Sponsored by Shea Stadium Remembered
Willie Mays made his triumphant return to New York in a home uniform on this date in 1972. Mets owner Joan Payson, former shareholder of the New York Giants and the lone dissenting vote for the baseball club’s move to San Francisco, had wanted Willie back in New York since the Mets came into being. Imagine Mays on those early Polo Grounds Mets teams? They may have done better than 40-120 in 1962, and it would have been quite an experiment to see how many wins one player was actually worth. The Mets had nothing remotely equal to trade to the Giants, and San Francisco wasn’t hard up enough to take money and a token player for one of the game’s greatest stars. By 1972 they were ready.
This was not the Mays of the mid-1960s, and certainly not the bright star of the Giants in the 1950s. This was end-of-the-line Willie. The 41-year-old baseball treasure sold a lot of seats at Shea in 1972—the Mets were first in the NL in attendance for the fourth straight year. The next time they would hold that distinction was 1988. But Willie got his New York swan song off with a bang—against his former club, no less.
Mays the Met’s first assignment was on Mother’s Day in front of 35,000 at Shea, including the Mets’ mom, Mrs. Payson. Mays, playing first base (Tommie Agee still manned center field), led off the game to a huge ovation and walked against former teammate Sam McDowell. The next two Mets also walked, and then Rusty Staub, acquired before the season began from Montreal, crushed a grand slam.
Mays struck out his second time up, but when he stepped up for the third time, the game was tied, 4-4. Mays long fly carried over the fence in left, much to the delight of Shea and Lindsey Nelson on WHN. It held up as the winning run for the first-place Mets. The Mets were in the midst of an 11-game winning streak under new manager Yogi Berra, who’d taken over after the tragic death of Gil Hodges. The injuries would mount and the Mets would wilt, but Willie Mays was back in town.