Baseball legend Willie Mays is in Birmingham in spirit – Andscape

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Clinton Yates takes readers inside all things surrounding the first MLB game in Birmingham, Alabama at Rickwood Field – the oldest professional ballpark in the United States.

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Long after the curtain closed at the historic Carver Theater on 4th Avenue, two New Yorkers were arguing about basketball. The return of Kristaps Porziņģis and the Boston Celtics, who in about two hours would win their 18th NBA championship, is a confusing prospect for these New York Knicks fans.

But these aren’t just two guys from New York. One is the legendary cultural polymath Nelson George. The other is Willie Mays’ son, Michael. The two had just finished a question-and-answer session following a screening of the HBO documentary Say Hey Willie Mays! which brought people of all types to the building that also houses the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

The function was no small matter. Everything from the traditional African attire to the Sunday service was on the backs of those in attendance, and the event featured several stories about the greatest baseball player of all time from people who met him in all walks of life from -over the years. .

The spirit presence of Willie Mays, if you will, is everyone. This is his hometown. But the 1954 World Series champion will not be in the first MLB game to be played at Rickwood Field, where he first roamed the spacious grass in center field in 1948 in the American Negro Leagues for the Birmingham Black Barons as a 17-year-old.

“He is 93 years old. There’s a lot,” Michael Mays said on stage about the decision not to have his father there. “I think deep down, what it is, is that it doesn’t show up halfway. And I think he feels like, you know, we all threw him away, just to show up. And you know, just doing your one thing and it will make all the difference in the world. No, if he can’t stop and do what he does with each person and give each their due and their time, he feels like he’s cutting corners and he’s not going to do that.”

Fair enough. When you’re an American icon whose presence and skills have helped transform various major tenets of society—baseball and, say, the television industry to name a few—you don’t do things on anyone’s terms but your own.

If you’ve never seen the 2022 movie directed by Nelson, it’s more than worth your time. The project looks at Mays as an allegory for how this country developed during those years, while various characters we all know from the worlds of sports and pop culture talk about how much Mays changed his life and career.

“Willie was so naturally effervescent and such a gifted storyteller and so comfortable in front of the cameras that much of white America was comfortable with him,” sports commentator Bob Costas says in the film. “I remember asking Willie about it. There are no black people in any of these sitcoms, but Willie Mays would appear, as if this were the natural course of things. So here’s Donna Reed having lunch with a white lady and suddenly Willie Mays shows up. The incongruity of the scene is apparently lost on most viewers, and then he walks away with the check.”

Costas recalling that kind of once-in-a-lifetime scenario with an incredulous chuckle isn’t the only laugh-out-loud moment in the film, but the thrills in the theater, which is located in Birmingham’s civil rights district, were pretty good. palpable. When the story reaches the point in his career when he was playing for the Mets in the 1972 World Series but didn’t get a last at bat in a crucial situation after his return to New York, there was an audible groan from the crowd.

“I’ve been here a lot lately, I’ve also been shooting another project in Selma for the last year,” George gushed. “I think my perceptions of the South and Alabama have definitely been changed by being here. And meeting people and seeing the relationship between the history we know and the reality of life on the ground, and so much of what happens in the storytelling is conflict. Most people are driven by conflict and how they tell stories. And certainly, that is very attractive. But there is a nuance and an interaction that people have with each other here that is very unique. One thing we tried to do in the film is connect Willie to history.”

In Birmingham, you don’t have to go far to connect with that history because it’s all around you. Right there on 4th Avenue, it doesn’t look like much has changed in general since the Fairfield Industrial High School product came along. Down the block, a restaurant called Green Acres serves delicious fried catfish with lots of pictures from the old days on the wall. It’s the kind of place that has a framed newspaper with then-President Barack Obama’s first inauguration on the front and a CD jukebox that plays a lot of gospel music.

“An amazing film. I never thought a documentary about baseball would bring tears to my eyes,” Samantha Briggs, vice president of education at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, said during the session. “But I was sitting here booing. So thank you. I love how you brought out the story of the parents, it really stood out as something special.”

Of course, often the best stories aren’t the ones told in front of everyone. They are the ones left on the cutting room floor.

“You know, it’s funny. I originally presented a four-hour document, right?

George talks about how this movie could have turned into a full-fledged mini-series because of the breadth of Mays’ life and the people he met. There were too many topics to reasonably cover. But my favorite story has to do with another star, his contemporary, the singer Frank Sinatra. The two, along with the rest of the rat pack, often ran in the same circles.

The short, safe-for-work version is that once Sinatra started bringing white women to gallivant with the guy known as Buck, Mays just stopped answering Sinatra’s party calls in public. Imagine having the kind of juice where Ol’ Blue Eyes and his crew are desperately trying to get you to date them.

Listening to Michael Mays recount childhood stories about his father felt like many different family gatherings I’ve been to over the years. The part where, after everyone leaves the kitchen, the uncles are still sitting in the backyard telling stories while the kids try to stay awake just to see what they can get away with.

Black men showing their love for each other and lifting each other up through the memories of our experiences is what has kept so many players motivated enough to keep going. And the only person you could credibly think would jail the 44th president of this country just for making a phone call and not showing up in person to his birthday party or turning him in hilariously on the pitcher from St. Louis Cardinals, Bob Gibson, from his door. when he was in town for a luncheon invitation—it’s Willie Mays. Because of course.

“He was first to the party in terms of what we do. As all that energy has picked up steam, I think it’s very relatable,” Michael Mays said as confetti fell in TD Garden on a nearby television. “Also, Nelson is the only one who addresses this Uncle Tom thing, but does it properly, like he’s not running away from it. He didn’t give up on it. Also to get dad talking about his mom. He never talks about Annie. He called me and said, “Would that be cool?” I was like, “man, I don’t know.” And he did, and you know, some risk-taking paid off, right?

As for George, he has been a documenter of black American life for longer than I have been alive and has shown the world things we would never see without his vision. His experience at 114-year-old Rickwood Field for the documentary was one that many people will also feel when they go through the turnstiles.

“I’ve been doing books and movies and art and all that stuff forever,” Nelson said with the smile of a kid who fell in love with the game long ago. “That field day was the most fun I’ve ever had.”