Seated in the dugout before Tuesday's All-Star Game in San Diego, Andy Van Slyke held a baseball freshly signed by Willie Mays.
"First autograph I ever asked for," Pittsburgh's center fielder said, a starstruck kid for a moment.Why Mays?
"I never saw him play," Van Slyke replied, "but I heard he was the best."
He could have heard this from any number of people who'd come to baseball's midsummer showcase. For all he has in the way of fame and fortune, Van Slyke doesn't have everything.
He never saw Mays seize control of a ballgame.
Watching the Say Hey Kid play was an all-day picnic. It was Christmas morning with a shiny bike under the tree. It was love at first sight, love that would grow stronger over the years.
Not many people are left who saw Babe Ruth in the flesh. Angels coach Jimmie Reese, 87 years old and still hitting fungoes, steadfastly supports the Babe, his long-ago Yankee roommate, as the greatest - and the record book backs him up.
But most anyone who saw Mays in his prime has trouble believing there ever could have been a better ballplayer. After the Heroes of Baseball had their fun Monday, I made the clubhouse rounds, asking the stars of yesteryear this question: Who was the greatest player you ever saw?
"Willie," Larry Doby, first black ever to play in the American League, said without hesitation. "When you talk about the five skills - hitting for power and for average, running, fielding and throwing - Willie's gotta be number one."
Doby put Joe DiMaggio a notch behind Mays, adding Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle.
"Joe D. did three things as great as most people," Doby said. "But Willie was the one."
"I'd put Roberto up there," said Orlando Cepeda, who batted behind Mays in San Francisco's power-packed lineup of the '60s. "But Willie was the man. The best."
Bob Gibson, as mean an hombre who ever hurled a baseball, couldn't resist the tide, hard as he tried to play devil's advocate.
"If you go by what everybody says, you've gotta go with Willie, " Gibson said. "If you go with a hitter, Hank. Willie did it with more flair than Hank, but Hank did everything, too. It's tough. How do you leave out Clemente, Frank Robinson, guys like that?"
Kansas City manager Hal McRae broke in with Cincinnati in 1968 but spent 15 of his 19 big-league seasons in the American League.
"Willie Mays, easy," McRae said. "No one else. There was excitement and drama in everything he did. He could dominate 100 ballgames in a season. Nobody else could do that. We're never going to see another player like Willie."
"Mays and Aaron," Dick Allen said. "Those guys played the total game. They were dedicated to their craft."
Clemente was Manny Sanguillen's hero, friend and guide in Pittsburgh.
"Roberto and Willie, they were the best I ever saw," Sanguillen said. "Those guys played every game and gave you 100 percent every time they stepped on the field. They were the most exciting. Roberto, he did so much for me. When I think about him, it's like a dream that he's gone."
Clemente died in a plane crash on New Year's Eve, 1972. Al Oliver, another young Pirate during Roberto's reign, gets misty-eyed thinking of a man who "was like a father to me, my mentor in every respect."
"He didn't say a whole lot; he led by example, by the way he ran out every ground ball," Oliver said. "Clemente was the greatest. "
Standing at the batting cage before Tuesday's main event, Mays, who is carrying some extra baggage around the waist, respectfully begged out of the debate.
"I've never rated ballplayers," he said. "I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings."
Deviously, I asked him about Aaron and Clemente.
"Hank was a good player, and Roberto, I taught him how to play (as teammates in the Puerto Rican Winter League). But I'm not saying who's the greatest."