MLB at Rickwood, Negro League Tribute Serve as Center Stage for Farewell to MLB’s ‘Say Hey Kid’
HoF Officials On Hand as Baseball Mourns the Passing of Incomparable Willie Mays
By CHARLIE VASCELLAROBIRMINGHAM, AL
The saying goes that baseball is a game without a clock, only innings, but time ran out on Willie Mays, 93, the game’s oldest living Hall of Famer, just as it was catching up with professional baseball’s Negro Leagues history in Mays’ birthplace of Birmingham, Alabama.
Fans in attendance (7,866) for the first day of a three-day celebration of Major League Baseball’s “A Tribute to the Negro Leagues” will never forget where they were when they heard the news.
Shortly after word began spreading via text messages and notifications during the seventh-inning stretch of the Double-A “Rickwood Classic” minor league contest between Montgomery and Birmingham on Tuesday, June 18, the public address announcer informed the crowd of Mays’ passing.
After the announcement, a highlight reel of classic Mays clips aired on the newly installed giant scoreboard behind the wall in right field, accompanied by “Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song),” the R&B baseball classic recorded by the Treniers in 1954.
We all sung along:
“Say hey, say who? Say Willie, Say hey, say who? Swinging at the plateSay hey, say who? Say Willie That Giants kid is great.”
And the game went right on into the next inning. And Willie was gone. The game continues to move forward while Willie has been relegated to the past. Baseball’s tough that way. None of us get to live forever, not even Willie Mays.
