I was never a baseball fan. But like so many, I was a fan of Willie Mays. Mays died on June 18 at the age of 93. As a writer-producer at NBC’s “Today Show,” I met many ball players. Yankee great Elston Howard lived in my town of Teaneck, New Jersey. His teammate Mickey Mantle signed a ball for my son Tyler. I shook the hand of home run hitter Hank Aaron who often visited the show.
But Willie and I went way back.
When I was born in April 1953, my parents brought me home to their new apartment on Harlem River Drive. At the time, it was known as the Colonial Park Houses. My mother recalled that she wanted to live in the Riverton, but she and my father didn’t meet the income requirements at the time, so they settled on 159-26 Harlem River Drive. We lived on the 14th floor. Our bedroom faced the parking lot and the historic Polo Grounds.
I was about three years old when I got out of the crib and into a twin bed in a room shared with my brother who was two years older than me. As I was no longer restricted by the bars of a crib, I could jump between beds and watch the activity on the street, many floors below us. During the day, we often heard the roar of the crowd coming from the ballpark, but the real action started when the sun went down. My mother insisted on an early bedtime so she could catch her breath as she awaited my father’s return home from work and school. He was attending Columbia University during the day and was a skycap at LaGuardia Airport at night. Finding a parking space when there was a night-time doubleheader proved challenging, but he managed to snag a place before taking the elevator up to our apartment. Though my brother and I were supposed to be asleep, my father often found us in the window attracted by the bright lights of the stadium. We tried to be quiet so as to not call attention to our antics because my mother would undoubtedly scold us and give my father a dirty look. So we were quiet as we watched the game together in the best seats in the house.
Because I was pretty young, I didn’t understand the game or know that there were other players besides Willie Mays as that’s the only one my dad ever talked about. In fact, I called baseball “the Willie Mays game.” He was the best reference I had to someone hitting a ball with a stick. I remember one evening as we watched the game from our bedroom window, waiting patiently for my dad to come home, we heard the apartment door open, and my father quietly heading towards our bedroom. Realizing it wasn’t my mother, we quickly opened our eyes and greeted our dad with smiles and hugs. My father, who had his hand behind his back, slowly showed us an old dirty baseball. He told us that it fell into his hand as he signaled to come into the parking lot. “You caught a Willie Mays ball?” I asked. My dad smiled and we believed he did. We kept the ball and that story until adulthood.
When the New York Giants announced that they would leave the Polo Grounds for San Francisco in 1957, my parents decided it was time for us to leave the projects as well. I initially thought it was because Willie Mays was leaving but in fact, my mother was pregnant with my younger brother and we needed more room. So, we moved to Teaneck.
Since learning of the death of Willie Mays, my older brother and I have been struggling to remember those days living across the street from the Polo Grounds. Though our shared memories are not identical, they are close enough to tell our story of the impact one sport’s hero had on two little kids watching history from our bedroom window.
Allison J. Davis is a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists and a member of the New York Association of Black Journalists. She spent much of her career at NBC News.
Great article. The personal nature of the experience was vivid and captivating! A memory well worth sharing!