score on a flyball to left field. Augie Donatelli, the home plate umpire, called Harrelson out on a tag from A’s catcher, Ray Fosse. Mays was on deck and begged Donatelli for the right call. Fosse insists to this day that he did indeed tag Harrelson.
Of course, most of the book highlights all the greatness of Willie Mays, his 660 homers, his 12 gold gloves, his relationships with his father, who taught him the game, with Monte Irvin, who protected him early in his career and with Hank Aaron, a rival and a friend.
“We wanted to present his voice interjected with every story,” Shea said. “The beauty of this is a life lived and his exemplary. He didn’t get in fights, he never even got ejected from a game.”