BY GREG PRINCE

From NYGPS Member and Mets Blogger (FAITH & FEAR IN FLUSHING) extraordinaire Greg Prince
A GREAT REVIEW OF THE EVENT!

Third Time’s Another Charm

Is there any better antidote to chilly days than Willie Mays? Is there any doubt that No. 24 could melt the 24 inches of snow projected to blanket our Metropolitan Area if you gave him a bat, a glove and another go with 24-year-old legs? Is there a sunnier thought 24 days in advance of Pitchers & Catchers than that which results when one considers the greatest center fielder there ever was?
Say no to all of the above because, Say Hey, Willie Mays was in town over the weekend, reminding all of us lucky enough to spend a few minutes in his presence that greatness doesn’t grow old. It just gets better with age.
The Willie Mays I saw on Saturday was the Willie Mays who acts as ambassador for the game he made his own a scant 64 years ago. There are many Willie Mayses. Willie the phenom from 1951. Willie the megastar by 1954. Willie the idol of millions forever after. Willie from Uptown, when he lived around the corner from where he worked and played ball at both addresses (stickball on St. Nicholas Place, baseball on Eighth Avenue between 155th and 157th Streets). Willie of the West Coast after he was transferred on business. Willie who left his heart in New York and came back to find it well cared for in 1972. Willie who Said Goodbye to America two weeks before helping bid the Big Red Machine au revoir in the fall of 1973. Willie the living legend, in and out of uniform for decades since.
Yes, there are many Willie Mayses. But when you get right down to it, there’s only one Willie Mays.
The Giants — currently of San Francisco, ancestrally of Manhattan — keep coming up with good excuses to give Willie Mays a ride back to his baseball hometown. They keep winning the World Series. Not every year, which would be gauche, but every other year. Then they take a few days out of their busy California schedule and visit New York with a trophy and an icon in tow. The trophy’s a lovely keepsake, but it’s somebody else’s. When the Giants come around, I don’t greet them in order to relish their spoils of victory.
I come to be near Willie Mays. Success hasn’t spoiled that sensation.
To offer a little background to those of you who haven’t heard it before, I’ll tell you that at the age of nine, when I was already deeply and eternally bound to the fortunes of our Metsies, I became fully aware that they were preceded as “N.Y. (N.L.)” by another outfit, one that even wore the same NY on their caps. This was 1972. I was in third grade and had begun to soak up the history of those larger-than-life New York Giants. There was an article in Baseball Digest that introduced me to John McGraw and Christy Mathewson. There was a biography in the East School library that profiled Mel Ott. Suddenly, there was a trade made by the New York Mets that netted them the greatest of New York Giants. Continue reading →

By; Chris Haft
http://m.giants.mlb.com/news/article/107523294/willie-mays-man-of-the-hour-as-giants-return-to-new-york

NEW YORK — About 75 men, all old enough to remember John F. Kennedy’s assassination or even Sputnik, gathered on Saturday in the ballroom of a midtown Manhattan hotel and lined up in two parallel rows to form a path between them. They stared expectantly at the ballroom’s double doors as if they awaited a bride’s entry.
All they really wanted to see was the best man.
Willie Mays slowly entered the room, walking between the columns of admirers. They and others greeted Mays with noisy yet respectful applause, sounding like both houses of Congress at a presidential State of the Union address.
“This is the greatest ballplayer of all time,” a man seated at a table told a grade-school-aged boy.
Mays’ appearance highlighted one of several events that the Giants scheduled last week to share the glory of the 2014 World Series triumph with fans in the franchise’s original home. Mays, who began advancing toward legendary status as a rookie center fielder with the New York Giants in 1951, joined current San Francisco Giants second baseman Joe Panik at this event for a question-and-answer session. Members of the New York Giants Preservation Society and the New York Giants’ Baseball Nostalgia Society formed the lucky crowd, which also received an opportunity to pose with the World Series trophy.
Most of the audience remembered seeing Mays perform at New York’s Polo Grounds between 1951-57, when he blossomed into baseball’s most exciting player — a distinction he maintained after the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958.
“A few guys said their lives are complete now that they shook hands with the great Willie Mays,” said Michael Weinberg, who grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York. “How many players can say they make people feel that way 42 years after they stopped playing?” Continue reading →

-Andy Baumgarten

Just as after their 2010 and 2012 World Series victories, the San Francisco Giants honored their New York supporters by bringing the 2014 championship trophy to New York and among the events was a great breakfast at the Palace Hotel.

