by Allen Barra
From 1951 through Mays’s retirement in 1973, Mantle and Mays appeared on the cover of Sport twenty-six times, more than any other athletes. For nearly fifteen years, it just didn’t seem to be spring unless Mickey and Willie were on the cover of Sport. In 1962, Sport did something unprecedented: it devoted an entire issue to just two players. Looking back on it today, that special issue still provides a cutaway view of Mantle and Mays and their impact on baseball and American culture early in 1962.
One article, “The Fans’ Favorite,” attempted to settle the issue of who was better, Mantle or Mays, through “a worldwide election.” The article had been inspired by a young fan and reader of Sport from Pittsburgh named Bill Hoebler who wrote to editor Al Silverman and asked, “Why not put an end to the Mantle-Mays feud once and for all with a nationwide election? It is only right that the fans should determine who is the best player—Mays or Mantle.” The voting ended on June 20, 1961, with Hoebler receiving seventeen pounds of postcards from all fifty states, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Germany (presumably from U.S. servicemen stationed there), Canada, and South America.
To my shock at the time, Mickey won by more than 500 votes. I realize now that that point in 1961, with Mantle and Maris pursuing Ruth’s home run record and Willie still playing second fiddle in the hearts of Giants fans to Orlando Cepeda, was probably the only time in their careers when Mickey could have won a popularity contest with Willie.
More important from a historian’s point of view was the article accompanying the results of the contest, which asked and attempted to answer the question: “Who’s the Best?” Though there was no author attribution, the text on Mays was written by Arnold Hano and the Mickey chapters by Dick Schaap, whose Mays and Mantle biographies in the Sport library were excerpted elsewhere in the magazine. Editor Al Silverman wrote the introduction to the “Who’s the Best?” article: “The baseball skills of Mickey and Willie are well-rounded and superlative. Each can hit for power and for average. Each fields with game-saving skill. Each can inspire a team. Each can beat you on the bases. Each, since coming to the big leagues in 1951, has been called the best ballplayer in the game.
“Who’s better? Since 1951 the question has been argued long and loud in dugouts, clubhouses, newspapers, and magazines. Since 1951 the winner most often has been …
“Willie Mays.
“Mays remains the choice today. For the same reason he has been picked so often through the years. He can do more things better. It is possible, some people say, that no player in baseball has ever been able to do so many things, so well.”
The article cited a study that the Los Angeles Dodgers commissioned in 1960 to determine the worth of ballplayers. Al Campanis, then the Dodgers’ chief scout (here called “Alex”), told Sport, “Of all the players we rated, Mays is the only one judged to have a perfect score on every count. I know this. The Dodgers would be willing to pay $1,000,000 for Mays right now.” The issue of whether Mays should have been paid a chunk of that million dollars was not raised; this was sixteen years before free agency came to baseball.
The article was quick to add that “from the point of view of a team, a reason, a major reason, for not considering Mantle worth $1,000,000 is his history of injury. Mickey’s physical future is insecure. Mays, off his past, looms as a good risk physically.”
The story quoted everyone from Mickey’s and Willie’s managers—Casey for once put in a rare plug for Mickey (“Mickey Mantle’s the fastest-running home run hitter I ever saw”)—to players and former players (Hank Greenberg thought that “on sheer ability, it has to be Mickey,” but to Braves catcher Del Crandall, “if there’s anything like a complete ballplayer, Willie is it”).
The piece concluded that Willie was “the best ballplayer in the game,” with Mickey close behind. For nearly forty years I accepted that verdict as gospel.
“Mays and I were friends,” Mantle recalled to Mickey Herskowitz, “from our New York days in spite of all the talk of a heated rivalry. Our rivalry was on the golf course, where we hustled each other whenever we got the chance. I wanted to beat Willie, but I would never embarrass him, and I didn’t like it when someone else did.”18 Mantle, like others observing the San Francisco situation from a distance, could not understand the refusal of Bay Area fans to embrace Willie Mays.
