I have, you may be surprised to learn, a Willie Mays story. It's one of the many, many things in my life I owe to a wonderful man I worked for named Lee Mendelson. You can read all about Lee here but if you don't have time to click, just know that for many, many years, he was the producer of the Peanuts and Garfield cartoons.
Years ago when I was still working for him, Lee's production company hit some nice, round number anniversary and Lee decided to have a big celebration. He made up a list of people who had contributed to its success and he flew us all to Sebastopol, California for a big party and paid for everything. I mean, he paid our meals, our airfare, our transportation from the airport to a hotel, suites at that hotel, everything. Saturday night, there were buses to take us from the hotel to a local country club for the party itself.
Mike Peters, who draws the comic strip Mother Goose and Grimm, and I rode the bus together to the club. When we walked in, we saw two men standing at a bar talking: Charles Schulz and Jim Davis. Mike said, "Wow! The two richest cartoonists in history!" I think Lee had even paid their ways there…although Schulz probably just drove or took a taxi over from his ice rink.
The party was filled with people you never heard of and I'd never heard of. At one point, Lee took me around and introduced me to some of them. I only remember the name of one of those people so I'm going to make up names for the others. You'll recognize the one real name in what follows.
Lee said, "Mark, this is Harvey Fenstermacher. Harvey was the cameraman on the first documentary I made in 1962…"
I said, "Nice to meet you, Harvey."
Lee said, "And Mark, this is Sam Shlabotnik. Sam was the lawyer who helped me arrange financing to open my first office…"
I said, "A pleasure to meet you, Sam."
Lee said, "And Mark, this is Murray Whatshisname. Murray was the liaison to Coca-Cola when I sold A Charlie Brown Christmas to CBS…"
I said, "The pleasure is all mine, Murray."
Lee said, "And Mark, this is Willie Mays."
I said, "Homina-homina-homina…"
It was Willie Mays. Willie Freakin' Mays — and Lee introduced him to me in the same matter-of-fact tone as he'd introduced his cameraman, his lawyer, his liaison to Coca-Cola. Okay but this was Willie Mays. I am not an expert in any sense about baseball. The last time I really followed it was when I collected the trading card that illustrates this post. But even I know that if you were in a room full of baseball history obsessives and you said Willie Mays was the greatest player of all time, no one would give you much of an argument.
And there he was in person, tolerating me shaking his hand for an abnormal length of time while I tried to think of something coherent to say to him. I gathered he was used to reactions like mine.
Lee went on to introduce me to his barber and his insurance man and his dentist and to Tommy Smothers and a few more folks who'd been important to him in his life but I made a point of later getting back to Willie Mays. I apologized for my stammering reaction and he couldn't have been nicer. I told him that when my father once took me to a Dodgers-Giants game at Dodger Stadium when I was ten, we and everyone in our section of the bleachers was, of course, hating on the Giants…
…but we couldn't hate on him. I think I said, "…though we were all disappointed that you caught every one of those long flies to center without slamming into any walls."
He chuckled politely and said, "Well, I had my off days…"
And that was about all he said. Mr. Mays was not a great conversationalist. I guess when you're the greatest baseball player of all time, you don't have to be.