Willie Mays was one of every kid’s sports heroes. In the early 1970s, in the twilight of his career, the great center fielder — who started in MLB with the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds (walking distance from my current apartment) before the team moved to San Francisco — returned to New York to finish out his career with the Mets.

The Mets were in the championship series in 1973, and my friends and I bought tickets to the entire series. We even cut class, something I never did before.

In the final game, in the final inning, I had my eye on a spot Willie stepped on right next to first base. After the Mets won the game and the championship, we were among those insane fans – fanatics, in the truest meaning of the word – who ran onto the field, grabbing strips of sod from the infield before running to the outfield and climbing the right-field fence out of the stadium.

I first ran to first base, and scooped up some dirt with cleat marks in it, into an old bottle of pills I’d found in the medicine chest.

When I got home, I transplanted the sod into the back yard. It proved unsuccessful. But I had my bottle of dirt. I can still recall that the pills, which I discarded, were my old, blue Marax asthma pills, and had been prescribed in 1968. I turned the label inside out and wrote, “Shea Stadium, Championship, 1973. Willie Mays possibly stepped on this dirt.”

I had it for years, and would often use it like a magical talisman, holding it during a game and shaking it in an attempt to cosmically change the Mets’ luck. I had this bottle of dirt until the year the Mets won the World Series, 1986, when I somehow stepped on it and broke the plastic bottle. The once beautiful innerfield dirt had turned gray and dusty, and was now all over the floor. I sadly discarded the bottle and swept up its contents.

Click here for the New York Times obit, as a gift article.

RIP, Willie Mays.

The New York Times