San Francisco was slow to embrace Willie Mays because there was too much New York stink on him, and I think about this often. For one example, at the end of the 1958 season, fans voted Orlando Cepeda the team’s best player in an Examiner poll. Cepeda hit .312 with a .342 on-base percentage and extremely rough defense; Mays had a .347 batting average, led the league in steals, and was Willie Freaking Mays in the outfield. Didn’t matter. Cepeda was 20 years old, just a pup, and that made him the perfect avatar for this strange, new San Francisco baseball team.
The loss of Willie McCovey is incalculable
