July 9, 1963: Mays leads NL stars in return to single All-Star Game

“They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays,” Ted Williams said,1 and Mays showed why in the 1963 All-Star Game. Wondrous Willie didn’t hit a home run, but the rest of his formidable tools were on display as he had a hit and a walk, stole two bases, scored two runs, knocked in two runs, and had two defensive gems to become the All-Star Game MVP.

After four years of double All-Star Games – between 1959 and 1962, two games were played, anywhere from a month apart (1959) to two days (1960) – the 1963 midsummer classic was again a one-game affair.

It was the second year that an All-Star MVP was named. (The Dodgers’ Maury Wills had won it the previous year after the NL had a 3-1 win in Game One, and the Angels’ Leon Wagner when the AL won Game Two, 9-4.) So while 1963 was the first of the two All-Star MVP Awards won by the 32-year-old Mays, one can imagine the 24-time All-Star would have won a few more had the award been in existence for his entire career.

There was one disappointment for Mays going into the 1963 Game: Whitey Ford wouldn’t be there. In five All-Star Games, Mays had gone an incredible 6-for-7 against Ford, with two home runs and a triple;2 in the 1962 World Series, he had four hits and a walk, with two runs scored and an RBI, in 10 plate appearances against Ford.

(In 1997 Mays was asked if there was a pitcher he wished he could have batted against in the days before interleague play. “Whitey Ford,” he replied. “He couldn’t get me out. 3-for-4, 4-for-4. He was my man.”3)

But the Yankees hurler, despite being 13-3 with a 2.94 ERA at the time, had been left off the roster by AL All-Star (and Yankees) manager Ralph Houk. The 34-year-old lefty had battled a sore arm and a circulatory issue with his left index finger earlier that season,4 and perhaps Houk wanted to save him for October.

The “Chairman of the Board” had made his appearance known anyway. The final Yankees series before the All-Star Game had them playing the Indians in Cleveland, where the All-Star Game would be played. Ford, after closing out a 7-4 win over the Indians with a perfect ninth inning, left a handwritten note for Mays: “Sorry I didn’t make team, but Houk didn’t want me to make you look bad.”5

Mays managed to look good even without him.

The game was played in front of 44,160 fans at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, the same ballpark in which Mays had made his All-Star Game debut nine years earlier.

After a scoreless first inning thrown by Jim O’Toole of the Reds and Ken McBride of the Angels, Mays led off the top of the second by drawing a five-pitch walk, the NL’s first baserunner of the day. On a 3-and-1 pitch to the Giants’ Ed Bailey, Mays stole second off catcher Earl Battey of the Twins. Bailey then walked, the Cardinals’ Ken Boyer popped out, and Dick Groat of the Cardinals hit a seeing-eye single through the left side scoring Mays from second with the first run of the game. McBride then retired the next two batters.

In the bottom of the second, with Leon Wagner on second and the Twins’ Zoilo Versalles on first, McBride helped his own cause with a two-out single to tie the score.

Mays came up again in the top of the third with two outs and Milwaukee’s Henry Aaron on second after reaching on a fielder’s choice. Facing McBride for a second time, Mays lined a single up the middle on a 3-and-1 pitch to knock in Aaron. Once again Mays stole second base with Bailey batting, and he scored on Bailey’s single to right-center. The stolen base, his second of the game, set an All-Star Game record for the most by a player in a game (since tied, but not broken), and extended Mays’ record for the most career All-Star Game stolen bases to five; he added another in 1964, and his six career stolen bases are still the All-Star career record.6 (He was caught only once, in 1960.)

In the bottom of the frame, the Angels’ Albie Pearson lined a gapper to left-center off the Cubs’ Larry Jackson to lead off the inning. “The fans are applauding for two things,” Cleveland Indians broadcaster Bob Neal, calling the game for NBC Radio, said over the cheering crowd. “One, the power and placement of that base hit by Albie Pearson that went all the way to the fence, and the other, the spectacular fielding by Willie Mays who on the dead run circled around behind (Tommy) Davis at the fence, came up with the ball, came out from behind and fired it into third all in the same motion.”7 Pearson scored on a single by Frank Malzone of the Red Sox, and then Malzone scored the tying run on a single by Battey.

The game stayed tied until the fifth inning, when Mays came up with one out and runners on the corners, facing Detroit’s Jim Bunning. Mays topped a bouncer to first baseman Joe Pepitone of the Yankees, who could only step on the bag for the second out as Davis scored the go-ahead run.

