PHILADELPHIA - September 7, 1964
I’m on a virtual trip to Philadelphia where I wanted to get another peek at the Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays, in his last game in the city of brotherly love this season.
Earlier this year I was following Willie Mays every day in 1964. He got out to one of the great starts in baseball history hitting 17 home runs in the first 34 games of the year and he was batting .468 in mid-May. Sportswriters were starting to talk about Willie being the first to bat .400 since Ted Williams in 1941.
Mays cooled off and nagging injuries bogged him down. In August, he only batted .243. But coming into the September 6th game in Philadelphia he was still leading the NL with 39 home runs, although his season batting average had dipped down to an even. 300., and the Giants who had been in 1st place as late as July 20th, were now 8.5 games back after losing to Jim Bunning and the 1st place Phillies in their prior game.
Yesterday, they had their final game against the league leading Phillies.
21,548 fans were on hand in old Connie Mack Stadium for the Saturday afternoon game.
The score was tied at 3 going into the 8th inning.
With one out the Say Hey Kid came to the plate.
Phillies pitcher Jack Baldschun didn’t like the idea of pitching to Mays who could put the Giants ahead with one swing. Baldschun pitched carefully to Mays and walked “the tired superstar,” as Frank Dolson referred to Willie in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Then Baldschun was nervous about Mays on the basepath. Mays, at age 33, and suffering from muscle spasms in his back, and exhaustion so bad that manager Alvin Dark didn’t want to play him yesterday, isn’t the stolen base threat he was in the mid-1950s when he led the NL in steals 4 consecutive seasons. But he could still run. He had 18 steals on the season going into yesterday’s game, and had only been caught 5 times. And Mays had not failed on a steal attempt since June.
So Baldschun threw to first baseman Frank Thomas to hold Willie close to the bag.
But the ball, “trickled off the top of first baseman Frank Thomas’ glove,” as reported by Dolson.
Mays then sprinted to second base.
However Willie didn’t simply slide in and take the base.
Instead Mays tried some trickery.
He rounded the bag to make it look like he was going to try for third base.
After the game, Mays told Dolson that he had no intention of going to third, “I don’t think I could have made it. I wanted him to throw.”
Mays was trying to dupe the Phillies’ first baseman, Thomas, into making a throw.
And it worked.
Frank Thomas told Dolson after the game, “I started to run it in. Then I looked at Mays and I thought he was going to go to third. So I fired it.”
But in his haste to nail Mays at third, Thomas’ throw sailed over the head of Phillies’ third baseman Dick Allen and bounced into the left field seats.
By the time it made into the hands of a lucky fan, Willie Mays had raced home with the go ahead run.
The Say Hey Kid has created a run all by himself without getting a hit.
And the Giants won the game 4 - 3.
“It was a real sickening way to lose a game,” sighed Baldschun after the game in an interview with Frank Dolson.
Allen Lewis of the Philadelphia Inquirer penned the front page story in the paper today which he started with this line, “If Willie Mays doesn’t beat you with his bat, or his glove, or his arms, he’ll do it with his legs, his daring and his great base-running instinct.”
With the loss the Phillies lead in the National League falls to 5.5 games over the Reds and 7.5 games over the Giants and Cardinals. They can ill afford to lose another game like that and maintain their hopes of winning just their 2nd pennant in the past 50 seasons.
Thanks for reading!
The Brilliant Baserunning of Willie Mays