I was fortunate to attend, circumventing the early day foul weather and transportation issues and thank The New York Giants Preservation Society and its dedicated, accomplished president Gary Mintz profusely for this event and all that he and the organization does to enrich and remember the great New York Giants baseball history.

Kudos as well to the San Francisco Giants organization which recognizes the New York days and people, proudly adding the 5 New York Giant’s titles to the incredible 3 “S.F.” titles in the past 5 seasons, giving the Giants 8.
That ties them with the somewhat historically similar, Boston Red Sox for fourth place, trailing only the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia/Oakland Athletics in World Series triumphs.

Special praise to Staci Slaughter, Shana Daum and Albert Jaimes within the San Francisco organization. The man at the top, CEO Larry Baer, is beyond gracious and was in attendance.

Continue reading →

Members of the society had a special viewing breakfast with Giants officials this morning, January 24, as the World Series Trophy came to NYC. Special thanks to Staci Slaughter, Shana Daum, and Albert Jaimes, among many, who made this an unforgettable day for all those in attendance. Willie Mays, Joe Panik, and Larry Baer, held a Q/A session to a captive audience. The NYGPS donated $ to the Jr. Giants Fund and the Say Hey Foundation. The SF Giants Organization continue their amazing tradition of remembering and embracing their past. For this we are most THANKFUL!!

THE LAST REMNANT OF THE POLO GROUNDS DESERVES A REDEDICATION CEREMONY WORTHY OF THE BALLPARK’S HISTORY

BY:MICHAEL ARONSON
The San Francisco Giants, including legend Willie Mays, are in town now to celebrate their latest championship with fans of old.
Say hey — then insist that the city give the Giants’ old home, the Polo Grounds, the hallowed place in history that it has earned.
Before they headed West, the Giants won five World Series there. The Yankees, football Giants, Mets and Titans/Jets also once called it home.
Yet for years, the stadium’s only remnant, a 80-step stairway, sat rusty and broken. In 2008, this page adopted the stairs and enlisted the five ex-Polo Grounds teams to help fund repairs. They came through with half a million dollars. Major League Baseball chipped in another $50,000. The National Football League didn’t give a penny.
The fixes have been made and all that’s needed is a nice ceremony to rededicate the stairs, honor the five teams and fête the incomparable Mays. Have it in June, when the Mets host the Giants.

SAN FRANCISCO — Stu Miller, who will be remembered more for committing history’s most famous balk than for his formidable pitching, died Sunday at his home in Cameron Park, Calif. He was 87.

http://m.giants.mlb.com/news/article/105613450/former-giants-orioles-pitcher-stu-miller-dies-at-87

