Willie Mays

By the time Willie Mays was nineteen, Jackie Robinson had already broken the color barrier in baseball. When a scout for New York Giants came to watch a Black Barons game, he didn't go to the field to watch Mays. Instead, it was one of his teammates who was supposed to get the looksee. But after a few minutes in the ballpark, the scout realized there was only one player there. Mays had caught his eye. He was signed for a $4000 bonus, plus $250 a month salary, to play in Sioux City, Iowa, on the Giants' Class A team.

Yet there were racial problems in Sioux City, and Mays wasn't allowed to join the team. Instead, the Giants moved him to Trenton, New Jersey, to play in a Class B Interstate League. Mays would become the first black to ever play in that league. But after only a season in Trenton, he went to the Minneapolis Millers to play Triple A ball. This was 1951, and Mays was but a short step from the majors after his first sixteen games of the season. He was batting .608, with a defense that was nothing short of spectacular. Leo Durocher, who would, like Piper Davis, take Mays under his wing, was the manager of the New York Giants. He called up Mays early in the '51 season. The Giants, rather mediocre that year, needed the help of Mays.

Willie Mays became the starting center fielder for the Giants on May 25, 1951. But whether it was nerves or something else, Mays could muster only one hit in his first twenty-five at bats. Durocher, however, saw the fire in Mays and knew that patience was necessary. He never lost faith. Though the Giants had a lackluster season, with the help of Mays—who eventually came out of his slump—they finished strong, tying their rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers in the last game of the season and forcing a playoff for the pennant.

Willie Mays

This put Mays in a game that would include one of the most famous hits in baseball history. Mays' teammate, Bobby Thompson, came to bat in the bottom of the ninth. The Giants were down, but Thompson hit a three run homer off of Brooklyn Dodger Ralph Branca. The "Shot Heard Round the World" clinched the pennant for the Giants, but they went on to lose to the Yankees in seven games.

In spite of his poor start that year, Mays garnered the National League Rookie of the Year honor for his twenty home runs and .274 batting average. At the conclusion of the season, however, he would be called into the army and serve his two years (primarily as a baseball instructor).