Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born into an athletic family in 1931. His father, Willie “Cat” Sr. was a semi-pro baseball player and center fielder like his son, and his mother was a high school sprinting champion, as Notable Biographies tells us. Mays was basically surrounded by baseball from infancy. His father, after divorcing from his mother when Mays was 3 years old, taught him the basics off the field, and let his son sit in the dugout during Birmingham Industrial League games.
By age 13, Mays was playing on a semi-professional team called the Gray Sox. From 13 to 16, as Biography says, he also played on the Fairfield Industrial High School basketball and football teams. At age 16, he entered what was called “The Negro League,” the national professional league for Black people, as center fielder for the Birmingham Black Barons. There, he earned far more than he could otherwise: $250 a week. He was also able to finish high school.
A scout for the New York Giants, one of the newly “integrated” teams (Black and white people combined), visited a Black Barons game and was captivated by Mays. In 1950, Mays joined the minor leagues on a $4,000 bonus and $250 a week salary, and by the end of 1951, Mays had already made his way up to starting center fielder in the majors for the New York Giants themselves.
