Willie Mays Negro Leagues homer could give him 661

There are a handful of numbers throughout baseball history that are so important, so revered, so iconic that they don’t need further explanation. 714 and 755 count there, as do 0.406 or 56 in a row. If we go beyond baseball card statistics to achieve uniform numbers, then 42 is also part of this club. You immediately know what it all means.

For almost 50 years, 660 was also one of those numbers. Willie Mays hit the 660th and final homer of his regular season career on August 17, 1973 at Shea Stadium as a member of the Cincinnati Mets off Don Gullett. Sure, he’s hit one in the playoffs (71), and three more at the All-Star Games (56, 60, and 65), and sure enough countless more in Spring Training and other shows, but 660 is the number. It’s on his Hall of Fame plaque. It’s on some of his autographs. It’s written on the wall of Oracle Park. When someone goes over 660, that’s a big deal. He is as associated with Mays as the 24 he wore on his back.

This number 24 will never change. But the 660, believe it or not, could. Forty-seven years after Mays last played professional baseball, he might have won another dinger. How? ‘Or’ What 661 sound?

What we’re about to explain isn’t set in stone, to be clear. There is a lot of research, clarification, approval and updating to be done. But as this research continues, so does our understanding of the historical record.

“We have this home run… 1948 for Willie Mays,” Larry Lester, prominent Negro Leagues historian, said in Thursday’s episode of the Ballpark Dimensions podcast. “We’re going to add that; it will have 661. We found this box score.

So long, 660, hello 661? It would be overwhelming. Let’s explain how we got here.

On December 16, Major League Baseball announced that the Black Leagues – in particular a group of seven leagues who were active between 1920 and 48 – would receive Major League status. This was done to rectify the misguided decision of a “Special Committee on Baseball Records” that met in 1968 and gave four historic leagues (alongside current US and National leagues) Major League status. , but didn’t even factor in the black leagues. This designation was long overdue and beyond necessary to recognize that black and Latino gamers of generations ago were no less and should not be overlooked.

“It gives added credibility to the importance of the black leagues, both on and off the field,” said Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. “These men and women, from players to owners, didn’t need anyone’s validation. For me, this movement in baseball is more about righting a mistake,” he told legendary sports reporter Claire Smith .

This immediately opened up the world of baseball to a ton of questions about how the inclusion of Negro League stats might change the numbers we all know. For example, career stats for Joe Tinker’s Hall of Fame shortstop include his time in the Netherlands. and his two years in the Federal League came from 1914-15, which is considered a major league. He has 31 career homers, which is a combination of “29 in the National League and two in the Federal League”. Conversely, the player pages of Major League legends like Mays, Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby do not include Negro League numbers – again, anyway.

As we’ve tried to speculate, using the Negro League database compiled on Seamheads.com, it appears that including these stats could have significant effects on all-time rankings. Josh Gibson won’t be the all-time point guard, but he could have the best batting average in a season (.466 in 1943). There will be around two dozen new non-hitters, including Leon Day joining Bob Feller as the only men to pitch opening day non-nos. There will be a lot of other changes like the one to come.

But that work is not yet complete, as only about 75% of box scores for known Negro League matches between 1920 and 48 have been collected and cataloged in the Seamheads database. Without a box score, there will be no official number, even if an event was known to have occurred. Like, say, an extra circuit for Willie Mays. Mays played briefly for the ’48 Birmingham Black Barons, and there are no home runs noted on his Seamheads page. But as Ben Lindbergh, who deserves a lot of credit for bringing the issue of Black League status to the fore this summer, pointed out this week:

“Mays has gone in depth at least once in his rookie campaign for the Black Barons, but no score has been found. Until there is one, his famous mark of 660 homers will remain the same. . “

And that, we thought, was that. This Mays home run was likely in this case missing 25% of the box’s scores. It could take years for it to be found. It could never to be found. Six hundred and sixty isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

THE 660 RUNS HOME MAYS BRAND IS DISPLAYED PROMINALLY IN THE RIGHT FIELD AT ORACLE PARK. (CREDIT: SF GIANTS)

Except … Thursday, we invited Lester to join us on the podcast to discuss the process to get there and how the news affected him. After all, Lester is a co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and chair of the Negro Leagues committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He is an accomplished author and editor in many fields, and he is one of the most distinguished scholars in the Negro League. It is likely that none of this would have been possible without his efforts.

When we brought up the point of the missing box scores, he agreed, but said there would be more to come.

“We found more than that,” Lester said, “but currently we only have about 75% in the database.”

So right away, we knew our speculative assumption of how the numbers would change – like Gibson’s possible .466, or his 200 OPS +, or Satchel Paige’s extra 1563 innings – was incomplete. These numbers are subject to change and will change as more information is entered.

“We found probably 99% of the games in the 1920s, and the 30s are random. In the 1940s and late 1930s, we found probably 90% of the games that were programmed,” Lester continued. “We’re in good shape. It takes a while to calculate the numbers. Each row of the score in this box has to be entered manually into a spreadsheet, which is uploaded to a database that I created.

“And that database information goes to Gary Ashwill with Seamheads, so that data is available to everyone on the internet. We’ll get there, and it will change some records, good bad and indifferent. Some people will be upset by find out. that Josh Gibson never hit 800 home runs. “

But the real news was not what has yet to be found. What’s this at – that of a missing home run from Mays.

This home run was struck on August 11, 1948, when Mays would have been about three months after his 17th birthday. As Lindbergh noted, this home run was mentioned in newspaper articles. He came to Birmingham, and if this report is correct, he was struck by Panamanian Vibert “Webbo” Clarke, 20, of the Cleveland Buckeyes. (Clarke would later appear briefly in seven games for the ’55 Washington Senators.)

So if the box score exists, and it just hasn’t been entered into the system yet, it looks likely that soon it will be. (As the process continues, the MLB and Elias Sports Office – the official statistician of the MLB – meet for an official review to determine how to proceed.) Mays will have 661 Major League home runs. – 660 NL circuits and one in the Negro Ligues. A regular season home run, anyway.

“We also have a home run that he hit in Game 3 of the World Series in 1948,” Lester continued. “There was no score in the box. Albert Pujols is safe at the moment with 662… but don’t count me yet. I’m still looking.”

Of course, Pujols also has 19 playoff homers, and we don’t count them in his career tally. Six hundred and sixty-one, if and when this is what Mays comes up with, would seem to be sure.

In 2015, The New York Times recounted Mays’ last home run in a story that was titled “On the Night Willie Mays Hit No. 660, It Was Just Another Number”, noting that he had little fanfare because he hadn’t broken any records and with six weeks left in the season, no one knew it would be his last; functionally, it was no different from # 657 or # 648. It will always be his last home run, but maybe The Times was more correct than he thought. Maybe that was just another number.