Willie Mays was as good — and as cool — as anyone who ever played

Because Unseld is 6-foot-7 and 245 pounds in the NBA record book and Mays, on my 1957 Topps card of him, is listed as 5-10½, I suppose this is impossible. But myths, and memories, have their prerogatives.

I enjoy thinking that Mays’s huge, powerful hands help explain a lot, like the prodigious distance of his longest home runs, several over 500 feet, despite him being listed, at various times, as 170, 175 or 180 pounds. Or his ability to hit rockets to all fields when it seemed he had been fooled and his feet were scrambling like a crab in the batter’s box as he swung. Or why he could hit with only nine fingers on the bat and his left pinkie below the knob. And, of course, how his powerful arm could launch that iconic spinning-discus heave from deepest center field in the Polo Grounds all the way to second base in the 1954 World Series.

Of course, his hands don’t explain his fabulous batting eye, with almost as many walks as strikeouts. Or his blurring speed on the bases, which enabled him to steal what he wanted whenever it was needed most. Or his acrobatic, twisting slides, which made hard dirt seem as malleable to his wishes as water in a swimming pool might be to us. Or his center field GPS that let him gobble up ground in the outfield alleys on his way to climbing a fence so he could plant his free hand on the top, then lunge even higher. Or his baseball IQ and daring — psychological warfare version — that rattled, intimidated or embarrassed opponents into playing their worst when faced with the certainty that he would play his best.

Or, so important to those of us who got to watch most of his prime, his thrilling love of personal style in every gesture as he turned the field into a stage. Hats have flown off other heads, but Willie’s flew the best. Anybody can make a basket catch, then throw the ball back submarine style — but on every catch? Except those on which he was flying level with the ground.

Whether wise or not, whether suited to your own proper use, or, more likely, outside your comfort zone, Mays inspired you to spread yourself. For instance, to type in the kind of overblown hat-flying sentence fragments that, when you wrote about so many others, you were able to say to yourself, “Now stop that!”

Mays made us normal folks feel just a little crazy, a little more wildly alive, in the best ways. My senior year in high school, when Mays hit 52 home runs and was the National League MVP in 1965, our best player was my teammate and shortstop, Charlie Freret. I was proud of a bone bruise he left in my knuckle for years from catching his pegs to first base. When the All-Star Game came to RFK Stadium in 1969, a young man ran into center field during the game to try to shake Mays’s hand. The photo made the papers in part because it was symbolic — D.C. was an American League town, and Mays embodied all the greatness in the NL we never got to watch in person. So, why not, go nuts and run to Willie. The guy in the picture was Freret.

For Mays, spontaneous joy and the unscriptable randomness of every baseball bounce provided a perfect blend of creativity, hard-earned craft and pure play. The big smiles, the pictures of him playing stick ball with kids in Harlem, his “Say Hey Kid” moniker, bestowed because he greeted so many people with a simple “Say hey,” were all genuine.

Because I didn’t become The Washington Post’s national baseball writer until two years after Mays retired, I never got to meet that version of the man. However, I always looked for him at old-timers games and Hall of Fame inductions, and I had a long talk with him as part of something he was promoting; after all, he was from that century of exploited MLB players who looked out for a post-career income. In 23 years as a player, Mays earned less than $2 million pretax, according to Baseball Reference.

His resting face in retirement seemed to have plenty of emotions going on under the surface, some sad or tired. Any African American who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1930s and ’40s, played three years in the Negro Leagues and was never paid a fraction of what he was worth by MLB owners had to know, to the bone, all about racism. His long friendship with Giants teammate Bobby Bonds, and his tutoring of his godson Barry Bonds, put Mays close to the flame but outside the controversies surrounding Barry.

Both of the Bonds men loved baseball and, along with Willie, were deep students of it — three gurus. Nobody talked inside baseball better than Barry. One afternoon, long before a game, Barry was in the mood to talk hitting, and he kept returning to Mays’s advice as a touchstone.

However, all three were ambivalent, and at times perhaps bitter, toward MLB the institution. Sometimes with cause. Bobby had been a strong early backer of the players union when that was a risk. When Barry passed both Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron for the all-time home run record, I’m convinced that, in part, he did it for his late father and Willie. What isn’t a tangled web?

The one place where I saw what I think of as the Young Willie was whenever he was in a group of ballplayers of any age. Mays loved to tease, in his high-pitched voice, and to be teased. His calm refrain to deflect almost any question was, “Whatever makes sense.” My wife wishes I hadn’t adopted it.

My favorite star growing up was Aaron. When you factor in how spectacularly Aaron played past 35, though naturally in less games per year as he aged, while Mays saw his production fall off past 35, as most do, you can make a case that there’s almost nothing to choose between the total careers of the pair. Quiet Henry was often content to be a bit overlooked in Milwaukee and Atlanta, while flamboyant Willie loved the attention New York and San Francisco poured on him.

But in Mays’s prime, from his MVP season in 1954 through his MVP season in ’65, when the most knowledgeable baseball experts on Earth (teenagers) debated such things, it was Willie, the equal to any center fielder ever, who edged out injury-prone Mickey Mantle for the top glamour spot. Mantle changed the game when he came to bat. Mays changed the game whenever he was on the field.

Baseball fans love debates, especially ones we know will never get settled. Wins Above Replacement is a modern stat with imperfections. But, for today, the all-time leaders among everyday players make an interesting top five: 1. Barry Bonds (162.8), who gets a big asterisk from me; 2. Babe Ruth (162.2, not including his pitching); 3. Willie Mays (156.2); 4. Ty Cobb (151.5); and 5. Aaron (143.1).

Among active players, the leader is Mike Trout at 86.2. We know how great Trout has been.

Of course, Willie Mays wasn’t twice as good. But — so long, Say Hey — sometimes it seemed that way.