At the instant of the crack he would glide along the deep
green carpet looking up in the high blue sky picking out the orb that at its
apex must have looked like a dancing white pea in the chill swirling winds above San
Francisco’s Candlestick Park. He moved
surely as if guided by some mystic inner sense directing him right to the spot
where the little orb would land. And
then he would position the glove just right, oftentimes just in front of his
belt, opened and waiting like a leather basket. Plop the orb would drop into the
glove and he’d step forward and throw a seed back to the infield. I had the pleasure and yes, the honor of
seeing Willie Mays, arguably baseball’s greatest player do that in person in
many a game at the frigid and usually unfriendly confines of Candlestick Park. I also watched Mays belt a fair amount of his
660 career home runs. I didn't see the
660th, which he hit in the uniform of the New York Mets in the
twilight of his career. It was 1973, the
Vietnam War was still raging, Nixon was living his Watergate nightmare and I was
just about to turn 20.
