Willie Mays Junior's Life And Accomplishments

William Mays Junior was born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield Alabama. The father of Willie Mays was a steelworker who played centerfield for the local Birmingham industrial league semi-pro team.His mother was a high school track star and it was clear from a very early age that Willie Mays had gotten lots of his athletics from his parents. According to his father, Mays learned to walk at six months, and soon thereafter he and Mays were playing catch with each other. The instructions he gave to Mays were the basic rules of the game that would eventually make him famous.Then at age 3 May's parents were divorced but he continued to practice playing baseball. He chose to live with his father, and because of that, he continued to play baseball with

¨Would I prefer to stay in school or play baseball¨. Later in life, he answered that question with “ If given the choice between the two I would’ve chosen baseball”. Not only did he like baseball, but he also practiced it all the time to the point where he would sit in the dugout with his father's industrial league teammates, and listen to baseball strategies and techniques while absorbing the game's finer moments. When Mays turned 13, he was playing on a semi-professional team called the gray Sox. Then eventually, Mays started playing for the local Birmingham black barons, which was one of the major leagues for African-American players. Mays was playing center field and was paid $250 a month to play. Then Mays eventually finished high school while being a professional baseball player. By the time Mays had secured himself the centerfielder spot on the black barons, legendary ball player Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in major league baseball. Eventually, a scout from the New York Giants came to a black barons game to watch a teammate of Mays but Mays ended up capturing his attention. The Giants had already signed a lot of black African-American baseball

It was such a great show of skill that it has ever since been known as “the catch”. Mays then had gotten a new contract. And he entered the 1955 season as a superstar. After the 1957 season, the Giants left New York for San Francisco where Mays found it difficult to fit in but eventually he learned the tricks of life out west and had won over the fans with his routine brilliance on the field and with the bat. And in 1962 he led the Giants back to the World Series with a career-high 141 runs batted in.Then in the following year, he joined an exclusive club by smashing his 400th career Homer. It now seems possible that Mays could have caught up to Babe Ruth's record home run amount. Mays passed the record for many of the games' all-time records until the last he tried to take Babes Ruth's crown. Mays after many years of continuous effort, age had started taking its toll on Mays after the 1966 season.His home runs and batting average both begin to drop, but by that time he wound up his career with the New York Mets in 1973, yet made a strong case for himself as the greatest all-around player in baseball