Retiring Number 24:
Mets Honor Willie Mays
By Richard Sternberg, M.D.
I am a NY Mets fan. I’ve been so since their beginning in 1962 when I was 9 years of age. I don’t know how that came to be, but I grew up in Queens and the new team in town fascinated me. My father was not a baseball fan but my mother showed an interest, maybe just because of me and my brother, or maybe she was a fan on her own. Anyway, through my mother’s serendipitous meeting with the wife of the president of the Mets and her development of a friendship with one of the club executives, we spent many happy days at the Polo Grounds, mostly in 1963. We sat frequently in the unused box of the president. To make some of you jealous, I saw Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, and Marvelous Marv Throneberry play. Eat your hearts out! My mom somehow also became friends with Choo-Choo Coleman. It was probably my best summer ever.
On Saturday, August 27, the Mets held Old Timers’ Day in Queens for the first time in 28 years. For this, we thank the team’s new owner Steve Cohen who rescued the team from a four-decade ownership experience less than welcomed by the fans. For most of that time, the team seemed parsimonious and happy to play second fiddle to the Yankees. The Mets are now winning again. The fans demonstrated their appreciation for the new ownership when Cohen received one of the loudest cheers of the afternoon.
It was great to see the true happiness of all the players enjoying each other’s company. The fun they had playing again, or at least attempting to play again, the game they loved so much. You could feel the love some of these guys had for each other and the respect for each other all of them had.
It was very poignant when Steve Dillon, a pitcher who only played three games for the team in 1963 and ‘64 was announced. He had been shocked to have been asked to attend, after all, who would remember him, someone who had been on the team for only a few weeks. You could see how much he truly enjoyed being there and finding that some of the players who were on the roster when he was, remembered him.
Dillon clearly prepared for his ten minutes on the mound. He was the oldest participant who actually played in the game and he could still bring it on. He pitched awfully well for an octogenarian. When his playing career ended, he became a New York City policeman.
My baseball heroes are entirely those players who were heroes in real life regardless of their baseball statistics; Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Yogi Berra, all who served in combat. Well, Steve Dillon, a New York City cop, is now a baseball hero also.
The spectators who attended the celebration will mostly, though, remember the surprise tribute to Willie Mays. It brought tears to many.
When Mays’ time as a superstar was up in San Francisco, the Giants traded Willie to the Mets. This was engineered by the then owner of the Mets, Joan Whitney Payson. Payson had been an owner of the NY Giants before they moved to San Francisco. Of all the owners of the Giants, she was the only one who voted against the move. Payson loved Willie and thought he should end his career back where he began.
When Mays joined the Mets, it was said that Payson promised him that when he ultimately retired, she would have his number 24, which he had worn all his career as a Giant and Met, retired also. Mays played with the Mets in 1972 and ’73. Payson died less than two years later before the promise could be fulfilled.
Finally, this year the new owner, Cohen decided to fulfill that promise. The ceremony was a surprise to almost all, though Mays and his family knew. As the TV cameras panned the field and stands; you could see men tearing up; one was a man in the crowd, another the former pitcher and current TV analyst Ron Darling. Mays sent a statement that was read and according to his son, he was watching the festivities.
Willie Mays epitomized baseball in New York City in the 1950s. He lived in the community in which he played and frequently would play stickball (for those of you unfamiliar with it, another story altogether) with the neighborhood kids. It was fitting that he returned home to retire.
The Mets fulfilling a promise made 50 years ago, hit it out of the park!