September 28, 1958: Willie Mays vies for an improbable batting title on season’s final day

San Francisco adopted Willie Mays like a stepson. He was fine and all, but he wasn’t theirs.

Sure, he was hitting .433 in early June, but as the summer went on, his average tumbled, the Giants stumbled, and fans began to boo. New Yorkers never booed Willie Mays. No one booed Willie Mays.

As Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times put it, “They didn’t expect Willie Mays to land there; they expected the waters of the Golden Gate to part and let him walk ashore.”1

The city liked Mays, respected him, but it loved Orlando Cepeda, a 20-year-old rookie unsullied by any association with New York. Before the final game of the year, against the St. Louis Cardinals at Seals Stadium, he received a spirited ovation as he accepted the team’s Most Valuable Player Award, as voted on by Giants fans. Mays, who bested Cepeda in almost every offensive category, settled for a consolation prize, albeit a nice one: a shot at the National League batting championship.

As of September 11, four future Hall of Famers huddled atop the list of National League batting leaders. St. Louis’s Stan Musial led the way with an average of .338, Richie Ashburn was three points back, Henry Aaron of the Braves was at .333, and then came Mays with a mark of .328.

The September 15 issue of Sports Illustrated laid odds on the race. Writer Roy Terrell didn’t think much of Ashburn’s chances, concluding, “Ashburn is a not a good bet for one of those 5-for-5 days, which the other three occasionally provide.”2

Terrell wrote a lot of nice things about him, too, but all Ashburn could focus on was that last sentence. “It really got me peeved,” he said years later.3

Aaron tailed off during the final few weeks. Musial missed nine games with a leg injury and, although he hit well upon his return, he couldn’t keep up with the stampeding pace set by Ashburn and Mays. From September 11 to September 27, Ashburn batted .460 and came into the season finale with five consecutive multihit games. Mays, during the same span, batted .500. The Sunday papers on the 28th were calculating their averages to four decimal points – Ashburn stood at .3469, Mays at .3445.

Mays had been here before. He began the final game of 1954 in a virtual tie with his teammate, Don Mueller, and Brooklyn’s Duke Snider. (Mueller was batting .3426, Snider .3425, and Mays .3422.) Mays’ 3-for-4 effort against Robin Roberts in Philadelphia earned him the crown.

This was going to be a steeper climb because he entered the day trailing slightly, but even if he fell short, Mays knew he had made a point. “I think I tried to prove something in ’58 because when I first came out, the writers said, ‘Well, here’s a kid coming from New York. We don’t know what he can do.’ So I said, OK, I’ll just go for batting average this year.”4

While Mays was heading for the ballpark, Ashburn was back east in Pittsburgh facing the Pirates’ Bennie Daniels. He grounded to short his first time up. “I remember going back to the dugout and kind of thinking, ‘It’s going to be one of those days.’”5

It wasn’t. Ashburn met the challenge. He lashed three singles, including one in the 10th inning that sparked a two-run rally and propelled Philadelphia to a 6-4 victory.

Although the Giants had been out of contention since August, a crowd of 19,435 came out, enticed by Mays’ chance at glory and by the unseasonable 80-degree weather. (The 92-degree temperatures the day before sent 125 parboiled fans wobbling into the first-aid room.)

Most of the crowd was unaware of exactly where the batting race stood. The Giants made no announcements about what Ashburn had done, but Mays knew. “I heard it on the radio just before we went out. I knew I needed [to go] 5-for-5 to win.”6 Manager Bill Rigney knew, too. He batted Mays leadoff instead of in his usual third spot to provide him with a better shot at that fifth at-bat.

The miracle would have to come against St. Louis’s 14-game winner, Sam Jones, who was tall, fast, wild, and generally a little terrifying. He was no easy mark for anyone, including Mays, who had only seven hits in 39 career at-bats against him.

Mays took the initial step on his unlikely journey with a ringing double to deep left field in the first inning. Jim Davenport’s infield grounder advanced him to third. Then, with Willie Kirkland at the plate, Jones’s pitch squirted away from catcher Gene Green. The ball didn’t roll far, but Mays broke immediately. Green slipped as he threw toward home, Jones was late getting there anyway, and Mays sneaked in with the game’s first run.

