The mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of Egypt’s 18th dynasty, was the largest of its kind. At its gates, on the West Bank of the Nile River, stood two gigantic statues of the pharaoh. Carved from a slab of quartzite stone, the pair of 60-foot monuments are known as the Colossi of Memnon.
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Earthquakes, floods, pillaging and centuries of decay have withered the 85-acre memorial complex to mere rubble. But the Colossi of Memnon remain. Towering and majestic.
Meeting Willie Mays, the experience of seeing him, was like standing at the feet of a colossal figure. He was sitting, his San Francisco Giants cap pulled down. His dark-rimmed eyes ever gentle. His smile warm. His massive hands draped in skin wrinkled like worn leather. He was no longer as sculpted and vibrant as his glory days. Yet, somehow, he was no less statuesque.
His aura was still 60 feet. His presence still kingly.
I couldn’t call my dad, who’d passed away by the time of my encounter. So I called his oldest brother, who I knew would comprehend my awe. He repeated stories of being a kid when Mays visited his neighborhood and how my grandfather took them on special trips to see him play.
The magnitude of this man. Who lures the giddy out of grizzled veterans. Who widens the eyes of youngsters not yet born when he retired.
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It’s difficult to overstate the impact of Mays. Because it’s difficult to overstate the importance of baseball to Black history and, thus, American history. Even more difficult to realize such eminence is largely a relic of history.
Can I miss a version of a sport I’ve never known?
The participation numbers, especially in MLB, declare the dynasty of Black baseball as rubble, its value and depth only discoverable through excavation. Hence the significance of Thursday’s game between the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals being played at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala. Black baseball is a history worth discovering, rediscovering and preserving. And we know where to look because the sport’s giant statues aren’t going anywhere.
None bigger than the “Say Hey Kid,” who reigned when Black inferiority was the popular propaganda. His dominance on the diamond was unmatched. His status in the culture is unparalleled. The player and the persona. The Colossi of Mays forever remains. At the entrance of an ancient greatness.
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The death of Mays, on the eve of Juneteenth, with the attention of baseball turned to Rickwood Field, feels like a memorial for the relationship between African-Americans and baseball, which for a large swath of modern history was as much an American story as any.
It’s taken generations for MLB to champion the legitimacy of Negro Leagues baseball. For decades the masses have been denied the treasures of Black baseball, buried like the expansive amazement of a pilfered Egypt. The inclusion of Negro League stats with MLB’s is a step towards proper honor.
The original No. 24 dying in 2024 — on 6/18, no less — seems like a divine message for us to stop and commemorate.
Appreciate what baseball meant to this country, and to Black people.
Appreciate a man so good as to merge segments of a segregated society.
Appreciate a time when a player’s greatness could be a unifying force.
Nobody would trade current progress for the witness of past honor, especially not with my melanin. But, man, how grand was baseball then? A man dominating a sport with a stick could be so powerful as to crumble barriers. Now, the barrier is a desire to stick to sports.
Times change. Eras end. Legends transition. But clearly some generations, and their giants, are worth lamenting having missed.
It’s the rite of the old to romanticize their day, fawn over feats from their more fervent years. But the era of the Negro Leagues and the pioneers who merged into Major League Baseball is every bit worth the enchantment. Modernity can’t diminish their grandiosity.
And no one, perhaps ever, provoked praise like Willie Mays. He moved men’s souls.
Mays was a pinnacle of baseball, which made him a pinnacle of American elitism. Baseball was the sport of superiority, the perfect test of cerebral and physical. It boasted the hardest thing to do in sports along with the chess between a battery and a batter and its requisite of meticulousness. Blacks excelling in baseball was a referendum on the pervasive notion of Black inferiority by way of limited intelligence.
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Mays did more than disprove such indoctrination with his success, endowing a generation with confidence. He melted the cold off many hearts and kept even more young ones from being frozen by bigotry. Black baseball created a Justice League of sports heroes to challenge the paradigm of America in the midst of Jim Crow. We can still feel the pride they provoked, still smell the aroma of unity they inspired.
Baseball held a special place in the hearts of many African-Americans in the 1950s and ’60s, and well into the ’70s. It was more than a game. It was a symbol of progress and resilience in the face of adversity. Black players powered through rampant discrimination and even violence. In a nation that habitually beat down its Black citizens, these players helped inspire generations to pursue their dreams and challenge race-based ceilings.
In many cases, White players embraced them, and White fans cheered for them, as a fist of rebellion against their own culture. Because when baseball appraised the quality of a man, the pure of heart couldn’t ignore it.
Black baseball players were so good they changed America. How special that must have been to witness, to experience.
Unfortunately, you had to be there to truly grasp their majesty. Their collective greatness is largely lost, the context of their merit buried like jewels in Kemet sands, leaving us with mostly oral history from fading memories. And giant statue figures.
Many of us can’t remember Mays, and we certainly don’t know a world where baseball was larger than life. Their prestige is only understood through bequeathal. We can’t fathom the emotional stakes of games between Negro League and all-White MLB squads. How those players endured racism, discrimination and general venom directed at their skin color to prove their worth through baseball.
While their athletic excellence was conceded, the intellectual capacity of Blacks was perennially doubted. In stepped Mays. He didn’t use his platform and voice so much to speak for and about Black people, yet his preeminence exclaimed as much. He was quick with his feet, his hands and his wits. He boasted strength and strategy. Power and patience. Grit and grace. He was a complete player, with five-fifths of the tools, and his larger-than-life presence matched the flair of his game. He endured the worst of his society before it embraced him.
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It’s a version of baseball never to be seen again. A brand that produced so many seminal moments and titanic figures.
Perhaps it’s the price of progress, but the estrangement of Black athletes and baseball settles like a loss. Players no longer need to bat .300, or throw a no-hitter, or call a good game behind the plate, to prove their capacity. Not for the sane, anyway. And MLB, a prominent steward of the sport, has struggled to win Black players back to a beautiful game. So we must dig up the buried gems. That era is a mortuary reduced to rubble. Kept alive by baseball archeologists, preserving our connection to this precious history.
Fortunately, they’ll always know where to look. Because at the gates of the epoch of Black baseball are the towering statues, colossal enough to withstand time. And Mays was chief among them.
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(Top photo of Willie Mays in 1962: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images)