To the Editor:
Re “Willie Mays, Baseball’s Electrifying Participant of Energy and Grace, Is Lifeless at 93” (obituary, nytimes.com, June 18):
I used to be 10 when the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco. From the very first day I watched Willie Mays play ball in Seals Stadium, I used to be hooked. By the point I graduated from highschool in 1966, I proudly displayed 15 framed photos of the Say Hey Child on my bed room partitions.
Nobody performed baseball like Willie. His love of the sport was infectious. My mates and I routinely pored over The San Francisco Chronicle’s Sporting Inexperienced and quoted his stats all day lengthy.
Willie wasn’t only a terrific fielder; he had blazing velocity and a cannon for an arm. My guess is that if he hadn’t been pressured to face in middle all these chilly, windy nights at Candlestick Park, he simply would have hit greater than 700 dwelling runs (he had 660 because it was).
At present’s stars, like Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout and Aaron Choose, are actually gifted gamers, however they don’t play baseball the way in which Willie did. A 24-time All-Star and a two-time M.V.P., the Say Hey Child was my idol.
I want my sons, who’re 44 and 32, may have seen him play. If they’d, they might know why I inform everybody that Willie was “poetry on the diamond.” For this 75-year-old baseball fan, there’ll by no means be one other Willie Mays, the best participant of his, and my, technology.
Denny Freidenrich
Laguna Seaside, Calif.
To the Editor:
Within the Fifties my good friend Dave and I performed sandlot baseball virtually on daily basis of the summer time in a discipline near my home. He was at all times Mickey Mantle, and I used to be at all times Willie Mays. He’d faux to modify hit, which he couldn’t do, and I’d attempt to make basket catches, which I couldn’t do. We’d argue endlessly over who was higher, Mickey or Willie.
Racism, alcoholism, melancholy, bodily accidents and politics have been by no means mentioned, and even thought-about. There was a lifetime forward for that. We have been harmless. Every little thing was doable. Our imaginations ran unchecked.
John E. Colbert
Arroyo Seco, N.M.
