Photo cred: Stuart Berman – http://www.stubermanphotography.com/
I was sad to hear of Willie Mays’ death last week. Willie Mays, the quintessential baseball player, the “Say Hey” kid, was world famous and probably one of the best baseball players ever. Baseball has always been big in America. It was big in the ’60’s. It was big in San Francisco. Baseball was a big part of my childhood too, not so much in watching it, but in playing it. And in the wake of Willie’s death, the memories of those childhood years come barrelling back…
As the icons of our childhood pass into eternity, the throbs of mortality amplify and those rose-colored memories of the past continue to dim. Willie Mays represents to me the memories of not only baseball, but also summer, childhood, youth and innocence. My Americana, if you will.
I went to a Giants game years ago with my friend, Leslie. It was a day game during the week. I found out where all the men my age and older were. They were at the game. Why were all those guys – men my brother’s age – there? Because of Willie Mays. Their childhood is there.
Baseball, like in Field of Dreams, brings back those memories. Our memories as a nation, as a region – the Bay Area – and my own personal memories. Memories of playing catch with my dad, playing on the softball team in Santa Rosa and watching my brothers play Little League. Willie Mays was playing at the height of his career during the height of my childhood in the Sixties. I don’t know his stats, or his awards – they are plenty, I’m sure – but I know he was great and he was ours. So when he died last week, it seems a large part of my childhood faded with him. A reminder of how America used to be. The part that was carefree and innocent. The part that is so foreign to today’s world.
Although baseball is a spring sport, the full season encompasses all of summer. Playoffs are reserved for the fall which are eclipsed by football, at least in my childhood household. Unless, of course, my mother had control of the TV. Diehard Yankees Fan…I have no idea why. My summer memories always default to the summers of my youth, summers at the Russian River, summers in Santa Rosa, and even the cold summers in Daly City. And those summers, which unfortunately are not replicated in the present, were filled with adventure, play and mystery. Relics of the past.
Hiking the hill behind Ms. Nielsen’s Guerneville cabin with hobo paraphernalia–we thought we were hobbits even before we heard of Lord of the Rings. Walking around the horseshoe on Wright Drive by the Castegnetto’s house thrilled me. Hoping for some great adventure or running into a cute boy who might like me. And, finally, swimming day in and day out – water skiing, boat rides, boat races, and mud fights. Days spent at the Russian River diving for rocks, racing across the river and back flips, back dives and cannonballs. Days of Innocence and Self-Forgetfulness. Days filled with simple curiosity and joy. These are the days of endless childhood. But, alas, they did end. Childhood jumped into turbulent adolescence and then into the long, rocky stretch of adulthood.
But the thought of Willie Mays, like Fogerty’s song Centerfield, has a way of transporting me back, back to that time when baseball represented more than the game…it represented the times: riding bikes, playing sardines in a can and all the aspects of childhood. But Willie has passed, reminding us again that those cherished memories of the past have passed as well. I can’t see them so well anymore.
Willie and Baseball were a happy part of America’s past, at least for me and many others. I know not for everyone, the Sixties were tough. Thank you, Willie, for all you gave to Baseball, to San Francisco and to America. Rest in Peace.
I’ll be a mess when Joe Montana dies.
FROM THE SHOE 