It remained a 4-3 game until the eighth. Mays, batting second in the inning, came up with the Cardinals’ Bill White on first after a base hit.

“Well, Willie has done just about everything here today,” Neal told his audience. “He walked, he singled, he grounded out, he batted in two runs, he scored two, and he has stolen two bases.”8

After taking a huge cut on the first pitch from Boston’s Dick Radatz and fouling it off – “Mays was gonna try to hit that one in the lake,” Neal said9 – Mays swung and missed at the 1-and-2 pitch with White running on the pitch. White was safe at second, and he scored the final run of the game on a single by Chicago’s Ron Santo.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Dodgers’ Don Drysdale struck out Elston Howard of the Yankees and Carl Yastrzemski of the Red Sox. That brought up Pepitone, who crushed a ball to the right of the 380-foot sign in center field that Mays ran into the outfield wall – actually a wire fence – to catch. He came away limping. The Sporting News reported: “Willie Mays was a near All-Star Game casualty when he caught his foot under the center field wire fence as he dashed to the barrier for a catch of Joe Pepitone’s long, eighth-inning drive. Willie hopped around for a few moments, then jogged to the dugout and reported later that he was not injured.”10

“I knew he was all right when I saw him limping,” NL (and San Francisco Giants) manager Alvin Dark said. “If he’d really been hurt, he would have been trying to hide it.”11

The AL had one last gasp in the bottom of the ninth, after Baltimore’s Brooks Robinson singled with one out off Drysdale. That brought up New York’s Bobby Richardson as the potential tying run. He hit a groundball to White at first base for a game-ending 3-6-3 double play. The win was the first of eight straight wins, and 19 of the next 20, for the Senior Circuit.

Mays, who was hitting .271/.352/.468 before the All-Star Game, went on a tear over the second half of the season, hitting .362/.412/.709 with 20 doubles, 6 triples, and 22 home runs to finish the year with a .314/.380/.582 line in 671 plate appearances. He was fifth in the MVP balloting and won his seventh straight Gold Glove.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/allstar/1963-allstar-game.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B07090ALS1963.htm

NOTES

1  Willie Mays biography, The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Accessed November 3, 2022.

2  Mays went 2-for-2 (with two runs scored) off Ford in the 1955 All-Star Game; 1-for-1 (with a two-run home run) in 1956; 1-for-1 (with an RBI triple) in 1959 (Game One); 2-for-2 (with a home run and a stolen base) in 1960 (Game Two). Ford finally retired him the last time they faced each other in an All-Star Game, in the first inning of the first game in 1961. In an oft-retold story, including in The Baseball Codes by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, Giants owner Horace Stoneham had paid for Ford and Mickey Mantle’s $400 tab at a golf club, and when they tried to pay him back, Stoneham offered a “double or nothing” bet on whether Ford could finally get Mays out. After two long foul balls, Ford threw a breaking ball (Turbow said it was a spitball) that was taken for a called strike three for the final out of the first inning. Jason Turbow and Michael Duca, The Baseball Codes (New York: Anchor Books, 2011), 59-61.

3  Berry Tramel, “Mays Loved Facing Whitey, and Didn’t Fear Drysdale,” The Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), June 15, 1997.

4  C. Paul Rogers III, “Whitey Ford,” SABR BioProject.

5  The note was taped to a mirror in the visitors’ locker room along with a newspaper clipping of a photo of a shirtless Mays. Asked about the stunt by The Sporting News, Willie said: “That Whitey’s a nice boy. I wish he had made the team again this year.” “Star Dust From Lake Erie,” The Sporting News, July 20, 1963: 20.

6  https://www.baseball-reference.com/allstar/leaders_bat.shtml. Mays also holds the All-Star Game career records with 24 games played (tied with Aaron and Stan Musial); at-bats, 75; plate appearances, 82; runs scored, 20; hits, 23; total bases, 40 (tied with Musial); triples, 3 (tied with Brooks Robinson); and singles, 15.

7  NBC Radio call as heard on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XtKO-NkxYs.

8  NBC Radio call.

9  NBC Radio call.

10 Photo caption accompanying “Star Dust From Lake Erie,” The Sporting News, July 20, 1963: 20.

11 Bob Broeg, “N.L.’s Swifties Scamper Past A.L. All-Stars,” The Sporting News, July 20, 1963: 5.