Willie Mays On Tour

After years of being a prick Willie Mays is going on media tour -- why - to promote his new biography.

Hopefully the media will ask better questions than Bruce Weber did in this story from todays NYT.

Barely was the big question of the day - PED's touched.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/sports/baseball/31mays.html?8dpc

 

The Willie Mays "What The Fuck Kind of Question Is That?" tour.

 

We can only hope that he gets those kinds of questions.

 

How do you NOT ask him Barry Bonds questions?

 

Maybe because the story is eight years old, he's already talked about it (to Costas) and nobody gives a shit anymore?

 

Since when?

How about a simple do you think Barry deserves to be in the HOF.

 

Excellent point. Much more timely to talk to him about his playing career, which ended in 1973. Or maybe that catch in the '54 World Series. Or has he already talked about those?

 

I'd like to hear about his banner season with the Mets or something more racy like what was in that little black bottle that he kept in his locker.

 

The questions possibly could have been asked, but Mays could have given non-answers, and Mays saying he didn't know about steroid use was probably put in the story as a representative wrap-up of the non-answers about sensitive stuff like that. The writer did mention that Mays was evasive. Maybe that's why there was nothing about greenies, which I would have been curious about.

But really, would you expect him to say, "no, I don't think my godson should be in the Hall of Fame" ???

 

Don't know what he would say. That's why you ask questions.

 

Well, since it's his biography, I assume any of those topics would be covered and anyone interested in the book would by definition be interested in those things. So yeah, I'd say those topics would be worthy of discussion. But I guess in the new world we have to assume that every single thing about baseball is first and foremost about steroids, so naturally the only way into the Willie Mays biography is to ask him about events that happened 25-30 years after he was done playing.

Sportswriters are so far away from their readership on this topic, it's getting embarrassing. Fans are done with it. Writers remain obsessed.

 

Who says he didn't, and thought that the likely "no shit" answer didn't further the story? It's a story, not a transcript. I thought it was a worthwhile story, with a couple of the anecdotes about baseball and racial separation. I'm sorry it wasn't the steroid story every baseball story apparently must now be.