Willie Mays’ impact on American culture

By Lincoln Mitchell, Columbia University Willie Mays playing stickball in Harlem in 1954. Bettmann/Getty Images In 1959, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev visited San Francisco and members of the International Longshoreman’s Union greeted him with cheers, newspaperman Frank Coniff quipped: “This is the damndest city. They cheer Khruschev and boo Willie Mays.” It was the height of the Cold War and, for Coniff and many of his readers, there was no better symbol of America than Mays. At that time, Mays was a 28-year-old centerfielder for the San Francisco Giants and the best ballplayer in the world, and he was occasionally booed by fans of his own team. A decade before that, Mays was playing for the Birmingham Black Barons, a Negro League team near his hometown of Westfield, Alabama, while still in high school. Mays, who died on June 18, 2024, at the age of 93, was not only the greatest baseball player of the last 80 years, and quite possibly ever, but he was an enormously important figure in American sports, culture and history. His journey from the segregated Deep South of his childhood to being honored by President Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom spans...