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Mays hit 52 residence runs in 1965, becoming a member of Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Ralph Kiner and Mantle as the one gamers at the moment to have hit at the very least 50 in a single season greater than as soon as. On Could 4, 1966, Mays surpassed the Nationwide League document for residence runs, 511, set by the previous Big outfielder and supervisor Mel Ott.
As he approached age 40, Mays was nonetheless able to excellent play, however he had modified.
“Willie, as he grew older, turned extra withdrawn and suspicious, extra cautious, extra susceptible and with loads of purpose,” Leonard Koppett wrote in “A Considering Man’s Information to Baseball” (1967). “Life, each personally and professionally, turned extra difficult for him, and he had his share of sorrow.” After marrying and adopting a baby, Mays “went by a painful divorce,” Koppett wrote.
On Could 11, 1972, with the Giants’ attendance in decline, Horace Stoneham, the staff’s longtime proprietor, wanting to offer Mays with longtime monetary safety, despatched him to the Mets in a commerce for a minor league pitcher, Charlie Williams.
Mays was within the subsequent to final 12 months of a two-year contract paying him $165,000 a season (the equal of a bit greater than $1 million at this time). When the deal was made, Joan Payson, the Mets’ president, who had been a stockholder within the New York Giants and was a fan of Mays, assured him a 10-year, $50,000 annual cost aside from his baseball wage. He was to be a good-will ambassador and part-time teacher after his enjoying days ended.
Mays was hitting .167 when he joined the Mets, however on Could 14, in his first sport with them, earlier than a Sunday crowd of some 35,000 at Shea Stadium, he beat the Giants with a house run. But he was 41, and his abilities had eroded. The following 12 months he was hampered by swollen knees, an infected shoulder and bruised ribs, and on Sept. 20, 1973, he introduced his retirement.
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