How Television Made Willie Mays a Star
His Astonishing Play Coincided With the Early Years of the Medium—And Made This White, Rural Georgia Boy a Lifelong Fan
Except for a fortunate few who got to see Willie Mays play in person, most Americans of my generation fell under his almost mesmerizing spell while watching him on TV.
Mays’ unmatched skills—and the unaffected, nearly childlike exuberance he brought to the game of baseball—quickly won a multitude of white fans, even in the South where I grew up amid angry calls for “massive resistance” to school desegregation. It’s fair to ask whether Mays could have managed this so readily had his early career not coincided so closely with the emergence …
