I've stumbled upon quite a few interesting articles recently, but one of them especially captivated me. It was an article published by the Sarasota Journal on June 10, 1952, entitled "Absence of Willie Mays Caused Giants to Decline".
First, a little background information...
Willie Mays made his major-league debut in May of 1951, and didn't disappoint from that point forward, hitting .274/.356/.472 over the course of his 121-game rookie season -- good for an OPS+ of 120. He captured Rookie of the Year honors that season, and also managed to help bring his team a pennant.
The next year, Mays was drafted by the U.S. army to serve in the Korean War. On June 10 of that year, this article was published:
It would, as a matter of fact, have been plain remarkable and against all the laws of probability if the New York Giants had not gone into at least a temporary decline after losing Willie Mays to the Army. The National League champions will be lucky if it proves only temporary.
Some things about baseball are difficult to explain, and the tremendous role this joyous Negro boy with the high-pitched voice played in the day-by day fortunes of the Giants is one of them. It transcended by a great deal the importance of his batting and fielding, good as they were.
Almost from the day he stepped into the lineup just over a year ago, fresh from Minneapolis, Willie became a sort of symbol to Leo Durocher's team. Here was a kid so gifted that no one could even guess at the heights he might scale, and yet so completely guileless and unaffected and plain filled with the wonder of playing big league ball that he scarcely seemed real.
The Giants adopted Willie, and Willie adopted the Giants. The Alabama kid become a sort of mascot, a winning symbol. The veterans of the club laughed when he ran out from under his cap on the bases and ribbed him like a bumpkin in the locker room, but when Willie wasn't around they told you he was making catches out in centerfield and throws to the plate probably never excelled, if matched, in the history of the game.
[...]
Possibly none of this explains entirely why the Giants figured to suffer an emotional reaction when Willie left. It might be difficult to understand how the loss of one player can drastically affect the fortunes of a club so solidly equipped with stars as the Giants.
All anyone knows is that the Giants haven't looked like pennant winners since Willie went away.
I found this astounding -- the impact that Willie Mays had on the Giants at the mere age of 21. And the best part about this is that he lived up to all of these expectations; he is without a doubt the greatest player of his generation, a star in multiple facets of the game.
One of my greatest disappointments in life is that I never got to see Willie play. Reading through this article, I can see that I truly missed out on a lot.
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