Top 100 Mays Quotes
#1. If you want to know who was better, me or Willie Mays, you have to look at our career stats. And Willie's bottom line was better.
Mickey Mantle
#2. As much as I loved Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Junior Gilliam, and Don Newcombe, I loved watching Willie Mays play more than all of them combined, even if he played for the 'bad guys!'
Cheech Marin
#3. I have to give Mays one edge, durability. Mickey isn't sound and Willie is. Otherwise, if I had a chance to trade for either player, I'd pick Mantle.
Gabe Paul
#5. There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare and I think you'd better put Shakespeare first, darling.
Tallulah Bankhead
#6. When you get to be my age, you begin to count how many Mays you have left - the best time of year for flowers and birds in North America.
Robert Bateman
#7. I had some great role models along the way. My on-field heroes were the great Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Willie Mays. I wanted to be like them on the field, and I am so damn proud to join them in the Hall of Fame.
Allan Ray
#8. There definitely comes a time where a fresh pair of eyes and fresh leadership would be good, and the Conservative Party has got some great people coming up - the Theresa Mays, and the George Osbornes, and the Boris Johnsons.
David Cameron
#9. I'm being compared to the impossible. I never saw Mays, Aaron or Clemente play. What about the people I face every day? Tim Raines is the best? Mattingly is the best? Why not compare me to my peers?
Eric Davis
#10. A Clinton staffer tells me his theory. Think about Frank Sinatra, he says: born to sing. Think about Willie Mays: born to play ball. These guys got their power from living lives perfectly suited to their natures. Same with Clinton: his life is perfectly suited to his nature.
George Saunders
#11. But tell me, Mays, why is it that all I can fucking think about is you? Why am I so eager to take another guy's head off for touching you? Why is it when I lay in bed at night I wish it was you there beside me?
A Meredith Walters
#12. Any ballplayers that played for me on either the Cardinals or the Yankees could come to me if he were in need and I would give him a helping hand. I made only two exceptions, Carl Mays and Joe Bush. If they were in a gutter, I'd kick them.
Miller Huggins
#13. Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.
A.E. Housman
#14. Come on, when does it come to the point where your name can't come up in trade talks? Willie Mays got traded. Pedro Martinez got traded. So what? That's part of the game.
Eric Davis
#15. I meant what I said, Mays. I love you. So damn much. And you'll wake up in the morning and realize you threw away something fucking perfect for NOTHING!
A Meredith Walters
#16. I never dreamed about being President, I wanted to be Willie Mays.
George W. Bush
#17. They invented the All-Star game for Willie Mays.
Ted Williams
#18. There have only been two geniuses in the world - Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.
Tallulah Bankhead
#19. To be good you've gotta have a lot of little boy in you. When you see Willie Mays and Ted Williams jumping and hopping around the bases after hitting a home run, and the kissing and hugging that goes on at home plate, you realize they have to be little boys.
Roy Campanella
#20. Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, 'I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.'
Ernie Harwell
#21. I can't believe that Babe Ruth was a better player than Willie Mays. (Babe) Ruth is to baseball what Arnold Palmer is to golf. He got the game moving. But I can't believe he could run as well as (Willie) Mays, and I can't believe he was any better an outfielder.
Sandy Koufax
#22. Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.
David Duchovny
#23. I want to establish myself as the first Eric Davis, not the next Willie Mays.
Eric Davis
#24. It matters to me, Mays. It matters a lot. I don't like seeing some other guy touching you. Not when it should be me touching you
A Meredith Walters
#25. I've been hearing this since I first joined the Reds organization, that I'm going to be the next this or that. It's tough on a young player coming up. You show some positive things and everybody jumps on that and says you should be the next Willie Mays.
Eric Davis
#26. Willie Mays was the best baseball player I ever saw. He could do anything.
Doug Harvey
#27. If I'm compared to Babe Ruth or Willie Mays, that's great. But I'm just going to go out there and be myself.
Ken Griffey Jr.
#28. He was something like zero for twenty-one the first time I saw him. His first major league hit was a home run off me and I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie (Mays) forever if I'd only struck him out.
Warren Spahn
#29. Willie Mays could throw better, and Hank Aaron could hit more home runs. But I've got enthusiasm. I've got desire. I've got hustle. Those are God-given talents, too.
Pete Rose
#30. I think anybody who saw him will tell you that Willie Mays was the greatest player who ever lived.
Monte Irvin
#31. I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
John Henrik Clarke
#32. When I'm up against a wall, that's when Billy Mays performs best.
Billy Mays
#33. I've always played for the acceptance of my godfather (Willie Mays) and father (Bobby Bonds).
Barry Bonds
#34. I think it's incredible because there were guys like Mays and Mantle and Henry Aaron who were great players for ten years ... I only had four or five good years.
Sandy Koufax
#35. Even if Mays is given every conceivable break on every unknown - defense, base running, clutch hitting - his performance still would not match Mantle's.
Bill James
#36. I played with Willie Mays and against Hank Aaron. They were tremendous players, but they were no Josh Gibson.
Monte Irvin
#37. With the Giants I broadcast the debut of Hall of Famer Willie Mays.
Ernie Harwell
#38. I'm not sure what the hell charisma is, but I get the feeling it's Willie Mays.
Ted Kluszewski
#40. I don't take on a product unless I believe in it. I use everything that I sell.
Billy Mays
#41. I like my friends to be the hitters. The pitchers, they all have the same brain as I do. The hitters see the game from a different perspective.
Joe Mays
#42. I think I was programmed to do good things when I came into the majors. I knew how to play.
Willie Mays
#43. Never assume the other guy will never do something you would never do.
Willie Mays
#44. They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.
Willie Mays
#45. Loving yourself is the most fulfilling and beautiful love that life has to offer.
Unfortunately, we're all looking to love someone else..
we're all looking to be loved by someone else, first.
Reyna Mays
#47. When I was in Birmingham I used to go to a place called Redwood Field. I used to get there for a two o'clock game. Where can you make this kind of money playing sports? It was just a pleasure to go out and enjoy myself and get paid for it.
Willie Mays
#48. Yes, I had to learn how to live life outside, but I had so many people help me.
Willie Mays
#50. Broken! Busted! Everybody has something to repair. Before buying new, let Mighty Putty fix it for you.
Billy Mays
#51. Some actors start with the right shoes. I start with the right hats.
Jefferson Mays
#52. I was very fortunate to play sports. All the anger in me went out. I had to do what I had to do. If you stay angry all the time, then you really don't have a good life.
Willie Mays
#53. I don't mean to be bashful, but I was.
Willie Mays
#54. At ten I was playing against 18-year-old guys. At 15 I was playing professional ball with the Birmingham Black Barons, so I really came very quickly in all sports.
Willie Mays
#55. The circumference of life cannot be rightly drawn until the center is set.
Benjamin E. Mays
#56. I enjoy what I do. I think it shows.
Billy Mays
#57. I was so focused at 21, maybe to my own detriment because I didn't allow myself to have fun. I was constantly looking for the next audition and working to pay the bills.
Jayma Mays
#58. He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.
Benjamin E. Mays
#59. I would try and help everybody, because the game was so easy for me. It was just like walking in the park.
Willie Mays
#61. The catch off Bobby Morgan
(a backhanded grab of the Brooklyn Dodger's line drive in September 1951 at Ebbets Field) in Brooklyn was the best catch I ever made. Jackie Robinson
and (Giants manager) Leo Durocher
were the first people I saw when I opened my eyes
Willie Mays
#62. The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It's not failure but aiming too low, that is life's greatest tragedy.
Benjamin E. Mays
#63. Whatever you do, do it so well that people looking on will feel that the task was reserved especially for you by God Himself.
Benjamin E. Mays
#65. Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.
Willie Mays
#66. You know what, rip me off once, shame on me. But twice? I'm coming after you and taking back what's mine.
Billy Mays
#68. What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.
Willie Mays
#69. I don't know what we did without Velcro in the American theater. It's a miracle substance! People had long intermissions, probably.
Jefferson Mays
#70. I don't remember my dreams. I'm one of those weird people. I know there are tricks and things you can do, but I never remember my dreams.
Jayma Mays
#71. It isn't a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.
Benjamin E. Mays
#72. This morning I was laughing at my cat who was running up the stairs and slipped, and pretended like it didn't happen.
Jayma Mays
#73. When I got to professional ball I used to play 150 games every year. It depends on how many games there was.
Willie Mays
#74. Defense to me is the key to playing baseball.
Willie Mays
#76. This reasoning is based on the wishful thinking that genius can only be earned through education and hard work. It denies the time-proven truth that genius can strike like a random bolt of lightning, at any time in any place, even in a humble glover's home in a small town in Elizabethan England.
Andrea Mays
#77. I'm a pitchman, my business comes from the pitch, nothing else.
Billy Mays
#78. A musical sweeps you along, like you're on a magic carpet ride of sorts. But you have to keep up.
Jefferson Mays
#79. I always enjoyed playing ball, and it didn't matter to me whether I played with white kids or black. I never understood why an issue was made of who I played with, and I never felt comfortable, when I grew up, telling other people how to act.
Willie Mays
#81. Before you throw it away, let Mighty Mendit save the day.
Billy Mays
#82. I don't know what Joe (DiMaggio)
wanted (in regards to being called 'the greatest living ballplayer'), but I don't have a problem, if he wanted to do that. He was my hero. Joe
was the best all-around player. Joe
was the best. I only played against him once, in the '51 Series.
Willie Mays
#83. Honest communication is built on truth and integrity and upon respect of the one for the other.
Benjamin E. Mays
#84. I'm kind of a reluctant Anglophile. My mother's a children's librarian, and all of the children's literature I read was from her childhood - E. Nesbit and Dickens, which isn't children's literature at all, but I was sort of steeped in English literature. I thought I was of that world.
Jefferson Mays
#85. In 1950, when the Giants signed me, they gave me $15,000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn't drive, but I had it in the parking lot there, and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing.
Willie Mays
#86. The best things in life are free - and $19.95.
Billy Mays
#88. The creation of the spiritual was no accident. It was a creation born of necessity, so that the slave might more adequately adjust himself to the conditions of the New World.
Benjamin E. Mays
#89. It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What is tough, is being good every day.
Willie Mays
#90. People talk about that catch and, I've said this many times, that I've made better catches than that many times in regular season. But of course in my time, you didn't have a lot of television during the regular season. A lot of people didn't see me do a lot of things.
Willie Mays
#91. When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody. But, when I'm hitting, I hit anybody.
Willie Mays
#92. Youngsters of Little League can survive undercoaching a lot better than overcoaching.
Willie Mays
#93. It's a funny business. I kind of compare it to baseball. I'm always looking for a home run.
Billy Mays
#94. I was really across-the-board, like a nutcase. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I just did everything. I was even part of FHA, Future Homemakers of America. How lost was I?
Jayma Mays
#95. Whatever you do,strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be born could do it any better.
Benjamin E. Mays
#96. I didn't teach you that. Catch the ball with your glove.
Willie Mays
#97. My mom was a big 'Smurfs' fan, so she would force me to watch every Saturday morning. I had no choice in the matter. I would jump downstairs on Saturday morning, 'Hurray, cartoons!' and she would say, 'Smurfs! That's what you're watching.'
Jayma Mays
#98. That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.
Willie Mays
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