1 of 5 | San Francisco Giants nice Willie Mays died final month from coronary heart failure. File Photograph by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photograph
July 9 (UPI) — Barry Bonds and former President Invoice Clinton have been amongst a number of audio system at a celebration of life for the late Willie Mays, honoring the baseball icon with phrases of affection from the sector at Oracle Park in San Francisco..
Corridor of Famers Reggie Jackson, Joe Torre, Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley have been amongst these assembled. Former President Barack Obama remembered Mays via a video message performed for the hundreds who attended.
“As I’ve contemplated on what I would say, with out crying, about my godfather tonight, there have been solely two phrases I might consider,” Bonds mentioned. “It was the identical two phrases I’ve thought of my father. It was: Thanks, Willie.
“Willie, 55 years in the past, you place your arms round a 5-year-old boy and mentioned, ‘Hey child, you are coming with me.’ And I knew at that second what I needed to be. That was knowledgeable baseball participant, like my father and Willie.”
Mays died final month from coronary heart failure. He was 93.
“Willie Mays gave me the possibility to comprehend what actual greatness is,” Clinton mentioned.
“It is a curious mixture of intelligence, dedication, the desire to win and a elementary humility to imagine that the hassle is the prize — a present he leaves us all with and that I hope we will all share and cherish for the remainder of our lives.”
Obama, who introduced Mays with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, praised the baseball legend for utilizing his reputation to “change racial attitudes in a manner that political speeches alone by no means might.”
He mentioned an argument might be made that Mays, who additionally performed within the Negro Leagues, is the “biggest baseball participant who ever lived.”
“It made folks re-examine how they considered their fellow residents and the crucial of true equality and helped pave the best way for the civil rights revolution that will transfer us towards a extra good union,” Obama mentioned. “Not many athletes can declare that sort of influence.
“In a really actual sense, Willie Mays’ profession was one of many basis stones that finally allowed somebody like me to even take into account working for president of america.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, baseball legends Juan Marichal and Felipe Alou and former managers Dusty Baker and Joey Amalfitano and Mays’ son, Michael Mays, additionally spoke on the ceremony in San Francisco.
“Willie Mays performed in a transformative time in baseball,” Manfred mentioned. “He was 16 when Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier. He was 17 when he debuted within the Negro Leagues.
“He was simply 20 when he arrived within the main leagues in 1951. Willie’s exceptional means and his love of the sport took New York, and ultimately the nation, by storm.”
James Inhofe
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., makes opening remarks at a listening to titled “Oversight of the Environmental Safety Company” in Washington on Might 20, 2020. Inhofe, an Military veteran and local weather change critic who served in Congress as a member of the Home of Representatives and most just lately as a member of the Senate, died on the age of 89 on July 4. Photograph by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photograph
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