Apr 22 2015 10:02 AM
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On the Night Willie Mays Hit No. 660, It Was Just Another Number
By DAVID WALDSTEIN APRIL 22, 2015
Willie Mays as a Met in 1972. He hit the final home run of his career the following year. Credit Associated Press
| As New Yorkers filed into Shea Stadium that night in 1973, there was much more for fans to think about than an aging baseball star’s home run total. It was Aug. 17. On that day, the Soviet Union had successfully tested a nuclear missile that could split into multiple warheads. The daily dose of Watergate news was on front pages again, the Vietnam War raged, and on a rooftop on the East Side of Manhattan, an 8-year-old boy was murdered, adding to a growing sense of chaos and fear in the streets. Sports may be a diversion, but the Mets were not doing their part to distract the troubled populace. They were 12 games under .500, in last place in the National League East, and they lost that night, too, to the Cincinnati Reds, in agonizing fashion. An article in The New York Times said that for the Mets, the game “produced some of the bitterest memories of a memorably bitter summer.” But something remarkable happened in that game. It had occurred twice before in baseball, and it is about to happen again. A player — in this case, Willie Mays, 42, in the final act of his career — hit his 660th career home run. The number held no significance at the time. Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron had reached that total, but both men then zoomed passed it. Aaron reached 660 in 1972 — also against the Reds — but by the time Mays reached it, Aaron had passed 700. Ruth reached 660 in 1933 at age 38. In 2004, Barry Bonds became the fourth player to reach and pass 660. Now Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees is poised to join them. Rodriguez hit his 658th career home run on Friday night and is two short of that gleaming 660 signpost that Mays planted beyond the Shea Stadium wall almost 42 years ago. Passing Mays was supposed to be a landmark occasion for Rodriguez, full of fanfare, merchandising and extra cash. But the moment now seems destined to pass modestly, just as it did for Mays, although for different reasons. Rodriguez, of course, was suspended for all of last season for his role in the Biogenesis performance-enhancing drug scandal. The Yankees do not intend to pay him the $6 million marketing bonus in his contract for reaching 660 home runs (and later, for reaching 714, 755 and so on). The Yankees are arguing that the milestone is no longer marketable because of Rodriguez’s transgressions, and, for the most part, they have studiously ignored it. Similarly, 660 was not a milestone when Mays reached it on that mild summer evening in 1973. It became one only after his season, and his career, ended. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember that home run, exactly,” said Felix Millan, the Mets’ second baseman, who made a great diving catch to help prevent Cincinnati’s Pete Rose from carrying his hitting streak to 18 games. “We knew he had a lot of home runs, but that one didn’t stand out.” The home run was described as a line drive to right-center field off Don Gullett, the ace of the Big Red Machine, and it brought the struggling Mets their only run in what turned into a 2-1 loss in 10 innings. No one knew it would be Mays’s final home run, but it was possible to guess as much. He was 42 and beaten down by 22 years of hard-charging, theatrical baseball, mostly for the Giants. He finished the year batting .211 with six home runs in 66 games. Years earlier, some believed Mays would be the one to catch Ruth and his 714 home runs. But that mantle fell to Aaron, a contemporary whose career intertwined so closely with Mays’s for the 20 seasons they lit up the National League together. In fact, on the day that Mays hit No. 660 at Shea, Aaron hit No. 703, against the Expos at Parc Jarry in Montreal. A headline in The Times read, “Aaron: 11 Homers to Ruth.” When news of the feat was posted on the scoreboard at Shea that night, it drew polite clapping from 36,803 fans at Shea Stadium. The applause they gave Mays upon his less glamorous home run was said to be thunderous. But both home runs drew attention in the news media. All of the major newspapers mentioned the Mays home run, noting it was his 660th. The Daily News had Aaron’s home run spread across the back page in an early edition, but later put the Mets result over it, highlighting Mays’s homer. Newsday, in an article that bumped up against ads for films like “Enter the Dragon” and “Day of the Jackal,” described how the fans, upon seeing the announcement on the scoreboard for Aaron’s 703rd home run in Montreal, “didn’t have the goose bumps that Willie gave them.” The New York Post ran a small box on the back page with a photo of Mays rounding the bases. The caption read, “Willie’s Night,” and described a tremendous ovation. It was not treated as a milestone, but for the fans, it was something special, a glimpse back to the greatness of a departing superstar, perhaps the best who ever played. “Willie was loved in New York,” said Ed Kranepool, Mays’s teammate and close friend. “Aaron was a great player, but he didn’t have Willie’s flair. And, of course, New York fans remembered him from his days with the Giants in New York. He was an icon coming back.” The Mets held the lead Mays gave them through eight innings, but the Reds tied it in the ninth and won in the 10th, after Hal King’s pinch-hit homer. The game was also notable because Mays, who was playing first base, was run over by Reds catcher Johnny Bench at the bag. Both men went down hard but remained in the game. For Mays, that was a feat in itself because of all the wear and tear on his body. “He spent a lot of time in the trainer’s room getting rubdowns,” Kranepool recalled, although he, too, could not remember the home run. “His lower half was pretty much gone by then.” In Montreal, Aaron’s homer was the 1,377th extra-base hit of his career, tying him with Stan Musial for first on that list. Aaron speculated that Expos Manager Gene Mauch told pitcher Steve Renko to throw him only fastballs because a 39-year-old would not be able to hit them. “But I know I can still hit,” he said, and he was right. He hit 52 more home runs over the next three seasons, passing Ruth the next spring. Rodriguez is on a course to join Aaron as the third player to catch Mays after the 600-homer plateau. Aaron tied Mays at 648 on May 31, 1972, then became only the second player behind Ruth to hit 649 home runs at the time. He did it with a grand slam on June 10, 1972, leaving Mays behind forever. “Bad Henry had to do it in grand style,” the Newsday report said. When Rodriguez passes Mays, some will call him bad, too, noting that he had the advantage of performance enhancers. Aaron was 38 when he hit No. 660. (Coincidentally, Aaron’s 661st home run came against Gullett.) Rodriguez will turn 40 on July 27, and he is in his 21st season, one fewer than Mays. “He hit a lot of home runs,” Kranepool said. “I don’t know how he did it. But if he’s passing a guy like Willie, then that’s a pretty incredible thing to do. I guess you’ve got to give everyone their due.” After Mays hit his 660th, he played in only 12 more regular-season games and rapped out five more hits, all singles. His ending was painfully near, but the Mets recovered from their memorably bitter summer to have a happy autumn. They won the pennant. Mays had three hits in 10 postseason at-bats, including a single to drive in the go-ahead run in the 12th inning of Game 2 of the World Series against the Oakland Athletics, one of the three games the Mets won in that series. It was Mays’s final hit. |
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