INTRODUCTION From The Sports Time Traveler™
One of the most exciting things about sports time travel is when I “discover” something that has been essentially lost in history.
It’s the closest thing I’ve ever felt to what the gold miners outside San Francisco must have felt like in 1849.
It’s fitting then that I found one such gem yesterday while I was traveling back in time in 1964 in San Francisco, following Willie Mays great start to that season.
Here is the report from my virtual trip 60 years into the past:
San Francisco, CA - May 23, 1964
Here in San Francisco, Willie Mays is off to one of the most sensational starts ever to a baseball season.
As of this morning, Willie Mays is having what you might consider a double triple crown year.
He leads BOTH leagues with 17 home runs, 40 runs batted in and a .405 batting average in just 34 games the Giants have played this season.
Those are stunning stats!
Mays’ start to the 1964 season is even more mind blowing if you make the projections to a full season.
If Mays were to continue at this torrid pace, he would finish 1964 with a line that looks like this:
162 Games
81 HRs
191 RBIs
.405 AVG.
And the recently turned 33 year old Mays is not slowing down.
In last night’s game, Willie went 3 for 5 with a home run, 2 runs scored and 2 RBIs as he helped the Giants beat the Pirates 8 - 3 and retain a 1 game lead in the National League at 22 - 12, the best record in all baseball.
It’s a dream start to the season for Willie and the Giants.
But it gets even better.
2 days ago San Francisco Giants skipper, Alvin Dark, named Willie Mays as captain of the team. The announcement capped a glorious day for Mays in which he slugged 2 home runs (the 3rd time this year already that Mays has had a 2 homer game) to beat the Phillies, at home in Candlestick, and put the Giants in first place.
Manager Alvin Dark is a former teammate of Mays when the Giants played in New York. Dark himself was captain of the Giants from 1950 - 1956.
The Breaking of a Barrier
The announcement of Willie Mays as captain of the Giants is of historic significance and resulted in a banner headline at the top of the sports section of the San Francisco Examiner yesterday (5/22/1963) which simply read:
“Mays Named Captain - Pilot Next.”
The article, written by Curley Grieve, started with this, “In a tradition shattering move, possibly second only to the induction of Jackie Robinson into organized baseball, Willie Mays was named captain of the San Francisco Giants.”
Grieve was referring to the fact that Willie Mays had just become the first Black man to be named captain of a major league baseball team.
And as far as anyone knows here in 1964, Willie Mays is the first Black man to become captain of any major pro sports team in America.
In making his announcement of Mays as captain, Alvin Dark said, “This is a most deserving man, and the highest honor the club and myself as manager can bestow on him.”
Dark then went a step further and proclaimed, “As far as I’m concerned Mays is definitely managerial material. Of course he has 10 more years to play.”
Grieve noted in his article the positive reception by the Giants’ other players to the announcement. Harvey Keunn, the Giants’ players’ representative said, “Everybody respects him not only as a really great player, but as a man. He will take his responsibilities seriously, but be the same Willie… He helps everybody. He always has a good word for anyone that makes a good play, or gets a key hit. Coming from him that means a good deal.”
Fellow outfielder and slugger, Willie McCovey, told Grieve, “He has been captain of the outfield ever since I’ve been out there. No one could have been nicer or more encouraging to me. I owe him a great deal.”
Mays himself was gracious in accepting the position as captain and appreciative of his manager’s decision. He told George Ross of the Oakland Tribune, “It took a great deal of courage for Alvin Dark to make this appointment… I think it shows baseball is progressing in some important directions… I’m very proud of this appointment... it’s a great honor for any ballplayer to be a captain of a major league team.”
May also indicated that he was particularly happy that he was named captain, “on the basis of being a ballplayer and not on race… especially on the Giants where we have some very intelligent guys and so many very great ballplayers.”
Of course, Willie Mays was being modest. For not only is Mays the best player on the Giants, but he has arguably been the best player in all of baseball over the past 10 years.
Since his first full season in 1954, in which he won the MVP award and led the Giants to a World Series title, Mays has had 10 consecutive seasons that rank as possibly the best stretch of 10 straight seasons anyone has ever had.
Over the 10 seasons from 1954 to 1963 Willie Mays has had the following annual averages:
118 Runs
31 Doubles
10 Triples
38 HRs
109 RBIs
24 Stolen Bases
.320 Batting Average
.401 On Base Percentage
In addition, starting with the inauguration of the Gold Glove Awards in 1957, Mays has won the Gold Glove for centerfield in EVERY season.
He is also durable, averaging just 2 missed games per season for those 10 years.
Alvin Dark told Ross, “This is a way of showing Mays what we think of him. In many ways he’s been a captain on the field anyway, but the fellows can look to him more now.” Dark added that Mays, “will be our captain as long as I’m here.”
In today’s San Francisco Examiner, the great sportswriter Harry Jupiter, tried out a new nickname for Willie Mays. Describing Mays home run he wrote, “It was number 17 for Captain Marvel, who used to be known as Willie Mays.”
Jupiter also described an amazing feat of baserunning by Mays that led to the first run of the game, “Jimmy Hart and Mays, who whacked three hits apiece, collaborated in a first inning run. Captain Marvel, continuing his inspirational work, got Hart home with an infield single on which he slid into first base.”
And so the “aMAYSing” career of Willie Mays keeps getting better.
The Sports Time Traveler™ is going to continue following Willie Mays day-by-day in 1964 and report to you whenever there is something so compelling I just have to share it.
POSTSCRIPT
Back here in 2024, I found out that few people know that Willie Mays was the first Black captain in major league sports.
An article that appeared on the website, “Yardbarker,” in July 2023, titled, “Significant Black firsts in sports history,” did not mention Willie Mays being named captain in 1964.
Even Wikipedia’s entry, “List of African-American sports firsts,” did not include Willie Mays as the first African-American captain of a major league baseball team.
As a result, I have updated Wikipedia. If the editors of Wikipedia let it stand you will see it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_sports_firsts
There are other sources that do recognize Willie Mays as the first Black captain in sports. The Society for American Baseball Research includes a reference in their biography of Willie Mays, as does the encyclopedia of Alabama.
Finally, I’d like to point out that this is now the 2nd major discovery this year I have made in which an elite athlete, one of the greatest of the 20th century, broke a color barrier that has gone largely unnoticed by history. The first one was back in February in an article which you can access in the link below:
1964 - Willie Mays Breaks a Major Barrier