The Stacks: Murray Kempton On The Homecoming Of Willie Mays
At the end of his career, Willie Mays had nothing left to prove to anyone. But every time he took the field, he played like a man with everything on the line.
Everybody knows hope isn’t the thing with feathers, hope is Opening Day. Okay, not really, but the illusion of hope is vibrant today and tomorrow as the baseball season begins. It’s also the beginning of the end for one Derek Jeter, future Hall of Famer and the greatest Yankee icon since Mickey Mantle. There is something unseemly about the kind of farewell tour he’ll enjoy this year—it’s canned and cynical. But if you don’t let the manufactured ceremony spoil this long goodbye, it’s a good time to appreciate Jeter one more time. And if there is one quality of his that’s been underreported, it’s how much fun he has on the field. Jeter is accommodating and calculated with the press but on the field—at the appropriate times, of course—his smile is easy, his happiness apparent.
It’s the kind of pleasure that brings to mind Willie Mays (and that’s pretty much where any comparison between the two end). In 1972, Mays was traded from the San Francisco Giants to the New York Mets. That year the brilliant New York newspaper columnist Murray Kempton wrote a monthly sports column for Esquire. In September, he filed this essay on watching Willie Mays at the end of the line. Reprinted with permission from Kempton’s estate, please enjoy this one; it’s a gem.
He was twenty when he began these voyagings, and he is supposed to have said then that this first trip around the league was like riding through a beautiful park and getting paid for it. Out of all those playgrounds, only Wrigley Field in Chicago is still used for baseball; everywhere else he is older than any piece of turf upon which he stands.