baseball player
🔗 Read on Wikipedia1931 – 2024
Mays said he thought maybe the Skinner catch was a bit better than yesterday's, as well as a catch he made on a ball hit this season by Gus Bell of the Cincinnati Reds. "But I don't want to compare 'em," said Willie. "I'm just a ballplayer, not a sports writer. I don't compare 'em; I just catch 'em."
Gee, I've been asked hundreds of questions about that catch in the first game of the World Series. The one that Vic Wertz hit for Cleveland. Was it my best catch? How did I play it? Honestly, I don't rate 'em—I just try to catch 'em. When he hit the ball, I just started toward the place it was heading. And I got there.
Any time I'm not playing, I watch the game at home on television. That way I can relax and if I decide to make a catch off my playroom wall, nobody is the wiser.
Aw-Kay Vaughan?! Aw-kay Vaughan?! Oh my God, Ralph, please ... I've hit 600 and some home runs. Don't be givin' me no Aw-kay Vaughan, please!
You're not from New York, are you? You can't be from New York. Well, when I broke in, I didn't know many people by name so I would just say, "Say, hey," and the writers picked that up. The writers here in New York can make anything happen, so they made that happen.
I think I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen. I feel nobody in the world could do what I could do on a baseball field. I hope I’m not saying anything wrong, but you have to think you’re the best. The next one would be Roberto Clemente.
That’s not like me, but I was giving my honest opinion. It doesn’t sound too good, though. [As for the second best player,] I’d have to say Roberto Clemente. He could do anything with the bat and in the field. And then there’s Cesar Cedeno. I don’t know why he hasn’t put it all together. He can do it all.
He could hit a ball farther than anybody that I've seen. [...] Richie Allen was—and still is—a Hall of Famer as far as I'm concerned.
I just felt baseball was a beautiful game, especially at night. The sun -- I mean, you had the lights out there and all you do is go out there, and you're out there by yourself in center field, and it's just a beautiful game. And, I just felt that it was such a beautiful game that I just wanted to play it forever, you know.
People talk about that catch and, I've said this many times, that I've made better catches than that many times in regular season. But of course in my time, you didn't have a lot of television during the regular season. A lot of people didn't see me do a lot of things.
I think the key to that particular play was the throw. I knew I had the ball all the time. In my mind, because I was so cocky at that particular time when I was young, whatever went in the air I felt that I could catch. That's how sure I would be about myself. When the ball went up I had no idea that I wasn't going to catch the ball. As I'm running -- I'm running backwards and I'm saying to myself, "How am I going to get this ball back into the infield?"
The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is that I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have. And, instead of people doing things for me, I had to do things for myself. That was scary for me.
I would say the main thing in any young kid's life is education. Even if a guy is prejudiced, he can be educated to understand why he is prejudiced. Education plays a great role in all life, whether you're black or white. You've got to go to high school, you've got to go to college. When you come out of college or high school, you can play sports. If you ever get hurt, they can't take that brain away from you, you've got that.
The American Dream can come in many different ways for many different people. It doesn't have to come in the way they explain it to you. Now, the American Dream can come if a guy hits the lottery. Who in the world thought he would hit a lottery? That's the American Dream for him. But I look at it from day one, moving up the ladder, and moving up the ladder. Now you get to the top of the ladder and you have to look back. How did you get to that ladder? To me, that's the American Dream.
I was very fortunate to play sports. All the anger in me went out. I had to do what I had to do. If you stay angry all the time, then you really don't have a good life.
Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what is most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.
I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.