Aaron and Mays: Closer Than You Think

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
July 20, 2008

Associated Press

Willie Mays, left, and Hank Aaron were teammates in the 1973 All-Star Game in Kansas City.

A great week of All-Star baseball festivities ended fittingly with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays sharing center stage on Wednesday when Bob Costas taped a state-of-the-game panel for his HBO show, “Costas Now.”

Aaron and Mays were scheduled to talk for 15 minutes but wound up speaking for nearly an hour. They discussed baseball old and new and told wonderful stories about the game in the 1950s and ’60s. They frequently drew laughter, as Mays did when he recalled the compensation All-Star players in his era received.

“How much money did we get?” Mays said. “We got no money. We got a ring, and the ring didn’t fit.”

But the most significant part of the conversation concerned the competition between Mays and Aaron. There has been speculation since my childhood that there was longstanding tension between these titans of baseball. Some of it was rooted in the perennial question of the time: Who is better, Aaron or Mays?

The more accurate question should have been, Whose style do you prefer? Aaron was as steady as the rising sun; Mays was exciting. Who was best boiled down to a matter of personal preference.

I loved the way Mays played, and I respected Aaron. I favored Mays’s style but thought the world of Aaron, especially the way he endured the pressure of the assault on Babe Ruth’s home run record with strength and dignity.

Costas asked about the perceived tension in their relationship. Mays and Aaron, who were All-Star teammates and barnstormed together during the off-season to make extra money, took pains to deny that there had ever been a strain in their relationship.

“We got along fine,” Aaron said. “That is absolutely the furthest thing from the truth that I can think of.”

He added: “I fed off some of the things he did. I’d read the paper: He got three hits. I said, ‘Boy, I ought to be able to get three hits.’ But that was competition. There was no resentment, no animosity.”

Mays used Aaron in a more tangible way.

“I would borrow his bats,” said Mays, who would tell the clubhouse boy to take them from the Atlanta Braves’ clubhouse.

1964 Topps

Mays recalled how, at Aaron’s request, he spoke to a couple of the Braves’ young players, Dusty Baker and Ralph Garr, about what it took to make it in the major leagues.

Mays recalled telling them bluntly to listen to Aaron, saying, “Hey, you two clowns, take his advice because he’s going to keep you here.”

Baker and Garr complained that Aaron never talked to them, so Mays said he told them, “You talk to him.”

Mays said he congratulated Aaron after he broke Babe Ruth’s record and became baseball’s home run king.

“When he broke the record, I called him,” Mays said. “I said, ‘Hey, really nice going, man,’ and I said, ‘Just keep going.’ There wasn’t no long talking about ‘How did you do it?’ ‘What did you do?’ Nothing like that.” They were just friends.

Any lingering tension might have been caused by the complicated relationship between Aaron, Mays and Barry Bonds, Mays’s godson. Bonds’s pursuit of Aaron’s home run record amid persistent suspicion of steroid use would have been enough to strain any relationship.

Yet Aaron said he sent a congratulatory message to Bonds the night he broke his record. On Wednesday, sitting opposite Mays, Aaron paid tribute to Bonds.

“Records are made to be broken,” Aaron said. “I’ve watched many ballplayers my 23 years that I played. I watched Mays, myself, even watching pictures of Babe Ruth, there was absolutely no one that has been as intimidating as much as Barry Bonds has. I don’t know of anyone who has intimidated, who can turn a game around with walks, base hits or home runs.”

Without going into specifics about the steroid issue or other criticism of Bonds, Aaron simply said that it was unfortunate that “all of these things” put a cloud over Bonds’s career.

“I carried the record for 33 years,” Aaron said. “I carried it on my shoulders, and I carried it with a lot of dignity. I’m giving it to him, and I hope that he carries it the same way.”

Mays and Aaron are bound by shared experiences. They played in the Negro leagues, Mays with the Birmingham Black Barons, Aaron with the Indianapolis Clowns. Both endured the slings of racism, staying in black hotels or private homes on the road. Mays recalled playing a series of games in Hagerstown, Md., where the fans taunted him without mercy.

After two days of watching Mays destroy the home team, the public-address announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I know you may not like that kid playing center field, but please do not bother him again because he’s killing us.”

Mays said, “That was a way of getting back, in my mind.”

Their stories could have gone on for hours, and the audience at the Skirball Center at New York University would have listened. So it was that on Wednesday, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays confirmed that, beyond their standing as national treasures, they are friends.

That’s good to know.

E-mail: wcr@nytimes.com