DALY CITY, Calif. — Rick Barry visited the Bay Area last week and savored a chance to recall some of basketball’s most famous names. The NBA All-Star Game returns to the San Francisco side of the bay in February for the first time since 1967 when Barry captured game MVP honors with 38 points.
Barry, at 80, can still rattle off the legends from that box score in rapid succession: Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Nate Thurmond, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson …
But on this day, the Hall of Famer player who really got Barry rolling was one enshrined in Cooperstown, not Springfield.
“You don’t know my Willie Mays story?” he asked.
Just like that, Barry was off — back to his childhood, back to the Polo Grounds, back to the day he played hooky for a chance to meet his boyhood hero.
Mays died June 18 at age 93, news that hit Barry hard. He wore No. 24 during his Hall of Fame basketball career as a tribute to Mays, the wondrous center fielder widely regarded as the best all-around player in baseball history.
GO DEEPER
Kawakami: Willie Mays, the Bay Area’s original and untouchable immortal
The two became friendly during their overlapping careers in the Bay Area in the 1960s and early 1970s, when Barry was with the Warriors and Mays was with the Giants.
But their connection began long before that, and in cinematic fashion. Barry grew up as a New York Giants fan in Roselle Park, N.J. His father was a terrific softball player who taught his son how to catch fly balls stylishly by turning the glove palm up at waist level.
During this interview, Barry repeatedly pounded his imaginary glove while catching invisible fly balls to demonstrate his technique.
“It’s the basket catch that Willie Mays made famous,” Barry said. Barry famously shot his free throws underhanded, too, so this was kind of his comfort zone. He was 7 when Mays reached the majors in 1951 and began making basket catches with flair. A kinship was born.
“The Giants get him; everyone says, ‘Who’s this rookie doing this?’” Barry said. “I said, ‘Well, that’s my guy.’ That’s how it worked.”
Barry, an outfielder as a youth league player, became so enamored of Mays that he concocted an audacious plan to meet him. It was “Field of Dreams” meets “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Barry was attending a parochial school in New Jersey but ditched that day to crash a Police Activities League trip to the Polo Grounds that welcomed PAL kids from public schools.
Hopping onto that bus was just the beginning of Barry’s plot. He knew that, after the game, Giants would head back to the clubhouse through center field rather than going back through the dugout. Barry counted down the outs.
“The game is over, and the Giants won. So after the last out, I dropped down the wall in left field and sprinted to try to shake Willie’s hand before he got to the stairs to go up to the clubhouse,” Barry said. “And I got to shake his hand.
“I ran back to my friends, and they were ready. And fortunately, the security didn’t get me. I got back on the bus to get home.”
His plan went off without a hitch … almost.
When Barry got home, his brother, Dennis, was there and asked how the game was. Rick denied it several times until his brother went full “CSI: Polo Grounds.”
“I saw you on TV,” Dennis told him, according to Rick. “At the end of the game, they zoomed in on this kid that jumped over the wall and sprinted out, and they zoomed in, and it was you shaking Willie Mays’ hand.”
Busted.
“Oh, God, don’t tell mom or dad, will you?” Barry replied. “And so he didn’t. Thank God for that.”
Rick Barry visited the Cow Palace today and signed his photo on the wall. The Warriors legend thinks it was his first time here since 1975. pic.twitter.com/lJbLP5afd6
— Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) July 11, 2024
That backdrop made it all the more surreal as Barry and Mays got to know each other during their Bay Area days. Barry’s first game with the San Francisco Warriors, as they were called then, was in 1965. That was the year Mays, age 34, won his second MVP award by batting .317 with 52 homers, 112 RBIs and a 1.043 OPS.
“I come to San Francisco, and I get to be friends with my boyhood hero,” Barry said. “Pretty cool.”
Over time, Barry and Mays became forever bonded, in part because the 12-time Gold Glove winner loved the story of one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players trespassing in his honor. Barry finished his career with the Houston Rockets, where Moses Malone wore jersey No. 24, so Barry took to wearing 2 for home games and 4 on the road.
When Mays turned 70 in May 2001, there was a lavish birthday celebration at Bally’s Casino in Atlantic City, N.J.
“Willie’s guy calls me up and says, ‘Rick, Willie wants you to come to the celebration for his birthday,’” Barry said.
Barry was touched, but there was, appropriately, a catch.
“He wants you to be one of the speakers,” Mays’ rep continued. “And he wants you to be first. And he wants you to tell the story of how you first met him.”
Barry, not known for his shyness, was nonetheless unnerved about being on the dais amid 3,000 mostly baseball people.
He defused pressure by opening his speech with: “I know exactly what every one of you right now is thinking. ‘What the hell is he doing here?!?’
“And then I said, ‘I’m thinking the same thing!’”
Barry told the story, and the audience roared its approval. It was the perfect way to celebrate an unlikely friendship between a player known for making basket catches and a player known for making baskets.
“I’m sorry he’s gone,” Barry said.
(Photo of Rick Barry and Willie Mays in 2010: Bryan Bedder / Getty Images)
