Say Hey
One unremarkable summer day in 1969, Bob Tyson, the local Sports Illustrated media representative, called to say that Willie Mays had just wrapped up an appearance on a local TV show and was wondering if I’d like to have lunch with Willie and him. He added that I could bring along a friend if I’d like. We had advertised Contac, our revolutionary cold product with “over six hundred tiny time pills” in Sports Illustrated ever since it was introduced in 1961, and Bob and the other SI media representatives frequently thanked their clients for their business with tickets to sporting events. But lunch with perhaps the greatest baseball player ever to play the game? How could I say no?
Shortly after Joe Rutledge and I arrived at Helen Sigel Wilson’s, Philadelphia’s trendy restaurant for businessmen where many passed on ordering lunch and drank away their afternoons instead, Bob and the “Say Hey Kid” joined us. Willie’s greeting was warm, animated, and infectious. There was no way you couldn’t like him instantly. His handshake was equally as memorable as his demeanor. His hand was thick with muscles, and I imagined it must be what it would feel like to shake hands with a bear.
Willie rejected the pasta special, saying that it would just go to his wheels, and ordered a chef’s salad. While we waited for our lunches, Joe and I asked Willie a string of questions, all of which he answered playfully. Near the end of the meal, Joe, whose knowledge of baseball and Willie’s career was encyclopedic, asked him if he remembered a game against the Phillies in which he was thrown out at home plate.
Like all the incidents that we’d discussed at lunch that day, Willie remembered every detail as though they’d happened the day before. “Man, do I. First inning. Connie Mack stadium. I was on second and tried to score on a single, but that Callison (Johnny Callison, the Phillies’ right fielder), man, he has an arm, and Corrales (Pat Corrales, the Phillies’ catcher) was waiting for me. I mean, I was out by at least ten feet, so, as I slid into home,” Willie opened his right hand and made a quick upward thrust with it into his left palm, “I popped Corrales on the jaw. He dropped the ball, and I’d scored the run. But Corrales just lay there, not moving a muscle. I’d knocked his ass out, and I said to myself, Willie, you better play possum, so I lay there like I’m out cold, too. The next thing I knew, they were bringing out two stretchers, so I started rolling around and groaning, ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ and pushed myself to my feet and staggered to our dugout. As I passed manager Dark, I said, ‘I’m alright, Alvin,’ and he said, ‘I know you are Willie. Go sit down.’ It was only the first inning, but he benched me for the rest of the game to make it look like I’d been pretty badly hurt.”
When I asked if he’d cold-cocked Corrales out on purpose, Willie smiled. “Let’s just put it this way. I like to catch the ball, throw the ball, hit the ball, and run the bases. And every once in a while, I like to knock a man down.”
What more did the Say Hey Kid need to say?
