A Perpetual All-Star Lends His Name and Sense of Hope

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
Sports of The Times
July 9, 2007

San Francisco

The most significant aspect of tomorrow’s All-Star Game is that it will bring the great Willie Mays clearly and perhaps more consistently into national view. Willie Mays is a national treasure and a state of mind.

He was a part-time first baseman on his daddy’s steel mill team at 9, a pro by 13, a baseball icon by 30 and a Hall of Famer by 48.

Willie Mays, at 76, is living history, telling us much about where we have been as a nation, where we are and where we are going.

In anticipation of the All-Star festivities, the Giants, with a gorgeous park and a controversial superstar, wisely decided that Mays would be the centerpiece of the celebration. He will be honored before the game tomorrow. That morning, as part of the acknowledgment, the Giants will dedicate the Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club of Hunters Point.

Center stage is not where Mays necessarily likes to be. But at a time when profits in baseball are racing ahead of the game’s sense of its own history, Mays needs to be out front as a symbol of the uninhibited pursuit of joy that his career represents.

I’d never visited Hunters Point until last week, when I toured the Boys & Girls Club facility with Mays. Hunters Point or Bayview Hunters Point, is a predominately African-American area in the southeastern portion of San Francisco, although with gentrification, the black population is shrinking. Nearly a third of San Francisco’s hazardous waste sites are here, and the community has a 30 percent unemployment rate. Gang violence is a persistent threat, keeping the faith a constant challenge. The Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club, with its ambitious multimillion-dollar renovation, will be an oasis.

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“This is a community that, through the years, has really been dealt a bad hand with promises, people coming in and making change, a lot of social groups taking advantage of funding,” said James Holley, the director of the club. “The kids in this community really got left out in the cold. I think right now with gentrification taking place, the neighborhood is worried again that, with all the beautiful views and things that are taking place, this area won’t be theirs 20 years from now.”

For now, the center is theirs. If one life can be saved or one soul salvaged, if the switch can be turned on in one person’s life, if the center can be a catalyst for someone to become the Willie Mays of medicine or law, then it will have served its purpose.

“All these kids, they’re going to have a chance to play,” Mays said as he looked around the cavernous gymnasium. “I hope they put some computers here for education. It’s not all about baseball, or sports. It’s all about getting out of here with education and moving on.”

It’s fitting that the Giants chose baseball’s All-Star Game as the backdrop for its celebration of Mays. The game was his personal stage. Mays was an All-Star for 20 consecutive seasons, from 1954 to 1973.

“I loved to play in the All-Star Game,” Mays said. “It was a fun thing for us. We didn’t get bonuses like these kids do; I really didn’t play for the money, anyway. I wanted to play to win, and I was a guy who played nine innings. I didn’t want the American League beating me.”

Referring to his favorite All-Star outfield, when he could play with Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, he added: “We had three guys — Hank, Clemente and myself — all guys who would play in the outfield until we won the game. When we got four or five runs up, then they’d take us out.”

I asked Mays what happened if the manager tried to take him out the game. He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “No, no, no, no, noooo,” Mays said.

I forgot. He was a nine-innings man.

In one All-Star Game, Manager Walter Alston asked Mays to fill out the lineup card. This was his batting order: Mays, Clemente, Aaron, then either Willie Stargell or Willie McCovey.

Who batted fifth? I asked.

“After the fourth,” Mays said, “put anybody you want in there. It didn’t matter.” You have to love this.

And the kids at Hunters Point did. They knew the name Willie Mays, they felt his timeless spirit and they knew that he cared.

But when I asked him about the Boys & Girls Club as part of a legacy, Mays said: “I’m not really looking at this, so far as a legacy. I want to do things while I can understand what it’s all about.

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“I’m a guy, I like to see what I’m doing. I like to enjoy with the kids. I’m going to try to stay on top of this as long as I can. Hopefully they’ll get it finished sometime next year and it’ll be here for a long time.”

Mays said he also planned to help renovate a baseball field in his hometown. “I’m helping kids — that’s all it’s about,” he said. “I try to help everybody. I try to help the black, the white, the green, the yellow. To me, they’re all kids.”

The most positive news from this year’s All-Star festivities is that the great Willie Mays is coming back, clearly into view.

E-mail: wcr@nytimes.com