My column today is headed “Have You Met Stoner?” I am referring to a book, a novel, by John Williams, published in 1965. At regular intervals, people discover the book and say, “Why isn’t it famous? Why isn’t it like The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird?” I have no idea. It is a classic, in some minds, and it ought to be a classic in every mind.
Willie Mays is. I had some mail about him, about a week and a half ago. The great ballplayer died on June 18, at 93. It is in order, I think, to publish some more mail.
Jay,
The year is 1966. It’s my first big-league game, at Pittsburgh’s old Forbes Field. The Giants are in town to play the Pirates.
We’re somewhere behind first base. Willie Mays himself rockets a foul ball right at me. I rise to catch it, and my dad’s best friend grabs my belt and yanks me back down into my seat, thereby saving my life.
Whew.
Another:
Dear Mr. Nordlinger (Jay),
It is summer 1972 and I am a 6-foot, obnoxiously precocious 13-year-old sitting in Shea the night before I will be put on a charter plane alone to be a “Young Voter for the President” at the Republican National Convention in Miami.
The Mets vs. the Big Red Machine. That spring, Mays had been traded from the Giants to the Mets. The next year, Johnny Unitas would be traded from the Colts to the Chargers. In both cases, it was like watching someone be put into assisted living. And yet . . .
On the night in question, Mays gets a community-service award and so must be added to the line-up. Second time up? The wind-up, the pitch, the fluid swing, the crack. If the shortstop had been Wilt Chamberlain, it would have been an out. Instead, in the time of one beat at MM 60, the eye follows the pill, flat-lining on an arc-less trajectory inexplicable by a physics accounting for the curvature of the earth. The pill is swallowed amongst the wheelchair-bound herd in the left-field “handicapped” section.
“Say Hey” rounds the bases with a mature dignity — like Blanda’s in 1970 — both men saying to my father, “Forty is just a number.”
That was lost on someone in the morning of adolescence. I was Johnny Sylvester but perfectly healthy, and God ordained Willie to play that night and hit one just for me.
A couple of footnotes to that beautiful, interesting letter. “In the time of one beat at MM 60” can be explained by the fact that the letter-writer is a conductor (of orchestras). As for Johnny Sylvester, I will quote Wikipedia:
John Dale Sylvester (April 5, 1915 – January 8, 1990) was an American packing machinery company executive who was best known for a promise made to him by Babe Ruth during the 1926 World Series. Sylvester was seriously ill and hospitalized. Ruth said he would hit a home run on his behalf, which was followed by what was widely reported at the time as Sylvester’s miraculous recovery.
One more:
Having grown up in San Francisco when Mays was at his peak — I wish I knew how to describe what that was like and what he meant to me, but I can’t. And I know I will never be able to.