But in 1962 something magical happened. For the first time, both Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were cheered almost without reservation by their hometown crowds. By their managers too: both Alvin Dark and Ralph Honk made Willie and Mickey de facto team captains, though they didn’t put it in those words.
The pennant races fired fan loyalty and enthusiasm. The Yankees had a terrific team and finally, with their typical late-season surge, pulled away from the Minnesota Twins, winning 96 games and taking the pennant by five games. There was no mystery to the Yankees’ success: though this wasn’t the ’61 team, which won 109 games, they still led the AL in runs scored—with 10 fewer than the ’61 team, which they would have made up easily had Mantle not missed so many games—and finished second in ERA at 3.70, just a tiny fraction behind the Baltimore Orioles.
The Giants had even more power than the Yankees: they also led their league in runs scored and scored 61 more runs than the Bronx Bombers. The pitching wasn’t overwhelming—the team ERA of 3.80 was good for sixth best in the league. But the rotation had some terrific starters, most notably Jack Sanford (24–7), Billy Pierce (16–6), and a flamboyant, high-kicking young right-hander who had burst into stardom that season with an 18–11 record, Juan Marichal. Perhaps what won San Francisco fans over was the thrill of their first real pennant race, and it was a classic. The Giants had to pick up four games with only seven remaining just to tie the Dodgers—an even tighter squeeze than in 1951, when the New York Giants had tied the Brooklyn Dodgers on the final day of the season.
In the final game, the Giants, facing the expansion Houston Colts, were tied in the eighth inning. Houston’s best pitcher, fast-baller Dick Farrell, tried to blaze one by Mays, who rocketed the ball fifteen rows back into the left-field seats. The Giants won, 2–1. A delirious crowd in Candlestick Park remained in the stands until they found out that the Cardinals had beaten the Dodgers down the road in Chavez Ravine, resulting in a tie for the pennant. Just as in 1951, there would be a best-of-three playoff to determine who moved on to the World Series.
The dirty secret of the Giants’ season, one seldom mentioned to this day, was that, as good as they were—and they won 103 games, seven more than the Yankees—they probably won the pennant because of Sandy Koufax’s middle finger. The Dodgers’ Koufax was 14–5 before being afflicted by a blood clot, and though he tried to pitch again, it was a disaster. In the first game of the playoff, Mays smashed a two-run homer off him in the first inning, and the Giants were off to a rout.
Los Angeles overcame a big Giant lead to take Game 2. During the third, which will forever be emblazoned in the memory of every Giants fan, the Dodgers went into the ninth inning with a 4–2 lead. With the bases loaded and one out, Willie came to bat against Ed Roebuck, who had won ten of eleven games that season. “I wanted to be up,” Willie would remember. “This is something I had been waiting for … how long? … eleven years. I wanted it to be on my shoulders. No scared rookie now.”19 Mays was referring to being in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit his “shot heard round the world” in 1951.
Mays slashed Roebuck’s first pitch back near the pitcher’s ankles; the ball was hit so hard that it tore Roebuck’s glove off. That made it 4–3, bases still loaded. The Giants went on to score three more runs. Al Dark called on Billy Pierce to pitch the ninth inning. With two outs and no one on, pinch-hitter Lee Walls hit a soft fly to Mays. Willie had started the inning thinking that if he made the final out, he would hand the ball to Billy as a memento. In the excitement of the moment, he forgot his promise and turned, wheeled, and fired the ball into the right-field seats. Later he went into the Dodgers’ locker room to seek out one of their coaches, Le
o Durocher. After a hug, he noticed that Leo had on the T-shirt he had worn on the day eleven years earlier when Bobby Thomson hit his home run. Leo, smiling, told him, “I guess the magic didn’t work this time.” “Yeah, it did,” said Willie. “The Giants won again.”
