A Giant of a Man

The timing was uncanny, a bit charmed even, but then again—during a Hall of Fame career that spanned nearly a quarter of a century, and that led him from the Jim Crow South to New York to San Francisco and then back east—Willie Mays had nothing if not exquisite timing. Mays passed away in mid-June, age 93, two days before the San Francisco Giants faced the St. Louis Cardinals in a game organized to honor both him and the Negro Leagues. The venue was Rickwood Field in Alabama, the oldest ballpark in the country, where a 17-year-old Mays got his start with the Birmingham Black Barons. And it was at Rickwood where word spread that Mays, too ill to attend the ceremonies, had died, turning the event into a memorial as much as a celebration.