page_title: Willie Mays
section_title: Post-MLB baseball
hierarchical_section_title: Willie Mays / Post-MLB baseball
caption_attribution_description: English: Willie Mays (right)
context_page_description: Willie Howard Mays Jr., nicknamed "The Say Hey Kid", is an American former professional baseball center fielder, who spent almost all of his 22-season Major League Baseball career playing for the New York/San Francisco Giants, before finishing with the New York Mets. He is regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.
  Born in Westfield, Alabama, Mays was raised by his father, Cat, who played baseball in the Birmingham Industrial League. The younger Mays began playing professional baseball in 1948, first with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos, then with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. He participated in the 1948 Negro World Series, then was signed by the Giants once he graduated high school in 1950. Mays made his MLB debut in 1951, and after getting only one hit in his first 25 at bats, went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award. Drafted by the United States Army for the Korean War over the offseason, he spent most of the 1952 and 1953 seasons in the military.
context_section_description: After Mays retired as a player, he remained in the New York Mets organization as their hitting instructor until the end of the 1979 season. Mays established a reputation for missing appointments during these years, and he also tended to go home before the start of games. When Joe McDonald became the Mets' General Manager in 1975, he threatened to fire Mays for this; it took the intervention of Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Mays's lawyer to keep his job. The Mets agreed to keep him but mandated that he stay at home games for at least four innings. Mays did teach the players skills, however; Lee Mazzilli learned the basket catch from him.
  In October 1979, Mays took a job at the Park Place Casino (now Bally's Atlantic City) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While there, he served as a Special Assistant to the Casino's President and as a greeter. After being told by Kuhn that he could not be a coach and baseball goodwill ambassador while at the same time working for Bally's, Mays chose to terminate his contract with the Mets, and he was banned from baseball by Kuhn. Kuhn was concerned about gambling infiltrating baseball, but Hirsch points out that Mays's role was merely as a greeter, he was not allowed to place bets at the casino as part of his contract, and the casino did not engage in sports betting. In 1985, less than a year after replacing Kuhn as commissioner, Peter Ueberroth decided to allow Mays and Mantle to return to baseball. Like Mays, Mantle had gone to work for an Atlantic City casino and had been required to give up any baseball positions he held. At a press conference with the pair, Ueberroth said, "I am bringing back two players who are more a part of baseball than perhaps anyone else."
  Beginning in 1986, Mays again had a baseball job, as he was named Special Assistant to the President and General Manager of the San Francisco Giants. According to Mays, Peter Magowan considered naming him the Giants' manager when he purchased the team after the 1992 season, but Mays was not interested because he had doubts about his ability to succeed in that capacity. He did sign a lifetime contract with the team in 1993 and helped to muster public enthusiasm for building a new stadium in San Francisco, Pac Bell Park, which opened in 2000. Mays has his own charity, the Say Hey Foundation, which promotes youth baseball. In 2009, the foundation donated $50,000 in equipment to young players around the Birmingham area.
caption: Mays on September 28, 2008
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