Maury Wills, RIP

[SSHoya]

I was fortunate enough to have spent part of my childhood growing up in Marin County, CA, and the SF Giants were my first rooting interest in baseball so I saw Wills v. Giants a lot.

Legendary shortstop Maury Wills, a three-sport star at Cardozo High School in Washington, D.C., who went on to win three World Series titles with the Los Angeles Dodgers, died Monday at 89, the team announced. Wills hit .281 during his 14-year major league career and stole 586 bases, including a then-single-season record 104 in 1962, when he was named National League MVP.

The greatest baseball player to come out of D.C., Wills grew up as the seventh of 13 children in the Parkside public housing project in Northeast. He said he first dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player after meeting Washington Senators second baseman Jerry Priddy at a youth clinic in the District in the 1940s.

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/20/maury-wills-dodgers-dead/

[hoyarooter]

I also saw Maury a lot - at least as often as Dodger games were televised back then, which was typically only the Giant games, or the games I actually attended, which were occasional, maybe 4 or 5 a season. Maury was my second favorite Dodger player, after Sandy, and I was thrilled when they reacquired him, along with Manny Mota, another player I really liked.

I have said for years, and I will never stop saying it: Maury belongs in the Hall of Fame, because he, along with Luis Aparicio (who is in the Hall) changed the game. Once you get past the superstars of that era (Mays, Aaron, Koufax, Clemente, F. Robby and a few others), there is no one who had more impact on the game over the next 20 years than Maury Wills. No one.