The Real Catch

 

 

“There's a long drive, way back at center field, way back, back, it is - oh my! Caught by Mays. Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet with a catch which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.” 

-Jack Brickhouse

 

When I go to the beach in spring and summer, I don’t bring a football. Because It’s not football season. I bring a few mitts, a few extra baseballs, and a small radio to listen to the ballgame amid the thundering beat of surfside dance music. Because it is baseball season. 

 

It takes a certain level of proficiency to play in an area as crowded as the Rockaways in high season. There are, what people of a certain age, might refer to as plenty of bogeys. This might explain the extra balls, there to guard against water logging; a risk I take as seriously as any rip current. So you don’t want to drop too many throws your way. It’s both embarrassing and dangerous. There is something special about hurling a fastball as the tide rolls across your feet and nothing else. 

 

All of this is to say, when my friends and I do it, it’s just "a" catch. Joyous, restorative, timeless, but a catch all the same. “The Catch,” is reserved for one man and one man only. 

 

Willie Mays. 

 

In the years since his ur-catch, the lore surrounding it has only grown. But only Willie Mays could make a grab like that in the World Series and have many remark, “it wasn’t even his best.” He had it all the way. See how he tapped his glove beforehand? It was his rookie year, back when he still played stickball with the Coogan’s Bluff faithful. The truth is that the real catch wasn’t that one. Or one while combatting the twisting wind of Candlestick after the Giants abandoned New York. Or one in the hard-fought ’62 series against the Yanks. Or any one of the seven thousand times Willie Mays made a putout. No, it was none of those.

 

Willie Mays himself was The Catch. He was a real catch for all of us fans. Even those who never saw him play. We caught enough of him to understand that what he meant cannot be summed up in statistics. Yes, 660 is important, but Willie Mays is not a number. Unless it's 24. He engaged in breathtaking theatrics because this game is supposed to entertaining. It's meant to be fun. He wasn’t in a factory; he was in the outfield. And he never forgot that. 

 

RIP