San Francisco was in a daze at the prospect of the World Series, and all the nation’s press could focus on was the prospect of seeing the two best players in the game, Mantle and Mays, on the same ball field. In fact, the Series featured two of the finest and deepest rosters ever to face each other. Besides Mantle, the Yankees had future Hall of Famers Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra, who was nearing the end of a fabulous career; they also had two players who would be touted for the next few decades by many as Hall of Famers—Roger Maris (whose 33 home runs in 1962 would have been more than satisfactory for any player who hadn’t hit 61 the year before) and catcher Elston Howard (the AL’s MVP that year). In addition to Mays, the Giants had Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal, who would all be voted into Cooperstown. They also had another future Hall of Famer in pitcher Gaylord Perry, but he figured in only four decisions in 1962. (Unfortunately, they lost Marichal in Game 4 when, after giving up just two hits in four innings, he caught a Whitey Ford fastball on his finger as he tried to hit a sacrifice bunt with two strikes. Had Marichal been available to pitch relief in Game 7, things might have turned out differently.)
The 1962 World Series was still in doubt in Game 7, in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the winning runs on base. The inning began with the Giants down, 1–0, and Matty Alou beating out a bunt; Yankees starter Ralph Terry then fanned Felipe Alou and Chuck Hiller, both trying desperately and failing to bunt Matty to second. The game—and the World Series—came down to Ralph Terry versus Willie Mays. Terry—perhaps surprised that he was still in the game at that point, as he was the pitcher who had surrendered Bill Mazeroski’s Series-ending home run just two years before—was not about to give Willie a pitch he could pull. He might have been better off challenging Mays and inviting him to hit a ball into the strong wind in left field. Instead, Terry missed with two outside pitches, and with a 2–0 count, Mays knew he would now get something to hit. Terry threw a third straight breaking ball, but this one was on the outside corner of the strike zone and Willie lashed it to right field, over the head of first baseman Bill Skowron and into the right-field corner of Candlestick.
Everyone in the ballpark, including players in both dugouts, immediately thought that the game would be tied. They hadn’t counted on two things—first, that the rain-soaked grass would slow the ball down before it hit the corner, and second, the speed and efficiency with which Roger Maris would field the ball and fire it back to cutoff man Bobby Richardson. The speedy Alou had a more than decent chance to score, but Giants third-base coach Whitey Lockman held him up.
For the next fifty years, Giants fans would argue about whether Lockman should have let Alou try to score. Mays, who once proudly remarked, “I never had a third-base coach,” thought that sending a fast runner in a situation like that forced the team on the field to make two good plays—first the throw from the outfield to the cutoff man, then the throw from the cutoff man to home plate. Sending the runner, Mays thought, gave you better odds than betting on the next batter to get a hit—even the most efficient hitters seldom had more than a one-in-three chance of getting a hit in any situation, and Alou’s chances of scoring, he thought, were better than one-in-three.
At any rate, that left the Giants with Alou the tying run at third and Mays the winning run at second. The tall, powerful, and talented rookie Willie McCovey was up next. Yankees manager Ralph Houk astonished all observers by making two decisions. First, he left Terry in to pitch. Second, he chose not to walk McCovey and pitch to the right-handed Cepeda, who was on deck. Whatever Houk was thinking, on the first pitch McCovey smashed a hard liner about knee-high off the ground. In a split second, every Giant fan envisioned the World Series coming down to Roger Maris trying to throw out Willie Mays, the potential winning run, at home plate. But Bobby Richardson, who scarcely had to move on the play, leaned to his right and speared the ball for the out. Richardson’s was not a great play—the ball was practically hit to him—but it was certainly a timely one.
