How Mays' path to MLB fame was aided by a scout at Rickwood Field

This story was published before Willie Mays passed away on Tuesday at the age of 93.

The photo hangs on the wall of Ed Montague’s Bay Area home, an enduring reminder of his family’s unique connection to one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

To the left is Montague’s father, also named Ed, a former shortstop who logged four seasons with Cleveland before embarking on a four-decade scouting career with the Giants. To the right is the legendary Willie Mays, the man the elder Montague is credited with signing.

“He was so proud,” said the younger Montague, who spent 34 seasons as a Major League umpire before retiring following the 2009 campaign. “It was talked about so much in our house that my younger brother, Jerry, who was four years younger than me, he’d go around the neighborhood and say Willie was our cousin. Willie was a big conversation around the house for us.”

The black-and-white snapshot of the smiling men captures a relationship that began at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., where the Giants and Cardinals will face off Thursday in a special regular-season game that will pay tribute to the Negro Leagues and Mays, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 93.

Before he became known as the “Say Hey Kid,” Mays was a teenage hotshot who cut his teeth with the Negro Leagues’ Birmingham Black Barons, who played their home games at Rickwood Field from 1924-1960. Mays was still attending Fairfield (Ala.) Industrial High School when he debuted with the Black Barons in 1948, one year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“It was my dream to play for the Black Barons,” Mays said in his 2020 memoir, “24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid,” co-written with longtime San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea. “I thought that’d be the highest level I’d reach. My dad used to take me to the games, so Rickwood Field meant a lot to me.”

A literal boy among men, Mays found an early champion in Black Barons manager Lorenzo “Piper" Davis, who entrusted the baseball wunderkind with the starting job in center field after his predecessor, Norman Robinson, broke his leg. The 17-year-old Mays ultimately developed into a key piece for the 1948 Black Barons, who advanced to the final Negro Leagues World Series before falling to the Homestead Grays in five games.

“I would call Willie the best natural ballplayer I ever saw,” Davis said in a 1987 interview with Allen Barra, author of “Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark.” “He could do everything right from the start, and experience just helped him to do it better. He was so good in the outfield that our other outfielders kind of got lazy. They would let him take anything that he could get to.

“One thing I want you to think about. When you look out to the outfield at Rickwood Field, remember that Willie Mays didn’t just play center field there. He played all the outfield there.”

By the spring of 1950, the Birmingham community knew it was likely watching Mays play his final season with the Black Barons, as word of his five-tool talent had begun to spread and attract the attention of Major League scouts, including Montague, who was initially dispatched to Rickwood Field to evaluate another prospect for the Giants.

“He went to look at Alonzo Perry, a first baseman, pretty good ballplayer, but he saw this young kid,” the younger Montague recalled in a recent phone interview. “Willie caught his eye, which was pretty easy to do, as great as he was. And so my dad forgot about Alonzo Perry and followed Willie.”

The elder Montague shared his account of his first encounter with Mays in a November 1954 letter to Tim Cohane, the sports editor of Look magazine:

“When I arrived in Birmingham for the Sunday double header I had no inkling of Willie Mays being on the club but during batting and fielding practice my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw a young colored boy swing the bat with great speed and power, his hands had the quickness of a young Joe Louis throwing punches. I also saw his great arm during fielding practice and during the games his speed and fielding ability showed up. This was the greatest young ball player I had ever seen in my life or my scouting career.”

Montague and fellow Giants scout Bill Harris followed Mays to Chattanooga, Tenn., for another doubleheader before calling farm director Jack Schwarz and urging him to move quickly to sign the rising star.

“From the story I got from my dad, he asked Willie if he wanted to play pro ball, and he had to clear it through his manager, Piper Davis,” the younger Montague said. “My dad went to Willie’s house and met with his dad, and his aunt Sarah cooked him a fried chicken dinner, and they signed Willie to a contract.”

Mays received $4,000 and a monthly salary of $250 from the Giants, who also agreed to send $10,000 to Black Barons owner Tom Hayes.

“I am just beginning to realize what a hell of a deal we made in acquiring Willie Mays,” Montague the scout wrote in another letter to Schwarz dated June 22, 1950, shortly after the contract was finalized. “When the deal was announced this morning the tongues of several scouts started wagging and I found out how vitally interested some of the clubs were, particularly the Boston Braves.”

Several other teams had their chances to land Mays, including the Yankees and Dodgers, but they both whiffed after their scouts concluded that the teenage phenom couldn’t hit a curveball. The Red Sox, meanwhile, had a Double-A team that shared Rickwood Field with the Black Barons, but they didn’t take advantage of their easy access to Mays, resisting integration until they signed Pumpsie Green in 1959.

“It worked out,” Mays said in his memoir. “I liked the Giants. The Red Sox scouted me, too. They didn’t like African-American guys back then, so I didn’t get a chance to play there. I came to the Giants because other teams didn’t take me. The Red Sox, they finally brought in Pumpsie Green. Second baseman, slick-fielding. That wasn’t until 1959. Other teams were slow, too. Maybe I was meant to be a Giant.”

The younger Montague will visit Rickwood Field for the first time on Thursday at the invitation of the Giants, giving him a chance to retrace history and sit in the very stands where his father first laid eyes on Mays over 70 years ago.

“It’ll be pretty cool,” Montague said. “It’ll be emotional thinking of my dad sitting in the stands there. I’ll just close my eyes and just imagine my dad sitting up there with his fedora hat and cigar with all the other scouts and watching the game.”