The Giants and Orioles, the teams with whom Miller distinguished himself the most during his 16-year Major League career, announced his death Monday.
Baseball’s spotlight glared upon Miller during the 1961 All-Star Game, which cemented Candlestick Park’s reputation as an oversized air conditioner. This, according to legend, was the Midsummer Classic in which Miller was blown off the mound. That wasn’t exactly what happened.
A game recap in the 1963 book “The Giants of San Francisco” cited unusually withering temperatures that forced 95 fans to receive treatment for heat prostration during the early innings. But Candlestick’s infamous breezes took over by mid-afternoon. Recalled Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills, who played the entire game for the National League, “I saw the same hot-dog wrapper hover over the infield for three or four innings with the wind taking it in different directions, about 100 feet off the ground.”
Miller, the Giants right-hander making his first and only All-Star appearance, relieved Sandy Koufax in the ninth inning with one out, Roger Maris on first base, Al Kaline on second and the NL clinging to a 3-2 lead.
In the 1979 book “SF Giants: An Oral History”, Miller said the flags in center field were “almost torn off the flagpole by the time I got in. It was actually the windiest day I had ever seen there, and I was certainly used to it by then. So I came in and anchored myself into the wind, as usual.”
As the 5-foot-11, 165-pound Miller went into the stretch position to pitch to Rocky Colavito, a sudden gust upset his balance. Miller threw the pitch anyway, but was called for a balk after doing so, due to his erratic movement. Kaline scored the tying run as third baseman Ken Boyer misplayed Colavito’s subsequent grounder.
Ultimately, Miller persevered and received the decision in the NL’s 5-4, 10-inning victory.
Miller, who ranked among the top 20 finishers in Most Valuable Player Award voting four times, broke into the Majors with the Cardinals in 1952. He performed for four other teams, including the Giants (1957-62) and Orioles (1963-67), and compiled a 105-103 record with a 3.24 ERA and 154 saves in 704 career appearances. He was among 43 former Giants to merit a plaque on AT&T Park’s Wall of Fame, a distinction reserved for the franchise’s finest San Francisco-era (since 1958) performers. Miller also was elected to the Orioles Hall of Fame in 1989.
After alternating between starting and relieving, Miller moved almost exclusively to the latter role in 1959, one year after he recorded an NL-best 2.47 ERA. He topped the NL with 17 saves in 1961 and the AL with 27 in 1963. He won 14 games in relief in 1961 and again in 1965. Though Miller relied primarily on a changeup, he overwhelmed enough hitters to average 8.35 strikeouts per nine innings from 1963-65.
“For what he had, he was amazing,” said left-hander Johnny Antonelli, a Giants teammate of Miller’s from 1957-60. “He made some of those hitters look pretty bad. He had a great idea of how to pitch, changing speeds. It was really funny to watch sometimes. He would throw a pitch that floated up there, someway, somehow, and it looked like it was going to be a fastball. But it came in there slow and they would just swing through it. He would make certain hitters look sick. That was Stu Miller.”
A native of Northampton, Mass., Miller is survived by his wife, Jayne; six children, Scott, Lori, Kim, Marc, Gary and Matthew; five grandchildren and one great-grandson.
Chris Haft is a reporter for MLB.com. Read his blog, Haft-Baked Ideas, and follow him on Twitter at @sfgiantsbeat. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

THE TWENTY-FOUR SURVIVING MEMBERS OF THE NY GIANTS
■Joey Amalfitano 1954-55 B:1/23/1934
■Johnny Antonelli 1954-57 B: 4/12/1930
■Jackie Brandt 1956 B: 4/28/1934
■Ed Bressoud 1956-57 B: 5/2/1932
■Pete Burnside 1955, 1957 B: 7/2/1930
■Foster Castleman 1954-57 B: 1/1/1931
■Gil Coan 1955 B: 5/18/1922
■Ray Crone 1957 B: 8/7/1931
■Joe Garagiola 1954 B: 2/12/1926
■Billy Gardner 1954-55 B: 7/19/1927
■Harvey Gentry 1954 B: 5/27/1926
■Monte Irvin 1949-55 B: 2/25/1919
■Joe Margoneri 1956-57 B: 1/13/1930
■Willie Mays 1951-52, 1954-57 B: 5/6/1931
■Windy McCall 1954-57 B: 7/18/1925
■Mike McCormick 1956-57 B: 9/28/1938
■Ron Samford 1954 B: 2/28/1930
■Red Schoendienst 1956-57 B: 2/2/1923
■Daryl Spencer 1952-53, 1956-57 B: 7/13/1929
■Wayne Terwilliger 1955-56 B: 6/27/1925
■Ozzie Virgil 1956-57 B: 5/17/1933
■Bill White 1956 B: 1/28/1934
■Al Worthington 1953-54, 1956-57 B: 2/5/1929
■Roy Wright 1956 B: 9/26/1933
Monte Irvin is the oldest living member of the New York Giants (95), while Mike McCormick is the youngest at 76.