Barry Tompkins: More Mays, more ways, and no more — please

I wrote about the passing of the great Willie Mays yesterday. This paper asked me to do that in the name of a personal relationship I had with the man, and because it all seemed to cry for an immediate response.

Mays defined the joy of this most complicated of all games. You became a kid again just watching the man make the seemingly impossible look routine. In all the years I’ve been yammering about sports, there have been a very small handful of athletes who – in the biggest of moments – you just knew would do something memorable. Joe Montana had that great intangible. Steph Curry, too. But no one embodied it more than Willie Mays.

Mays and I became friends, I’m quite sure because he simply took pity on an innocent kid who he knew, were he to refuse an interview request, would be spending the next several years on a shrink’s couch and eking out a living saying “Fries with that burger, sir?” I have no doubt what Mays was thinking that day: “I can’t shoot Bambi. Can I?”

The fact that I wound up spending many days in Mays’ company talking baseball history (his, not mine), life in San Francisco, and everything else from the Negro Leagues, to family, to the golf course, was an even greater phenomenon for me based on my childhood upbringing.

While I was born and raised in San Francisco, the rest of my family lived in Brooklyn, New York, where I would spend most of every summer. If you think the current Giants-Dodgers rivalry is heated, the rivalry in my neighborhood between the two teams made King Kong vs. Godzilla seem like a playground spat.

All my family, right down to the dog, were Dodger fans. How we ate, or if we ate at all, depended on if the Dodgers beat the Giants. That in itself, naturally, made the dog a little nervous. We had Duke Snider (or as my family called him, “Schneider.” My family thought everyone was Jewish. Even Mickey “Mendell” who played for the dreaded Yankees). But, the Giants had Willie Mays.

In our house, Mays was public enemy number one. With good reason. He ate the Dodgers for lunch. He was the devil personified.

Years later, when I informed them I was now loyal to the Giants and that Willie Mays and I had become friends, they immediately disavowed ever having attended my Bar Mitzvah. That was a good thing, because the laugh was on them. I never had a Bar Mitzvah.

I told Willie Mays that story over lunch one day. It was the hardest – and loudest – I had ever heard him laugh.

I don’t much miss my Aunt Fanny and Uncle Max back in Brooklyn.

But I sure do miss Willie Mays.

It’s a local game

For me, the greatest part of every baseball season was always Spring Training. Back in the day there was something low key and folksy about those Spring games in Arizona and Florida. There were kids and grandparents taking in the sun and, oh by the way, there was a baseball game in the background as well. There was just a certain innocence about it that made you realize baseball at its core, is an up close and personal game.

Times, of course, have changed to the point that Spring Training tickets are no longer in a price range that everyone can afford — stadia have gotten bigger, more modern, and way less folksy. And the players somehow seem less accessible and more remote than ever before.

I recognize that Major League Baseball is big business now. I can’t argue, nor begrudge that fact. But what also struck me is that the folksiness we used to know in February and March can now be found right through the summer and basically right outside our door.

The Oakland Ballers and the San Rafael Pacifics are right there for the taking. The price is right, you’ll be up close and personal, and you’ll walk away from there feeling as though you were a part of another era. Players press the flesh with fans. Autographs are readily available. Most of the players aren’t too far removed from asking for them themselves.

The best seat in the house in Oakland is $35. At Albert Park, you’re the king for $17. It’s what baseball aspired to be – a local game for local folk.

I’m just sayin’.

They still have the Tree

No college has been hit harder by the transfer portal than Stanford University. It’s a sign of the times. A Stanford education was one of the nation’s great recruiting tools before NIL came along. Coaches in every sport recruited mom and dad, touting the value of a degree from one of the nation’s premier institutions as a great reason to send their son or daughter who might also be a true student-athlete to Stanford.

And, while the school does now have a fund available to offer potential athletes, compared to schools in the SEC, Big 10 or Big 12, it is Burger King trying to compete with the House of Prime Rib.

So, the Cardinal’s best softball player, best women’s basketball player, and the best they have in football and men’s basketball have decided that selling themselves to the highest bidder is a lot easier than graduating with a Stanford degree.

I only bring this up because Monday was National Mascot Day and the Stanford Tree was named the number two most famous college mascot. And yet, it hasn’t transferred. WHY??

I started broadcasting games in 1968, and the Tree was doing the same act then as it is now. It’s time for a pruning. The Tree has gone from irreverent to redundant. And yet, it is not being recruited by an SEC school. I just don’t get it.

Mike the Tiger at LSU is the only mascot more known than the Stanford Tree. Mike is a real tiger. The Tree is an art class project. Mike is tough. The Tree can dance. Mike makes you root for your team. The Tree makes me root for an outbreak of Dutch Elm Disease.

Okay. I feel much better now.  See you next week.

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native.  Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.