OT - Willie Mays, Nolan Ryan and Bill Self

Porthawk (I think) posted below about Self’s comment that with a short roster the players know they won’t be pulled and they play more free minded. Well, I was watching the new documentary “Say Hey, Willie Mays” and there was a very interesting story. But first I wanted to go off topic for a minute and give a shout out to that documentary and also to “Facing Nolan”. Both are fantastic and well worth watching. Both give a really good picture of the greatness of those two players. This was especially meaningful to me because as a youngster I was a HUGE baseball fan and I had two players I was absolutely crazy about. One was Bert (Campy) Campaneris of the KC A’s and the other was Willie Mays, who along with Mickey Mantle were, in my mind, clearly the two best players of that era. And as far as Willie Mays, probably all eras. So the Willie documentary was special to me because I was such a big fan. Starting in the 70’s, of course, it was all George Brett all the time, my favorite player of all time. But in the 80’s I moved to Houston and went to a ton of Astros games and became a huge Nolan Ryan fan as well. To this day Nolan and Willie Mays are 2nd only to George Brett in my fandom. So I was super excited about both of these documentaries and they both delivered. I highly recommend both.

But now for the story that ties to Bill Self. As I said, I think it was Porthawk below who posted about Self’s comment that with no threat of being pulled for mistakes, the players can play more free minded. That begs the question why does he create that environment where players are always looking over their shoulder. Well, in the documentary on Willie, it of course starts with his family, dad, and how he came to learn the game as a boy. Then at age 17 he played in the. Negro league and was a real star even though he was super young. He was signed by the New York Giants to a contract. Pretty quickly he was brought up to the majors and proceeded to go 0-24 in his first 24 plate appearances. The manager was Leo Durocher who took Willie under his wing. Someone told Durocher he needed to talk to Willie because Willie was sitting at his locker crying. Durocher walked over and took Willie aside and told him, “Willie, don’t you worry at all about that 0-24. As long as I am the manager of this team, you are going to be my starting center fielder. Absolutely guaranteed. The next day Willie hits his first homer and game winning hit and went on the be arguably the best baseball player of all time. And a heck of a human being to boot. But it adds fuel to that argument of the mentality of a player, even a great player, when they feel a lack of confidence. There may be something to that argument. At least it was anecdotally true for Mr. Say Hey.

like you corpus i was a huge campy fan growing up. do you remember the nine inning game where the owner ( finley) had him play a different position each inning which went fine until the ninth inning when playing catcher there was of course a play at the plate and we lost him for the season. actually i think after that he was never quite the same. regarding your larger point the alternative is i think much worse. when we play teams that dont have the mistake and your out discipline the players just keep making the same mistakes. generally bills method works on most guys and for those for whom it doesnt they rarely succeed other places. maybe grimes is an exception.

Bigg, I was at that game. We were quite poor when I was a kid but there was a gentleman in our town that would give my dad a couple tickets 6 or 8 times a year and my dad and I would go. That game was one of the highlights of my childhood along with the game where they let the kids down on the field to meet the players and get autographs. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I met them all. I still have the pictures with Dick Green, Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom, Campy (of course), Mike Hershberger, Rick Monday and Ken Harrelson. One of the greatest days of my life.