WHY TRY FINDING A NEW WILLIE MAYS WHEN WE’VE ALREADY SEEN THE GREATEST?

He was the best baseball player ever, many would argue, and he certainly brought joy to a sport that always needs his influence and will salute him Thursday night at Rickwood Field in Birmingham

     The first time I mentioned him as a kid, I grinned, and the last time I met him years ago, I sighed. Willie Mays. Could a name have better symbolized a man’s joy? When he rushed toward the brick wall at the Polo Grounds, 450 feet from home plate, Willie Mays conceived The Catch. When he amassed home runs without steroids and ruled record books, Willie Mays created impact compared only to playwrights with blank verses.

     To this day, in every inning of every ballgame from New York to San Francisco, we look for his bliss. We called him the “Say Hey Kid” with endearment that lasted almost 70 years, until Shohei Ohtani came around from Japan and we called him the “Sho Hey Kid.” My only resentment: He was born way back in the 20th century. If anybody of his inspiration belonged to today’s era and this media cycle, it was Mays.

     “I think I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I feel nobody in the world could do what I could do on a baseball field.”

     We should give up trying to find the next Mays. He was a genius, an entertainer and a man who excelled for folks in the stands. Ohtani is a slugger. So is Aaron Judge. Mookie Betts has his flair but doesn’t compare. Barry Bonds was his godson but devoured too many performance enhancers. Does anyone look at the stadium panorama and say they want to please each and every person?

     “I was always aware that you play baseball for people who paid money to come see you play,” Mays said in “24,” his memoir. “You play for those people. You want to make them smile, have a good time. I could make a hard play look easy and an easy play look hard. Sometimes I’d hesitate, count to three, then I’d get there just in time to make the play. You’d hear the crowd. Sometimes you had to do that in order for people to come back the next day.”

     They always returned to see him, knowing he’d leave more thrills and charms. Dead at 93, Mays is remembered as a center fielder the way we think of football stars as mad quarterbacks and basketball stars as breathtaking scorers. He brought the show. Every time I covered a Giants game during a Bay Area sojourn, I walked past his statue at 24 Willie Mays Plaza and pondered what Rob Manfred said Tuesday night. “His incredible achievements and statistics do not begin to describe the awe that came with watching Willie Mays dominate the game in every way imaginable,” the MLB commissioner said.

     And how Mays lived a long life because he was humbled by our thanks. “My father has passed away peacefully and among loved ones,” said his son, Michael. “I want to thank you all from the bottom of my broken heart for the unwavering love you have shown him over the years. You have been his life's blood.” He played baseball because he loved being magnificent and loved making us happy.

     We remember him playing stickball with kids in Harlem, where he lived in a ground floor apartment. We remember him causing such widespread wonder that a cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz, used him frequently in “Peanuts” strips — spelling the word maze as “M … A … Y … S.” Most of all, we remember him playing home games as a 17-year-old for the Birmingham Black Barons. He played at Rickwood Field, where this Thursday night, his Giants will play the St. Louis Cardinals. The park is almost 114 years old, and Mays will be honored on a national broadcast. “My teammates from the Birmingham Barons were really the ones who made me understand about life,” Mays said. “We played at a time when baseball was becoming open to everybody; we were playing for generations of players who were held back. We had a lot to play for, not just us.”

     I was too young to watch, unlike Larry Baer, who eventually became his guide atop the Giants in California. “I fell in love with baseball because of Willie, plain and simple,” said the team’s president and CEO. “My childhood was defined by going to Candlestick with my dad, watching Willie patrol center field with grace and the ultimate athleticism. Over 30 years, working with Willie, and seeing firsthand his zest for life and unbridled passion for giving to young players and kids, has been one of the joys of my life.”

     But what I remembered as a young writer was his verve. His name ventured across the planet, where everyone recognized him as an American master. He had no rancor, no rage. “People do things in different ways,” he said. “I can’t, for instance, go out and picket. I can’t stand on a soapbox and preach. I believe understanding is the important thing. In my talks to kids, I’ve tried to get that message across. It makes no difference whether you are Black or white because we are all God’s children fighting for the same cause.”

      When he met people, Mays used a pet phrase. “I would just say, ‘Say Hey,’ and the writers picked that up,” he said.

     Say Hey. Was he the best player in baseball history? “I am beyond devastated and overcome with emotion,” Bonds wrote on Instagram. “I have no words to describe what you mean to me — you helped shape me to be who I am today. Thank you for being my Godfather and always being there. Rest in Peace Willie, I love you forever. #SayHey.”

     A day before he passed, Mays had words for the Rickwood Field proceedings. “My heart will be with all of you who are honoring the Negro League ballplayers, who should always be remembered, including all my teammates on the Black Barons,” he said. “I wanted to thank Major League Baseball, the Giants, the Cardinals and all the fans who’ll be at Rickwood or watching the game. It will be a special day, and I hope the kids will enjoy it and be inspired by it.”

     Instead, the night becomes much larger. “With sadness in our hearts,” said Manfred, “it will now serve as a national remembrance of an American who will forever remain on the short list of the most impactful individuals our great game has ever known.”

     Willie Howard Mays Jr. Thankfully I’ll still grin, like a night at the theater, where the actor wins and so do we.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.