History collides

A reflection on today

In this era of instantaneous news, it likely bends the mind that it took fully two and a half years from Abraham Lincoln issuing it on the first day of 1863 to the news of the Emancipation Proclamation reach slaves in Texas. News traveled much more slowly in 1865, arriving with the Union Army upon its arrival in Galveston on 19 June. Some accounts indicate it took even longer to reach interior regions of Texas which is, after all, a huge area without planes, trains or automobiles in the Nineteenth Century.

News does not translate into action, however. Repression based on race continued well past either Lincoln’s Proclamation or the news arriving in Texas. Indeed, many African Americans and others argue it continues today, even though Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s—fully a century following the legal Emancipation—codified the equality promised under the Equal Protection Clause embedded in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The tragedy of history collided with another milestone yesterday as baseball’s greatest player, an African American named Willie Mays, died at age 93. Mays not only was a phenomenal hitter, the man just behind another legendary Black—Hank Aaron— in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run tally during the 1970s.

Willie Mays also had the single greatest catch in baseball history—over his shoulder while running towards the fence in 1954. If you have never seen it, watch the clip I include below because whether you are a baseball fan or not, the grace, the situational awareness, and the skill bowls you over.

Willie Mays never caught either Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth, although Aaron successfully held the Home Run crown until the 1990s when controversial Barry Bonds, Mays’ godson, took the title. Mays hit 660 home runs as a National League hitter but that is an artificial record as he played in the Negro Leagues for several years before coming into the Majors after Jackie Robinson broke the ‘color barrier’ in 1947. Had all of Mays’ playing been in the Majors, he would have been even more remarkable statistically but the prejudice and racism prevented that glory to be in the formal record books.

We tend to give circum-Caribbean baseball players more rights and privileges than we did African American citizens for decades, including Mays.

On top of all of his skill hitting and catching, stories of his role as an icon for many are also legend, if not more important. Willie Mays was still affiliated with baseball for much of his remaining life but also took on other roles. He represented what many Americans saw as the good of sports while also highlighting the stupidity of excluding players from the game—and hence much of society— based on the colour of their skin. Mays’ service in the Army in the early 1950s came only after Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces in the late 1940s but Mays, like Ted Williams, Elvis Presley, and other American icons served his country, even though a mere half a dozen years earlier his country would have forced him to serve separately with other African American troops.

He did not, as far as I know, confront a raft of controversies that plagued other sports idols upon retirement. Please do not misunderstand: I am not implying he was either immortal or unblemished as a person since none of us are. But, he was a remarkable man, born in a repressive culture of Depression Alabama, cheered by millions during his almost thirty year career in Major League Baseball and the Negro Leagues.

News of Willie Mays’ death yesterday in Palo Alto circulated far faster than did the news of the Emancipation Proclamation a hundred and sixty years ago. The tragic determination on the part of too many Americans to exclude people because of their skin or ethnic origin sadly remains with us. Even with laws in place prohibiting the repression and exclusion of a Wilhemina or Willie Mays born in 2010 to become a full member of society, that behaviour still exists.

Actions Create Consequences. We can only have effective laws when we follow them fully, not merely by the letter. We aren’t ‘there yet’ on equality. I also understand that Emancipation did not guarantee equality but we are all Americans and we do have equal protection by those laws according to the Fourteenth Amendment. We are definitely no longer in 1724 but conditions in 2024 leave us with room for improvement in our actions as a society.

Willie Mays lived a long, splendid life which we reflect upon the same day as we remember Juneteenth. It’s also a terrific day to recall our commitments to others in a society which professes to value life and equality.

Thank you for reading this column today and any day. I appreciate and welcome your feedback of any type as I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. My goal, as I have stated repeatedly, is to foster civil, measured dialogue on topics that we confront. Dialogue means conversation which means differing interpretations are welcome.

Thank you to those who support this column with subscriptions. Your financial support helps more than you know.

It was a watercolour morn as the sun rose on the Chesapeake today.

Please be safe in this heat and, for those so affected, rain. Be well and be safe. FIN

Dan Brown, ‘The Catch: How Willie Mays Explains His Signature World Series Play, TheMercuryNews.com, 18 June 2024, retrieved at https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/18/the-catch-how-willie-mays-explained-his-signature-world-series-play/

Fourteenth Amendment, Constitution of the United States, retrieved at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv