Baseball legend Willie Mays is in Birmingham in spirit

Editor’s note: The San Francisco Giants announced that Willie Mays died Tuesday afternoon at age 93.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Long after the curtain closed at the historic Carver Theatre on 4th Avenue, two New Yorkers were arguing about basketball. The resurgence of Kristaps Porziņģis and the Boston Celtics, who in about two hours would go on to win their 18th NBA championship, is a confounding prospect to these New York Knicks fans.

But these aren’t just any two guys from New York City. One is legendary cultural polymath Nelson George. The other is the son of Willie Mays, Michael. The two had just finished a Q&A session following a screening of the HBO documentary Say Hey, Willie Mays!, which brought folks of all types out to the building that is also home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

The function was no small affair. Everything from traditional African garb to Sunday service best was on the backs of those in attendance and the let out featured more tall tales about arguably the greatest baseball player of all time from people who’d run into him in all walks of life over the years.

Willie Mays’ presence in spirit, if you will, is everyone. This is his hometown. But the 1954 World Series champion won’t be attending the first MLB game to be held at Rickwood Field, where he roamed the spacious grass in center field first in 1948 in Negro American League for the Birmingham Black Barons at age 17.

“He’s 93. It’s a lot,” Michael Mays said on stage regarding the decision for his father not to be there. “I think deep down what it is, is he don’t show up halfway. And I think he feels like, you know, we’ve all been pitching him, just show up. And you know, you just do your one little thing, and it’ll make all the difference in the world. No, if he can’t stop and do what he does with every single person, and give everybody their due and their time, he feels like he’s cutting corners, and he’s not gonna do that.”

Fair enough. When you’re an American icon whose presence and skills have helped transform various major tenets of society — baseball and say, the television industry to name a couple — you don’t do things on anyone’s terms other than your own.

If you’ve never seen the 2022 film directed by Nelson, it’s more than worth your time. The project looks at Mays as an allegory to how this country developed in those years, while various characters we all know from around the sports and pop culture world talk about how much Mays changed their lives and careers.

“Willie was so naturally effervescent and such a gifted storyteller and so comfortable in front of the cameras, that much of white America felt comfortable with him,” sports commentator Bob Costas says in the film. “I remember asking Willie about this. There are no Black people on any of these sitcoms but Willie Mays would just show up, as if that was a natural course of things. So, here’s Donna Reed having lunch with a white lady, and all of a sudden Willie Mays shows up. The incongruity of the scene is apparently lost on most viewers, and then he walked away with the check.”

Costas recalling that kind of once-in-a-lifetime scenario with an incredulous chuckle isn’t the only laugh-out-loud moment in the movie, but the emotions in the theater that sits square in the Birmingham Civil Rights District, were quite palpable. When the story gets to the point of his career when he was playing for the Mets in the 1972 World Series but didn’t get a final at-bat in a crucial situation following his return to New York, there was an audible groan from the crowd.

“I’ve been down here a lot lately, I’ve also been shooting another project in Selma, in this last year,” George told the packed house. “I think my perceptions of the South and Alabama have definitely been shifted by being here. And by meeting people and seeing the relationship between the history that we know, and the reality of life from the ground, and so much about what happens in storytelling is conflict. Most people are driven by conflict and how they tell stories. And certainly, that’s very attractive. But there’s a nuance and an interplay that people have with each other down here that is very unique. One thing we tried to do in the film is connect Willie to history.”

In Birmingham, you don’t have to go far to connect to that history whatsoever, as it’s all around you. Right there on 4th Avenue, it doesn’t feel like much has changed writ large since the Fairfield Industrial High School product was on the come-up. Down the block, a restaurant called Green Acres serves delicious fried catfish with plenty of pictures from the old days on the wall. It’s the kind of place that has a newspaper framed with then-President Barack Obama’s first inauguration on the front, and a CD jukebox that plays a lot of gospel music.

“An amazing film. Never thought that a documentary about baseball would bring tears to my eyes,” Samantha Briggs, vice president of education at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, said during the session. “But I was sitting over here boo-hooing. So, thank you. I love how you brought out the story about the fathers, [that] really stood out as something special.”

Of course, often the best stories aren’t the ones told in front of everyone. They’re the ones left on the cutting room floor.

“You know, it’s funny. I initially pitched a four-hour doc, right?”

George is talking about how this movie could have swelled to a full-blown mini-series, because of the breadth of Mays’ life and the people he encountered. There were just too many topics to reasonably cover. But my favorite story has to do with another star, his contemporary, singer Frank Sinatra. The two, along with the rest of the Rat Pack, often ran in the same circles.

The short, safe-for-work version is that once Sinatra started bringing white women around to gallivant with the guy known as Buck, Mays just stopped returning Sinatra’s phone calls to party in public. Imagine having the kind of juice where Ol’ Blue Eyes and his crew are making desperate attempts to get you to kick it with them.

Listening to Michael Mays tell childhood stories of his dad felt like so many different family type gatherings I’ve been to over the years. The part where after everyone leaves the cookout and the uncles are still sitting in the backyard telling stories while the kids try to stay up just to see what they can get away with.

Black men showing love to each other and lifting one another up through the reminders of our experiences is what kept so many players motivated enough to go on. And the only person you could credibly believe that would hang up on the 44th president of this country for only lobbing a phone call and not showing up in person to his birthday party, or hilariously turning away St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson from his doorstep when he was in town for a lunch invitation — is Willie Mays. Because of course.

“He was the first one to the party in terms of what we’re doing. While all this energy was getting a head of steam on it, I think it’s very relatable,” Michael Mays said as the confetti fell in TD Garden on a nearby TV. “Plus, Nelson’s the only to address that Uncle Tom stuff, but to do it appropriately, like, he didn’t run from it. He didn’t duck that. Also, to get Dad to talk about his mother. He never, never talks about Annie. He called me and was like, ‘would that be cool?’ I was like, ‘man, I don’t know.’ And he did and you know, some risk-taking paid off, right?”

As for George, he’s been a documenter of Black American life for longer than I have been alive and has shown the globe things we’d never see without his vision. His experience at the 114-year-old Rickwood Field for the documentary was one that quite a few people will also feel when they walk through the turnstiles.

“I’ve been doing books and films and art and all that stuff forever,” Nelson said with the smile of a kid who fell in love with the game long ago. “That day on the field was the most fun I’ve ever had.”