The Day Private Willie Mays Threw Out My Dad
On May 29, 1952, Army draftee Willie Mays reported for duty at Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia. The reigning National League Rookie of the Year would see no action during his nearly two years of service—except on the baseball diamond, as the center fielder for the Fort Eustis Wheels. Mays later estimated he played in about 180 games while in the Army.
In one of them, the opposing center fielder was my father.
For Private First Class Mays, that particular contest in June 1953 was probably not noteworthy. (It was surely not as memorable as one the following month, in which Mays broke his foot and ended up in the base hospital, his military baseball career over.)
But Dad—officially, Photographer’s Mate Jim Shoop of Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Maryland—would never forget the game. Because in it, he learned firsthand why many people would later make the case that Mays was the greatest all-around baseball player ever to take the field.
Beyond that, there’s a broader significance to the matchup. Mays and Dad have intersecting and divergent stories of life in the military, in baseball and in American society during the Korean War era.
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