Willie Mays’ son wants people to remember his father’s Mets tenure a little differently.
When the Mets acquired the all-time baseball great in May of 1972, Mays was 41 years old and more than two decades into his professional playing career.
He spent just over a season and a half with the Mets, hitting .238 with 14 home runs in his 135 games with the team. But he was also part of a World Series run in 1973, which ended with Mets losing in seven games to the Oakland A’s.
“His relevance in that year, a lot of people talk about ‘the fading Willie Mays,’ but if you really look at it, he drove the team he just came to to a World Series,” son Michael Mays said Wednesday at Citi Field. “Perspective on that year needs to change a little bit.”
Michael Mays threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Mets’ home game against the Yankees on Wednesday, eight days after his father died at age 93.
Nicknamed the “Say Hey Kid,” Willie Mays was a 24-time All-Star who hit .301 with 660 home runs and 1,909 RBI and won 12 Gold Gloves as a center fielder during one of the greatest careers in MLB history.
The Alabama-born Mays made his professional debut in 1948 with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, then won NL Rookie of the Year with the then-New York Giants in 1951. He spent 21 years with the Giants, including 15 after their move to San Francisco, until that 1972 trade to the Mets.
Mays’ Mets debut came on May 14 of that year against the Giants, and fittingly, he hit a home run.
“To come here, get off a cable car, go up to the plate, hit a home run, joke with your old team, turn wrong to go into the clubhouse, lead a new team to the World Series, it was all epic,” Michael Mays said.
Michael was a teenager during those Mets years and served as a bat boy.
“That was a cool time because I was here, too,” he said Wednesday. “I was a bat boy, so he was here, and in my own little way I got to be on the field with him and drive in and drive home. I remember that time as us being together.”
Michael Mays also remembers his father’s Mets tenure ending on the bench. Mays recorded two hits in the first three games of the 1973 World Series but did not receive an at-bat in the final four.
The series ended with light-hitting Wayne Garrett popping out with two runners on base in a 5-2 game, with Mets manager Yogi Berra opting against using Mays as a pinch-hitter.
“If I was Yogi, I would’ve had him swing,” Michael Mays said. “He was Willie Mays. He did have a bat in his hand. … I can’t understand that part of history. I would say stranger things have happened, but they haven’t.”
Mays didn’t like to discuss that moment, his son said, but was delighted when Mets owner Steve Cohen retired his No. 24 in 2022.
He hopes his father is remembered for always taking the time to engage with people.
“He’s always been the truth,” Michael Mays said. “I think that’s all he’s ever concerned about, is being honest, in his game, in his life. If you watched him, if you talked to him, you know that was the truth.”
