Willie Mays
Baseball Player — born 1931
Willie Mays is a retired American professional baseball player who was a center fielder with the New York and San Francisco Giants for the most of his career.
Willie Mays was an American Major League Baseball center fielder whose 23-season career — primarily with the New York/San Francisco Giants (1951–1972) — produced one of the American baseball-player careers of the 20th century. He was born Willie Howard Mays Jr. on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama, into an American athletic family — his father William Howard Mays Sr. was a Birmingham-area semi-professional baseball player. He started playing Negro American League baseball at age 17 with the Birmingham Black Barons (1948–1950).
His Major League debut came on May 25, 1951, with the New York Giants. The 1951 New York Giants World Series-bound team (which lost the 1951 World Series to the New York Yankees) and the 1954 World Series championship over the Cleveland Indians established Mays as one of the young Major League stars of the early 1950s. The September 29, 1954 Game 1 of the 1954 World Series — featuring Mays's over-the-shoulder catch of Vic Wertz's deep center-field drive — is one of the American baseball moments of the 20th century.
His 22-year Giants career — through the 1957 franchise relocation from New York to San Francisco — produced 24 All-Star Game selections (an MLB record at the time of his retirement), two National League MVP Awards (1954, 1965), and 12 consecutive Gold Glove Awards (1957–1968) for his defensive work. His career statistics included 660 career home runs (the third-most in MLB history at the time of his retirement, behind only Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron) and 3,283 career hits.
He played 21 seasons with the Giants and two seasons with the New York Mets (1972–1973) before retirement in 1973 at age 42. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979 with 94.7% of the vote. He died on June 18, 2024, at age 93, at his Atherton, California home — two days before the special MLB tribute game scheduled in his Birmingham birthplace. He was widely considered the greatest all-around baseball player in Major League history.
His name Willie is the English short form of William (from the Old Germanic Wilhelm meaning "resolute protector"). Willie has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.
About the name Willie
Gender: Male · Origin: English
Resolute: Will Abbreviation Of Names Beginning With Will-