The Mets, surprising virtually everyone in attendance and watching on television, announced that Willie Mays’s iconic number 24 will never be worn by a New York Met—and in essence, any New York National League team—again.
Without proper context, it is easy to question Mays getting his number retired by the Mets; after all, he only played 135 of his ,2992 Major League games in a Mets uniform. However, the number retirement has nearly nothing to do with those games. With a productive 1972 campaign and how instrumental he was throughout the 1973 playoffs, Mays helped the Mets reach their second World Series in his final season, though they came up short, losing in seven games to the Oakland Athletics.