Willie Mays, RIP

Here is #647:

Here is the start of the New York Times obit:

Willie Mays, the spirited center fielder whose brilliance at the plate, in the field and on the basepaths for the Giants led many to call him the greatest all-around player in baseball history, died on Tuesday. He was 93.

At his death, which was announced by the San Francisco Giants on social media, he had been the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. No cause of death was given.

In 22 National League seasons, with the Giants in New York and San Francisco and a brief finale with the Mets, preceded by a 1948 stint in the Negro leagues, Mays compiled extraordinary statistics. He hit 660 career home runs and had 3,2832 hits and a .302 career batting average.

But Mays did more than personify the complete ballplayer. An exuberant style of play and an effervescent personality made him one of the game’s — and America’s — most charismatic figures, a name that even people far afield from the baseball world recognized instantly as a national treasure.

Read the rest here.

And let’s not forget this from the Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds:

Keith Hernandez gets choked-up tonight in the Mets booth:

"I got to tell him he was the greatest player I ever saw"

Keith Hernandez recalls his meetings with Willie Mays pic.twitter.com/j6BEI063fk

— SNY (@SNYtv) June 19, 2024

By May 1951, America was calling him the “Say Hey Kid”:

Here’s the St. Paul Recorder on June 29, 1951:

Here is