My dear bride pointed out to me when i got home from golf, i had inadvertently published the beginnings of my post about Willie. Mea culpa. i’m trying again.

i’ve been watching, listening, and reading all of the praises (deserved) of Willie Mays who crossed over the bridge yesterday at 93.

Many of the accolades claim Willie was the best baseball player ever. i remain amazed that folks could claim such.

In my mind, folks who try to assess baseball players from, possibly 1786, until today, are barking up a tree where the there are no squirrels. Equipment, field conditions, injuries, medical advances, baseball quality and consistency, specialization, coaching (from an absurd age, almost infancy), money, number of games in the season, information, oh, yes, PEDs, and lord knows what else have made such comparisons ridiculous. But the public wants to compare: they are good at being illogical and ridiculous. And the sports moguls eat it up because they make money on it. So we have it.

Correction: i do not have it. Comparing Walter Johnson to Bob Gibson to Gerrit Cole is worse than comparing apples and oranges. It’s comparing high tech to farming. i’m out.

So i will not state Willie Mays was the best. i certainly argued with my father enough about whether he was better than Mickey Mantle, but we never reached an agreement.

However, there is no one, no one who made me happier than Willie Mays when i watched him play. He was magic. He was made even more magic by Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reece in their description in the Falstaff Beer Game of the week on Saturdays. It really didn’t matter who announced. Willie made it magic. You could feel the joy.

i was a Pirate fan. Bill Mazeroski, Don Hoak, Dick Groat, Smoky Burgess were in a place of honor. And if you ask me about the greatest baseball player of all time, my vote would be for Roberto Clemente.

But, as i have noted, baseball greatness is arbitrary.

Willie?

i smile when i think of watching him.

Rest in the peace, incredible and forever, young man.

Say hey!

As i explained last year on Father’s Day, my brother, sister, and i didn’t call him “Father.” We didn’t call him “Dad.” We called him “Daddy,” always. His grandchildren and great grandchildren (there was only one talking before he left us) called him “Grandpa.”

And so he was.

In all of the stuff i’ve written about him, i don’t think i’ve said one of best things about him. Several years ago, Peter Thomas and i concluded that the most consistent and most important thing about the most effective leaders in history is they did the right thing.

Daddy did the right thing. Always. Sometimes it was tough to do the right thing. He did it anyway.

Most folks believe their father was the best. They probably were for them. So i’ll join that choir.

My graphics capabilities stink. Photos are with with him and me, 1944, a month before he went to war; with my daughter Blythe, 1974 in San Pedro California; with my daughter Sarah, 1998 in his home on Castle Heights Avenue in Lebanon, Tennessee; and with his great grandson Sam, c2010 on a walk in Deer Park community – Blythe, Sam’s mother will have to straighten me out on the year.

And on many occasions pertaining to Daddy, i repost a poem i wrote about him that he liked very much:

Hands

When most folks meet him,
they notice steel blue eyes and agility
his gaze, gait and movements
belie the ninety-five years;
but
those folks should look at his hands:
those hands could make Durer cry
with their history and the tales they tell.

His strength always was supple
beyond what was suggested from his slight build.
His hands are the delivery point of that strength.
His hands are not slight:
His hands are firm and thick and solid –
a handshake of destruction if he so desired,
but
he has used them to repair the cars and our hearts;

His hands are marked by years of labor with
tire irons, jacks, wrenches, sledges, micrometers on
carburetors, axles, brake drums, distributors
(long before mechanics hooked up computers,
deciphering the monitor to replace “units”
for more money in an hour than he made in a month
when he started in ’34 before computers and units).

His hands pitched tents,
made the bulldozers run
in war
in the steaming, screaming sweat of
Bouganville, New Guinea, the Philippines.

His hands have nicks and scratches
turned into scars with
the passage of time:
a map of history, the human kind.
Veins and arteries stand out
on the back of his hands,
pumping life itself into his hands
and
beyond;
the tales of grease and oil and grime,
cleaned by gasoline and goop and lava soap
are etched in his hands;
they are hands of labor,
hands of hard times,
hands of hope,
hands of kindness, caring, and love:
oh love, love, love, crazy love.

His hands speak of him with pride.
His hands belong
to the smartest man I know
who has lived life to the maximum,
but
in balance, in control, in understanding,
gaining respect and love
far beyond those who claim smartness
for the money they earned
while he and his hands own smartness
like a well-kept plot of land
because he always has understood
what was really important
in the long run:
smarter than any man I know
with hands that tell the story
so well.