Baseball Cards * Series 1: Brilliance, Power, Speed, Elegance
Batting second in the Daydreaming at Midnight Base Ball Cards (Series 1), representing Power, is Willie Mays. I was born too late to see him play in person, but through baseball cards and videos of his triumphs, I found a visceral connection to “The Say Hey Kid” in my imagination. The first grownup book I ever read from cover-to-cover, or from home plate-to-home plate, was his autobiography, Say Hey. I still have it as a prized possession. I remember the childhood stories he told. The one that burns brightest is when he was caught having a pack of cigarettes in his room. His father told him that if he was going to smoke, he was going to have to smoke the whole pack. He put Willie in the closet and made him finish the entire pack of bones. He never touched them again. I also enjoyed getting in on some of his secret tactics to make him appear to be even faster than he already was. In the outfield, he’d place his cap lightly on his head. So when he ran after a fly ball, it would be taken by the wind, advertising the horsepower of his wheels.
If J.D. Salinger had written about him, perhaps one of the most famous books of the twentieth century would’ve been The Catcher in the Sky. If William Golding had seen Willie make “The Catch” on the island of Manhattan, perhaps the conch would’ve been a centerfielder’s glove, and the struggle for superiority would’ve been titled Lord of the Fly Ball. And if F. Scott Fitzgerald had played the typewriter keys instead of the piano keys, he may have scored The Great Batsby. Alright, that last one is maybe a swing and a miss, but I’ll keep it just the same. In any case, I took to my pencil to praise the Polo Grounds icon.
