MOMENTS, MEMORIES and MADNESS with STEVE CAMERON: A current Giant's four-homer bid took me back to Willie Mays
Talk about déjà vu.
Almost completely by accident, I wound up watching a baseball game last week that, well…
Got me excited and nervous all at once, pretty much the same way I felt while listening to a similar game on the radio 59 years ago.
The straight-line link to the two events is Willie Mays.
It turned out that Willie was watching and rooting during this latest thriller, too.
It happened on Tuesday night, when the San Francisco Giants pounded Colorado 23-5 in Denver.
I happened to be scrolling MLB results and box scores that evening — especially since the Mariners were off due to the A’s COVID-19 infections.
Even after all this time away from the Bay Area, I still take an occasional peek at what the Giants are doing.
And that night, we almost saw history repeated.
The Giants’ platoon left-fielder, Alex Dickerson, absolutely caught fire.
Dickerson had hit three home runs by the sixth inning.
YOU HAVE to understand, too, that this guy is not the second coming of Barry Bonds.
Prior to Tuesday night, he’d hit four home runs — so, a little power but hardly a number that would suggest a night for the ages.
But the way the Rockies pitching staff had surrendered, and how Giants were hammering the ball (they finished with 27 hits), you felt Dickerson might have a legit shot at a fourth home run.
In case you don’t follow baseball history all that closely, no one ever has hit more than four home runs in a game — but Dickerson could tie the record.
As it happens, that four-homer mark has a very “Giants” feel to it, as well — even though 18 players have managed it.
Mays accomplished the feat on April 30, 1961, in Milwaukee — yes, it was before MLB juiced the ball.
And just like with Dickerson’s explosion on Tuesday night, I got caught up in the Mays record day partway through the game.
IT WAS a Sunday, so my dad was home.
He loved to listen to the Giants on this old, dusty Motorola radio that we had in the kitchen.
He also was a stickler about keeping score on a pad he’d lay across the table.
Side note: He was the one who taught me how to keep score properly and, sadly, he died just a few years before I became an official scorer for the American League in Kansas City.
Everyone keeps score a little differently, but I still use the system I learned at our kitchen table.
OK, back to the home run saga…
I was out of the house, playing with the other kids in the neighborhood, when Dad summoned me from the porch.
“Come and listen to this,” he said. “Willie has hit three home runs against the Braves, and he’s going to bat again.”
So, I went from fooling around outside, and straight to the drama unfolding in Milwaukee.
Dad brought me up to speed: Mays had homered twice off starter Lew Burdette, and again off lefty Seth Morehead.
His chance to hit four in a game was going to come against veteran reliever Don McMahon.
I ASKED Dad if he thought Mays would manage one more.
For the record, my father was a gambler — he’d paid his way through school playing pool, he bet on horses and sports events, and was such a good card player that it was scary.
If you played gin rummy with him, you’d just start to put your hand on whatever you planned to discard, and he’d say: “No, better hold on to that six of spades.”
He’d do it to make you crazy.
He had the amazing combination of a mathematical mind (hey, he was a CPA) and almost eerie intuition.
Oh, and he understood people better than anyone I’ve ever known.
So, even as a pretty young kid, I understood that my father was a very successful gambler — in addition to being a huge sports fan.
In fact, he and his partner in the accounting firm of Marshall and Cameron handled the books for the San Francisco 49ers when the franchise was formed in 1946.
Anyhow…
When I asked if Mays could hit a fourth homer, it was a serious question — posed to a man who absolutely would know all the pros and cons involved.
“I wouldn’t shove ALL my chips in on a fourth one,” he said, “but with Willie Mays, I’d bet a lot of them.”
ONLY REAL Giants fans will get this, but for us, “The Voice” who would relay what happened in Milwaukee was broadcaster Russ Hodges.
Another side note: Yeah, Vin Scully down in L.A. was the best baseball play-by-play man who ever lived.
There, I said it.
Meanwhile, back up in our world…
Russ split duties with another Bay Area icon, Lon Simmons, but Hodges did six of the nine innings, so he was at the mic when Mays faced McMahon.
“Mays has hit four balls right on the nose today,” Hodges said, “three of them for homers.”
(HERE VOICE BECOMES A SHOUT…)
“Now he hits another one, a long drive to center…
“Tell it: ‘Bye, bye, baby!’
“…Willie Mays has tied the record with four home runs, and County Stadium is going crazy.”
Guess what?
A father and son in a Millbrae kitchen were going crazy, too — although my dad was ALWAYS cooler in every possible situation.
Shoot, we were together to witness a perfect game by Catfish Hunter at the Oakland Coliseum, and when Hunter struck out pinch-hitter Rick Reese to end it, Dad simply grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
A gambler’s calm, I’d call it.
IT WAS impossible last Tuesday night to block out that memory of Mays’ fourth homer.
The Giants didn’t televise many games back then, but now you can zip through channels and find any sports event in an instant.
So, I got to see Dickerson’s attempt at a fourth home run in Denver.
And oh, man!
He came a few feet short, with a drive that the TV guys said was hit 414 feet.
Dickerson wound up with three homers and two doubles in the game, and I wasn’t the only one rooting for that fourth long ball.
Here’s a snippet from the next morning’s San Francisco Chronicle…
“Willie Mays was impressed.
“The Say Hey Kid had Tuesday night’s game on at his Bay Area home, and was pulling for Alex Dickerson to hit one more home run.
“That would have been Dickerson’s fourth, matching Mays’ celebrated performance on April 30, 1961.
“ ‘He was trying to get four with me,’ Mays told the newspaper. ‘You never know. Man, keep going.’ ”
So…
Mays might be 89, but he was trying to push that drive just a little farther.
Willie is still a Giant, after all.
And hey…
I was so, so lucky to hear Mays’ fourth blast on that scratchy Motorola radio — and lucky, too, that I saw Dickerson’s bomb so close to matching it.
So lucky.
Blessed, even.
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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.
Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball, once per month during the offseason.
