Jun 20, 2024, 08:00 ET
Willie Mays, who died Tuesday at age 93, played winter baseball in Puerto Rico on the same team as Roberto Clemente.
The press room of the US Cellular Field Chicago was packed for the special event, a gathering of all living players from the 500-home run club, in July 2003.
I wasn’t very sure that a story about this stellar team would be of much interest to the newspaper where I worked, but when I saw them together, I realized that several of the legends had played winter baseball in Puerto Ricoso I decided to go one by one for them.
Michael Schmidt, Eddie Murray (Caguas Creoles) and Rafael Palmeiro (San Juan meters) talked about how playing baseball in the Caribbean gave them the confidence boost they needed to establish themselves in the Majors. Frank Robinson (Lions of Ponce and Crabsters of Santurce) expressed that not only did it help him as a player, but that he took his first steps there as a manager, while Reggie Jackson (Santurce) said that he improved his swing on the way to becoming Mr. October.
I left Hank Aaron (Caguas) already Willie Mays for the end, because their tables were surrounded by journalists, but there were 10 minutes left until the closing of the activity, and somehow I had to complete that adventure. I approached Aaron from behind his chair and asked him about his experience on the Isle of Enchantment. He took the trouble to turn around, look me directly in the eyes, and respond that Puerto Rico It helped him not only improve his game and change positions (he arrived as a second baseman), but also to see another country without racial segregation, where he was treated as equal regardless of skin color.
I had Willie Mays left. His table was still full and a little jostling, and almost on my knees, I came to be in front of him. Even though he was smiling, he was intimidating like a monument of the seven wonders of the world. For every question they asked him, he would make a joke or respond with a short but accurate phrase. The announcement that the interviews would close in two minutes made me ask my question in the middle of two or three interventions.
“Willie, how did playing in Puerto Rico help you develop?”
“Me? Nothing, it didn’t help me at all,” he said, smiling. I don’t know if she noticed my disappointment, but she kept up his argument. “I had nothing to prove, nothing to demonstrate. I was already a star, and I had nothing to develop at that time.”
I was already starting to get uncomfortable with his arrogance and his little smirk. ‘Say Hey Kid’, when he added. “But I had a wonderful time. How much fun I had in those days in Puerto Rico! How well they treated me there. And what a great team we had.”
Everything he said was verifiable with numbers. Mays was coming off a season that led him to win the award for 1954 National League Most Valuable Player. He had just completed a year of military service, but he was a batting champion with .345, slugging (.667) and OPS (1.078) and OPS + (175). He was the leader in triples and added 33 doubles, 44 home runs, 119 runs scored and 110 RBIs.
His leap to legendary level that season came in the first game of the World Series against the Cleveland Indianswhen he made his iconic catch with his back to the plate in the gigantic center field of the Polo Grounds, to preserve the Giants’ victory and fuel the four-game sweep of the Indians.
Since he still had the desire to continue playing and earn additional money in the Caribbean winter, he accepted an offer to help his friend, Pedrín Zorrilla, the owner of the Cangrejeros, and join an already powerful Santurcino squad that had just finished last the previous year. There he not only met his Giants teammate, Ruben Gomezbut he was part of a powerful lineup that had a young man named Roberto Clemente and stars from the Negro leagues such as George Crowe, Buster Clarkson and Bob Thurman. The quartet became known as the ‘Panic Squad’ and the team was later described as ‘The Perfect Machinery’ for him historian Jorge Colón Delgado.
Needless to say, Mays continued his MVP career in the Puerto Rican league. He averaged .395 with a .773 slugging percentage in 172 at-bats, with 12 home runs, 33 RBIs, 63 runs scored, 15 doubles and 7 triples. He hit for the cycle in one game and was the leader in triples. Clemente, at 20 years old, batted .344 and led the league in scoring with 65 and 95 hits.
“Mays played center field, Clemente played left field, and Bob Thurman played right field. When Thurman wasn’t playing, he came in Luis Rodríguez Olmowho also caught baskets,” said Colón Delgado. “That is a rarity in baseball history, that all three outfielders caught baskets.”
“The experience playing with Willie Mays helped Clemente a lot,” added Colón Delgado. “They practiced together every day at 11 in the morning with Herman Franks and Olmo. And this was just before Clemente’s debut in 1955.”
Above all, he did have fun. My father in law, Fufi Santoriwas a student at the College of Mayagüez (a technological university in the west of the Island) and traveled several times on the Cangrejeros bus, where Mays was a true ‘Say Hey Kid’. Even months before his death in 2018, he remembered those moments.
“I would make the bus stop, two or three times along the route, just to go somewhere I saw on the road,” recalled Santori, who later lived in New York when the city had Mickey Mantle patrolling center field in Yankee Stadium, Duke Sinder in it Ebbets Fields and Mays in the Polo Grounds. “He didn’t stop making jokes, the four hours of the trip he had everyone laughing. And on the field… a marvel. He didn’t hold anything back, everything he did in the Major Leagues, all the dedication, all the talent, showed it in Puerto Rico.”
His work did not end with lifting the championship title with the Cangrejeros, but with a great performance in the Caribbean Series.
Mays started without a hit in his first 13 at-bats, but woke up with a golden home run against Magellan and finished with two home runs and the lead in runs batted in with 9, leading Puerto Rico to a victory in the regional classic.
Clemente and Mays frequently met on the same team in the Greater, in the National League all-star games. From 1960 to 1972, they participated in 12 All-Star Games, generally accompanied by Hank Aaron. When Clemente hit his 3,000th hit in 1973, Mays was told about comparisons with Clemente, who played like him, and he responded, “I play like Roberto Clemente.”
The last of this trio of legends passed away on Tuesday night.
