Baseball nice Willie Mays has died on the age of 93, his household has introduced.
An announcement from the household issued by his former membership the San Francisco Giants mentioned he had “handed away peacefully and amongst family members” on Tuesday.
A 24-time All Star generally known as the Say Hey Child, Mays was the oldest dwelling Corridor of Famer.
Giants chairman Greg Johnson mentioned: “At present we now have misplaced a real legend. Within the pantheon of baseball greats, Willie Mays’ mixture of large expertise, eager mind, showmanship and boundless pleasure set him aside.
“He was an inspiration and a hero who can be eternally remembered and deeply missed.”
Main League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred mentioned Mays left “a legacy like no different”.
He mentioned: “His unimaginable achievements and statistics don’t start to explain the awe that got here with watching Willie Mays dominate the sport in each approach possible.”
Mays hit 660 residence runs to rank sixth on the all-time record throughout his 22 Main League seasons, principally with the Giants in New York after which San Francisco earlier than ending his profession with the New York Mets.
He additionally gained 12 Gold Gloves and his catch within the 1954 World Sequence in opposition to the Cleveland Indians is taken into account one of many biggest defensive performs in baseball historical past.
He was named Nationwide League rookie of the yr in 1951 – after the Giants introduced his contract from Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League in 1948 – and was the league’s MVP in 1954 and 1965 after spending two years within the Military.
Elected into the Baseball Corridor of Fame in 1979, turning into solely the ninth participant to be voted in throughout his first yr of eligibility, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then president Barack Obama in 2015.
The Sporting Information journal ranked him second to Babe Ruth in its record of the 100 biggest baseball gamers of the twentieth century.