In the clubhouse, a weary Mickey forced a smile. After so many spectacular World Series, he had now earned a ring despite seven games in which he hadn’t hit “a damned thing except maybe some rented golf balls.”20 Willie, showered and dressed, made his way into the visitors’ clubhouse. Mantle, soaked in champagne and clad only in shorts and a T-shirt, was unwrapping the rolls of tape that had been wound around his legs. Mickey rose as he approached. Willie, unconcerned about what the champagne might do to his suit, accepted Mickey’s embrace. “Mickey looked so tired,” Charlie Einstein recalled, “that you would have thought that he was in the loser’s locker room.” Before he left, Willie leaned over and whispered something in Mickey’s ear. Mantle guffawed, pointed at Mays, and said, “We gon’ see ’bout that.” According to Einstein, Willie had told Mickey, “I’ll see you on Mr. Stoneham’s golf course [that is, Horace Stoneham’s country club’s course] tomorrow. By this time tomorrow afternoon all that nice World Series money is gonna be in my pocket.” Thirty-five years later, I asked Einstein who won their grudge golf match. “Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “They were both pretty bad. That is, they both had the talent to be great golfers, but they didn’t really give a damn about the game. All they did was bet the same $10 over and over to see who could hit the ball farther.”
The Series had not been a showcase for either Mantle or Mays. In May, Mickey, furiously trying to beat out a soft infield grounder, had put on a burst of speed and pulled a right hamstring. He then proceeded to tear two ligaments and some cartilage in his left leg. He didn’t show up in the lineup again until June, and for a week or so he could do nothing but pinch-hit. He played in terrible pain through the rest of the season and in the World Series was practically useless. Willie, too, seemed flustered; after stroking his usual three hits off Whitey Ford in the opening loss, he simply could not get his rhythm at bat. Until, that is, the ninth inning of the seventh game.
“During the final game, Mickey heard a fan yelling at him from the bleachers, ‘I came out here to see which one of you guys was the better centerfielder. But it looks like I have to decide which one is worse.’ There was a momentary pause, and then his foghorn voice echoed: ‘Hey, Mantle, you win.’ ”21 The story gained wide circulation, but it was almost certainly apocryphal, invented by Mickey.
Despite the fact that he, like Mickey, hit no home runs, Willie took a different memory with him from the 1962 World Series: the San Francisco fans had finally warmed up to him. “It only took them five years,” he would put it a quarter of a century later.22 He also had a dream that haunted him for years: “I could still see myself running to third on a triple as the tying run scored, instead of being stuck at second base because the watered-down outfield grass held my hit to a double.”23
Charlie Einstein had a favorite moment from the 1962 Series that had nothing to do with success or failure. “I have a memory,” he wrote in the greatest of all books written about Willie Mays, Willie’s Time, “of the afternoon of October 5, 1962”—after the Giants’ Jack Sanford had shut out the Yankees, 2–0, in Game 2—“when I was standing in the hallway that separates the home and visiting teams’ dressing rooms at Candlestick Park.… That day’s game had just ended, and as the players came in from the field, my eye fell on Mays and Mantle as they entered together, immersed in private conversation of the sort two consummate, tired professionals will have at the end of a day’s work. There was no sensation that one was black, the other white. The only visible difference between them lay in the tools of their trade: Mays having been in the field when the game ended, had what Mantle did not have—a pair of flip-up sunglasses dipping like a lower lip from the visor of his cap.”24
Willie was thirty-one. Mickey would be thirty-one in fifteen days. As
they walked off the field that day, neither could have had an inkling that an era had ended in more ways than one. Neither man would ever win a championship again; in fact, Mantle would play only one more great season. It would be three more years before Willie finally passed up Mickey in career home runs, but for all intents and purposes, their rivalry was over.
There were other changes in the wind. In 1962 the National League had expanded for the first time, and so Major League Baseball was on the move and would grow until it had teams in every part of the country. In two months, Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers would play Allie Sherman’s New York Giants for the second consecutive year in the National Football League’s championship game; the ratings would supply grist for those who argued that professional football, at least as a TV attraction, was going to bypass baseball. And the next year would bring social and political change with such a violent jolt that it would call into question baseball’s—and therefore Mickey’s and Willie’s—relevance to American culture.
* Henry Aaron went on to win the overall competition, taking six of seven derbies. Mickey was second, winning four of five.
† From 1959 to 1962, to raise money for the players’ pension fund, two All-Star Games were played.