March 19, 2010

Baseball superstar Willie Mays was inducted into the African-American Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame. Known as the “Say Hey Kid,” Mays, who was raised in Fairfield, became one of the greatest baseball players of all time. In 22 seasons as a center fielder, mostly with the New York and San Francisco Giants, Mays won one World Series and two National League Most Valuable Player awards. He finished his career with a record 24 All-Star Game appearances, 660 home runs, and a record 12 Gold Glove awards, despite the award not being introduced until 1957. Mays became a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Fame inductee in 1979 and was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1977.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Willie Mays’s plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, 2012. (Beyond My Ken, Wikimedia)

Willie Mays, standing, wearing baseball uniform, with arm around shoulders of Roy Campanella, 1961. (World Telegram & Sun photo by William C. Greene, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Photo of Maury Wills, Milton Berle, Jimmy Piersall and Willie Mays in a salute to baseball on the television program The Hollywood Palace, 1967. (ABC Television, Wikimedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.