Willie Mays: The Say Hey Kid and the Complete Player

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 9 min read

Willie Mays by the numbers: 660 home runs, 3,293 hits, 12 Gold Gloves and 24 All-Star Game selections, plus the phases of his career and what the historical record cannot measure.

Willie Mays finished his career with 660 home runs, 3,293 hits, 339 stolen bases and a .301 batting average, and he is the only player in the historical record with 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 stolen bases and a .300 career average. Add 12 Gold Gloves, two Most Valuable Player awards and a Hall of Fame vote of 409 out of 432 ballots, and the case for him as the most complete player of the twentieth century writes itself. What the numbers cannot show is how he looked doing it: the basket catches, the hat that flew off while he ran the bases, the way he played center field as if the whole outfield belonged to him.

This profile follows the career in phases, from the Birmingham Black Barons to the Giants in New York and San Francisco and a last season with the Mets. Every figure below comes from the historical record through the 2025 season, and we point out where the database goes silent. For other careers of the same generation, see our profiles of Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial.

Born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama, Mays died on June 18, 2024, in Palo Alto, California. He batted and threw right-handed, listed at 5 feet 10 inches and 170 pounds. His major-league debut came on May 25, 1951, and his final game on September 9, 1973.

The career in one table

On the historical career lists, Mays ranks sixth in home runs (behind Barry Bonds with 762, Hank Aaron with 755, Babe Ruth with 714, Albert Pujols with 703 and Alex Rodriguez with 696), seventh in runs scored, twelfth in runs batted in and thirteenth in hits. Those are the rankings of a hitter who was also a center fielder and a base stealer, and almost nobody else has a place on all of those lists. The slugging percentage of .557 is the number that best captures how much damage he did per at-bat: it is high enough that it was not an accident of one favorable ballpark. He also drew 1,468 walks against 1,526 strikeouts, a near-even split that was unusual for a power hitter of his era.

Birmingham and the Negro Leagues, 1948

The database's first line for Mays is 1948, when he played 13 games for the Birmingham Black Barons, a team in the Negro leagues. He had 43 at-bats, 10 hits and no home runs, a .233 average, at age 17. The historical record includes Negro leagues statistics for 1920 through 1948 as major-league data, so that line sits in the same table as his National League seasons, but the coverage of those leagues is partial. Box scores were not kept for every game, and his time with the Black Barons ran beyond that single season. Anyone trying to measure his early development from the data will find almost nothing, and we think it is better to say so than to guess.

The story of how Black stars entered the white majors runs through Jackie Robinson, whose 1947 debut opened the door. Mays reached the Giants four years after Robinson, in the next wave of Black players who had come up through the Negro leagues or the minors and were now arriving in the National League.

The rise, 1951 to 1953

The Giants called Mays up in May 1951, and he debuted on May 25. That first season he played 121 games, batted .274 and hit 20 home runs with 68 runs batted in, which earned him the National League Rookie of the Year award. The Giants made the World Series that year, the one best remembered for Bobby Thomson's playoff home run against Brooklyn; they lost the Series to the Yankees.

Then came the Army. Mays played just 34 games in 1952 (127 at-bats, a .236 average and four home runs) before he was drafted, and he played none in 1953; the database has no 1953 line for him. The two years he missed are the largest unknown in the arithmetic of his career. Players of the era who served, including Ted Williams, lost seasons from the prime of their careers. No one can say how many home runs or hits Mays would have added, and the database cannot say either. It can only tell us what he did in the years he played, which were remarkable enough.

The first peak, 1954 to 1957

Mays returned in 1954 and hit .345 with 41 home runs, 110 runs batted in and 195 hits in 151 games. That was good enough for the National League's Most Valuable Player award, his first, and it led a Giants team that won the pennant. In the World Series the Giants beat Cleveland, and Game 1 produced the defensive play that is still the first thing many people say about Mays: a long drive by Vic Wertz to the deepest part of the Polo Grounds outfield, run down with his back to the plate. The play is widely documented, and the historical record has nothing on it. It does confirm the result: the 1954 Giants are the only World Series winner among the teams Mays played for.

The next seasons built the legend:

His 51 home runs in 1955 were a career high until 1965, when he hit 52, and the 1955 season came with 127 runs batted in. The Gold Glove award began in 1957, and Mays won it that year, the first of 12 in a row through 1968. The award is a vote and has its biases, but a dozen in a row is a signal even skeptics accept.

San Francisco, 1958 to 1966

The Giants moved from New York to San Francisco after the 1957 season. Mays was now playing in a new city, first at Seals Stadium and from 1960 at Candlestick Park, a ballpark that became famous for cold, windy evenings, and he kept hitting. In 1958 he batted .347 with 208 hits, the highest hit total of any season in the sheet. In 1959 and 1960 he hit 34 and 29 home runs, and in 1961 he reached 40 with 123 runs batted in.

The 1962 season may have been his best across the board. He played all 162 games, hit 49 home runs, drove in 141 runs and batted .304, and the Giants finished in a tie for first place and won a playoff against the Dodgers to reach the World Series. They lost it to the Yankees in seven games. Mays was the All-Star Game's Most Valuable Player in 1963 and again in 1968, and he hit 38 and 47 home runs in 1963 and 1964.

