The Say Hey Kid.
Willie Mays.
Watching him play
could make your day.
I won’t get into one of those silly
“Greatest of All Times” kind of debates
but I find it easy to say
that in no way
has there been anyone better at baseball playing.
Just saying.
He was a sight to see, meaning
nobody was buying cokes and hot dogs
when he came up to the plate
with a bat in his hand
because you knew
you had a great chance
of seeing a ball heading for the parking lot
as he did that a lot
and if the ball bounced off the wall
you might see
Willie, at full speed,
in pursuit of extra bases,
sliding to beat tags,
with a kind of flair
that’s beyond compare,
making his opponents take in deep breaths of air
being fully aware
that he could steal the next base
and they’d have to see his cap
fly off his head again,
as it so often did
due to being one size larger than it was supposed to be
and due
to his
physics-defying style
of running the bases
and making plays in the outfield.
Oh, he was so entertaining.
The real deal.
Glad he was part of my lifetime.