San Francisco scored two more in the second, but Mays’ hopes came to an end in the middle of that rally. He got a reprieve after tapping a weak groundball toward first base; umpire Frank Secory immediately sprang in front of the plate, waved his arms, and shouted that Green had called time before the pitch. The stay was only temporary, however. Moments later Mays lofted a lazy fly ball to Ellis Burton in left. “I knew then what chance I had was gone,” he said.7

San Francisco starter John Fitzgerald was making his major-league debut. He was a prospect the Giants wanted to take a look at, even though he had just gotten out of the US Army and hadn’t pitched professionally in two years. The kid held up. He allowed just one walk and a solo home run to Joe Cunningham in his three innings of work. Dom Zanni, also making his first big-league appearance, relieved Fitzgerald in the fourth. Mays helped him with a solo home run in the bottom of that inning to increase San Francisco’s lead to 4-1.

After Bobby Gene Smith cut the lead to 4-2 with a fifth-inning home run, the Giants rose up again in the sixth and Mays was right in the middle of it. With one away, he trickled a grounder up the third-base line. Ken Boyer’s throw was wild, and Mays ended up at second with an infield hit and an error charged to Boyer. Davenport doubled to left to bring home Mays, and one out later, Leon Wagner doubled to right-center to plate Davenport. The Giants added another run in the seventh to set the final score at 7-2 and give Zanni a victory in his debut. Mays lined out to center in his final at-bat in that seventh inning.

Mays went 3-for-5 and scored three runs. The runs elevated him past Ernie Banks to the top of the National League in that category, but he fell three points short of Ashburn – .350 to .347.

Mays was in a rush to get out of the clubhouse and catch an evening flight home to Manhattan, where he planned to kick back for a few days before going out again on an offseason barnstorming tour. He brushed aside a question about whether he had felt any extra pressure: “Of course, I wasn’t pressing. Anytime I get three hits I’m not pressing. I just went out and played my regular game.”8

“No, I wasn’t disappointed,” he said. “After all, I didn’t have it won. If I hit .347 every year I’ll be satisfied.”9

Ashburn found it to be a scintillating final month. “The other time I won the title (in 1955) it wasn’t close. This year was different. I feel better about winning a race with four guys in there,” he said.10

“I don’t know how I ever finished ahead of [Mays],” Ashburn marveled. “It seemed Willie kept getting hits by the handful.”11

“Willie sure made a good run for it,” said Rigney, who preferred to focus more on the progress his club had made, improving from 69-85 in their desultory last season in the Polo Grounds to a third-place 80-74 record in sunny California.12 “[N]ext year we’ll win 90 if we get some pitchers. I hoped for the first division this year and I said so and am pleased with third.”13

It took a while for the Giants to fulfill Rigney’s exuberant vision – and he was gone by the time they did. It also took a while for San Francisco to fully embrace Willie Mays. He was a Black man in a city that was surprisingly inhospitable to African Americans. He played the same position as the local hero, Joe DiMaggio, and suffered by the comparison. He was an unwelcome reminder of the Giants’ New York roots, which the new fan base preferred to forget. No batting race, no matter how thrilling, could magically sweep all that away. But it was a start.

SOURCES

In addition to the newspaper sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for play-by-play and other information:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN195809280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1958/B09280SFN1958.htm

The author also reviewed the following sources:

Connolly, Will. “Mays’ 3-for-5 Not Good Enough,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 1958: 1H, 6H.

Lewis, Allen. “Ashburn’s .350 Wins Batting Title, Phils Finish With 6th Victory in Row,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 29, 1958: 22, 27.

NOTES

1  Jim Murray, “Wonderful Willie,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1962: Part III, 1.

2  Roy Terrell, “For Silver and Gold,” Sports Illustrated, September 15, 1958: 52-53.

3  Larry Shenk, “Ashburn Edges Mays for Batting Title,” MLB.com, September 28, 2016, https://www.mlb.com/news/richie-ashburn-beats-out-willie-mays-in-1958-c203891470.

4  Steve Bitker, The Original San Francisco Giants: The Giants of ’58 (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing, LLC, 2003), 185.

5  Shenk.

6  Jack Fiske, “Willie Knew, but 19,435 Fans Didn’t,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 1958: 1H, 6H.

7  Walter Judge, “3 Hits! – Mays’ Bid Fails,” San Francisco Examiner, September 29, 1958: Sec II, 4.

8  Fiske.

9  Judge.

10 Allen Lewis, “Freese Billed to Plug Phils’ Keystone Gap,” The Sporting News, October 8, 1958: 13.

11 Lewis.

12 Judge.

13 Fiske.