RIP. I love that he is Star Trek canon.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

MLB is hosting a game Thursday between the Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala. where Mays once played.

"He caught a ball as a rookie in Brooklyn," said Jim Hirsch, who wrote the authorized biography, "Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend" in 2010.

He tried to understand all the nuances in an era before we had computerized fan graphs that told you where every hitter hit the ball, depending on what pitch was thrown."

"I made the clubhouse guy fit me a cap that when I ran, it flies right off," Mays said in the 2010 NPR interview, adding, "you [also] have to tilt your head a little bit because you got to get the wind in there.

Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947, criticized Mays for being a prominent black athlete during the volatile 1960s who didn't use his platform to speak out publicly on civil rights.

"In his quiet example while excelling on one of America's biggest stages, [Mays] helped carry forward the banner of civil rights," Obama said, adding, "it's because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for president."

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