Then came 1965, when he won his second Most Valuable Player award with 52 home runs, 112 runs batted in and a .317 average. He was 34, an age at which most sluggers have started to decline. Our guide to reading a box score explains how to put a season like this in context against the rest of the league.

He kept hitting in 1966, with 37 home runs and 103 runs batted in, and then began the slide that every player eventually faces.

Why "complete" is the right word

Baseball writers have called Mays a five-tool player for decades, and the label fits because the numbers back up each tool:

• Hitting for average: a .301 career mark and three seasons above .330 (.345 in 1954, .333 in 1957 and .347 in 1958).
• Hitting for power: 660 home runs and a .557 slugging percentage, plus 525 doubles and 141 triples.
• Running: 339 career stolen bases.
• Fielding: 12 Gold Gloves, all in center field.
• Throwing: arm strength is not something a box score or the historical record measures, so we cannot put a number on this one, though contemporaries praised it.

The combination mattered because it is rare. Only seven players in the historical record have 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, and Mays is the only one of them who also has 300 stolen bases and a .300 career average (Alex Rodriguez has the steals, with 329, but a .295 average). Mays did it as a center fielder, a more demanding position than first base. Defensive value is the one place where the box score undersells him. Putouts and fielding percentage reward the fielder who gets to the ball and makes the routine play, and they say nothing about the ball that other center fielders would never have reached.

The decline and the Mets, 1967 to 1973

By 1967 the numbers had dipped: 22 home runs, 70 runs batted in and a .263 average in 141 games. He still won the last of his Gold Gloves in 1968 and hit 23 home runs. In 1969 he played only 117 games and hit 13, though he was named to the All-Star team as he was in every season from 1954 through 1973. In 1970 he came back for 28 home runs and a .291 average in 139 games. In 1971 he hit 18 in 136 games and won the Roberto Clemente Award (which the historical data lists under that name). He was 40.

In May 1972 the Giants traded him to the New York Mets, and he split that year between San Francisco and New York (88 games, .250, eight home runs). His final season, 1973, was 66 games, a .211 average and six home runs, but the Mets won the National League pennant that year, and Mays appeared in a final World Series, which Oakland won. It was his fourth Series with the clubs he played for: 1951, 1954 and 1962 with the Giants and 1973 with the Mets, one win and three losses. His postseason batting line across six postseasons was 34 games, 30 hits in 121 at-bats and one home run, a .248 average that would not make a case for him by itself. October was never where his reputation was built.

24 All-Star Games from 20 selections

Mays was selected to the All-Star Game every year from 1954 through 1973, which is 20 selections in the historical data. The commonly cited number is 24 because from 1959 through 1962 the major leagues played two All-Star Games each season, so a player who made the team in all four of those years appeared in four additional games. That is the arithmetic behind 24: 20 seasons plus four extra games. Mays, Musial and Aaron are the names usually cited at the top of that list, and Mays was voted the game's Most Valuable Player in 1963 and 1968.

Hall of Fame and legacy

Mays was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year on the Baseball Writers' Association of America ballot, with 409 of the 432 votes cast. The threshold was 324, so he cleared it with room to spare, at about 94.7 percent, and he was elected on the first ballot.

His legacy has three parts. The first is statistical: very few players have matched his combination of power, speed and defense. The second is cultural: the Say Hey Kid nickname, the stickball games with neighborhood children in New York that he is remembered for, and the sense that he played with a joy that was visible to fans in the upper deck. The third is historical, because he helped carry the integration begun by Robinson into the 1950s and 1960s, when Black stars like Mays, Aaron and Roberto Clemente became the faces of the National League. The profile of Roberto Clemente is a good companion on that last point.

What the numbers cannot tell you

Three limits are worth stating plainly. First, the historical record has no wins above replacement, so any claim about his total value in that framework is not from this article; sites that publish those numbers disagree slightly on their method. Second, it has no Statcast data, so the speed and the throws are untouched by modern measurement. Third, the Negro leagues coverage before 1948 is partial, and the two seasons lost to military service are a gap that no statistic fills.

What we can say is narrower and still convincing. Over 22 seasons in the major leagues, Mays hit .301 with 660 home runs and 339 steals, won two Most Valuable Player awards and a dozen Gold Gloves, and played in the All-Star Game every year for two decades. If you want to compare him against any modern star, use the stat calculator to work out rates like OPS from his raw totals, and the leaders pages to see how today's players rank.

Common questions

How many home runs did Willie Mays hit? 660, which ranks sixth in the historical record behind Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez.

How many Gold Gloves did he win? Twelve, in every season from 1957 through 1968. The award began in 1957.

When did he win the Most Valuable Player award? In 1954 and 1965.

Did he play in the Negro leagues? Yes. The historical record lists 13 games with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, when he had 10 hits in 43 at-bats.

How many World Series did he win? One, in 1954 with the Giants. He also played in the 1951, 1962 and 1973 Series, all of which his teams lost.

Where to go next

Compare his totals with the leaders on our leaders page, or read the Hank Aaron profile for the other great hitter of the same era. The Mickey Mantle profile tells the New York side of the 1950s center-field debate.