Earlier this week, as Major League Baseball prepared for a tribute game in his hometown Birmingham, Ala., Willie Mays said that age would keep him away but that he would be watching from afar.
“Rickwood Field is where I played my first home game, and playing there was it — everything I wanted,” he said in a statement to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Mays died the next day, at 93, and as fans walked into the ballpark on Thursday, it felt like he was there in spirit, watching from afar.
“I’m sure he’s here,” said his son, Michael Mays, who rushed to California from Alabama to pray over his father’s body and then returned in time for the game. “He figured out a way to be the center of attention like he always did. He’s the star of the show. He’s Willie Mays.”
His death added poignancy to M.L.B.’s celebration of the Negro leagues at Rickwood Field — the nation’s oldest professional ballpark, where Mays got his start as a professional — and to the game between the San Francisco Giants, Mays’s old team, and the St. Louis Cardinals.