We all love those viral videos that show the likes of the Angels’ Mike Trout and the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts having a catch with fans in the stands before a game, right?
Consider that some 70 years ago, Willie Mays was routinely engaging in next-level interaction with fans. As we see in archival footage presented in the marvelous HBO documentary “Say Hey, Willie Mays!”, when the superstar with the then-New York baseball Giants was living in Harlem in the 1950s, just a couple of blocks from the old Polo Grounds, he would play stickball in the streets with the neighborhood kids for an hour nearly every morning, take them down the street for ice cream like a dapper Pied Piper — and then head for the ballpark. Can you imagine? To this day, there are likely some old-timers still telling the story of how they played stickball in the streets of Harlem with the great Willie Mays when they were young.
