Say Hey, Willie Mays
                   
Director: Nelson George
Year: 2022
Rating: 7.5
I have very little good to say about getting old other than I am retired and have more time for movies. Don't believe anyone who says it just gets better. It basically sucks. But one thing I am grateful for is that I am old enough to have witnessed baseball at its finest in the 1960s. When baseball was King. The National Sport. When every little kid woke up, got the sports section in the newspaper and poured over the box scores from the night before. I would guess papers don't even carry these anymore because you have the internet. That was my religion. I knew every player's batting average, home runs and pitcher's won loss record and era. There was a sandlot in every neighborhood where we would gather after school or on weekends and play until dark. Trading baseball cards. My mother threw all mine out when we moved overseas. I would be rich now because I had them all from 1960 to 1965. Collecting bottles and buying cards with my proceeds. I lived in Washington DC so had the pathetic Washington Senators as my home team - Eddie Brinkman, Minnie Minoso, Frank Howard, Chuck Cottier - the saying was Washington - First in War, Last in the American League. But I still loved them.



But on Saturdays they had the game of the week and this was where I got to see the greats of the 60's. I suppose like music, every baseball fan thinks the period when they were growing up was the best. They would be wrong. It was the 1960s. Baseball only had two leagues, no playoffs, just a World Series, players were making normal salaries and they were on the same teams often for their entire careers. I hate what baseball has turned into. There were so many great players back then - the color barrier had been broken and blacks and Hispanics were being brought in. The names of the players still have an aura about them 60 years later. Aaron, Musial, Kaline, Brooks and Frank Robinson, Marichal, Koufax, Gibson, Yastrzemski, Killibrew, Banks, Clemente, Ford and so many more.



And of course, Mantle and Mays. There was the on-going debate about which was the best center fielder - often taking racial sides - one white, the other black. I think I was neutral because I hated the Yankees and never got to see Mays except at World Series time. But it is evident now that Mays was not only the best center fielder but likely the best player of all time. It is impossible to compare players from different eras but Mays is certainly right up there because he excelled at every aspect of the game - hitting, hitting for power, speed, defense, throwing, thinking, clutch hitting. Mantle was close for the years he was healthy but injured too often.



This 90-minute documentary from HBO is pretty good. It covers his life and career with plenty of talking heads extolling him. Clips of the great catch and home runs. But the wonderful part of it is Mays being interviewed recently. He is about 90 now, a little hard of hearing and walking carefully but clear of mind. He remembers everything. I mean everything. The interviewers would ask him about a hit or a catch or about a slide home and he remembers it. He is amazing. The documentary weirdly morphs into an elect Bobby Bonds into the Baseball Hall of Fame for the final 15 minutes. Mays is his Godfather, and they are very close and I would guess that Mays insisted on this to co-operate with the show. He wants Bonds inducted. These types of documentaries tend to avoid the negative and focus on the positive and with Mays there is a lot of positive to focus on. If he were playing today, he would be making $40 million a year. My current team the Boston Red Sox had a chance to sign him and Ernie Banks and passed because they wanted no blacks on their team. Fuckers. We would have owned the 1960s.