May 14, 1972: In his first game against the Giants after being traded to the Mets earlier in the season, Willie Mays hits a game-winning home run against his old teammates.

Willie Mays was better than you think.

In 1972, I mean.

When people think of Willie Mays and the New York Mets, they think about Mays showing all 42 of his years in the 1973 World Series. And Mays hadn't played well that summer, either. Actually, he played poorly, batting .211 with a .304 on-base percentage and a .344 slugging percentage in 66 games. But the image of Willie Mays stumbling and bumbling in his Mets uniform, while enduring, isn't exactly fair.

In 1971, playing for the San Francisco Giants, Mays had led the National League with a .429 on-base percentage (and his .482 slugging percentage wasn't too shabby, either). He got off to a terrible start in 1972, however. On May 11, his batting average stood at .184 and he hadn't homered in 49 at-bats. What's more, he was due to make $165,000 for the season. In 1972 that was a lot of money, money that Giants owner Horace Stoneham didn't think he could spare.

The Mets, meanwhile, had plenty of money, having drawn more than two million fans in each of the previous three seasons. What they didn't have plenty of was runs. In 1971, the Mets had scored only 588 runs, 200 fewer than the first-place Pirates. So while bringing Mays back to New York -- he had played with the Giants in Harlem from 1951 through 1957 -- was obviously a great PR move, the Mets really didn't need Mays' name to bring in fans; what they needed was Mays' bat to bring in more runs.

So on May 11, the Mets sent minor-league pitcher Charley Williams and $50,000 to the Giants, and in return they received the great Willie Mays.

It worked. Mays' first hit was a game-winning homer against the Giants, and he wound up with a .402 OBP and .446 slugging percentage for the Mets. He was acquired as a bench player but wound up playing in 69 games, due mostly to a rib-cage injury suffered by starting center fielder Tommie Agee.

Willie could still play center field, too. Sure, he'd slowed down some, but even at 41, Mays still worked hard. In How I Would Pitch to Babe Ruth, Tom Seaver wrote (or dictated),

One thing that surprised me when [Mays] joined the Mets was how well thought-out his defensive play was. You'd think, here was a guy who ran so fast and got such a good jump on the ball that playing center field was easy for him. It might have been, but he thought about it too. He'd come up to me with a list before a game I was pitching and ask me how I was going to pitch to each batter. Was I going to keep the ball away from this guy, and would I change my tactics if a runner was on second? I'd tell him in detail and he'd decide just what he'd do with each player in each circumstance. "I'll play this man about four steps to the left; that guy I shade to the right and move in if someone's on first." He'd put the list in his back pocket. And if I looked around during the game, there he was, just where he said he'd be."

Statistics are often derided by people in the media. The other day I was in the car, listening to a radio host talk about Reggie Jackson, about how if you just look at the statistics you might think that Reggie doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame (I don't agree), so you have to watch him play, or talk to people who watched him play. That's fine. But statistics can tell us things, too. My only personal memories of Willie Mays are 1) watching him look old in the '73 Series, and 2) watching him scowl his way through a three-hour autograph session. From those, I might conclude that Mays was nothing more than a cranky old guy who should have quit playing when he was 40.

A look at the statistics, though, tells me that Mays was not only the great player that everyone says he was, but that he also was a fine player even into his early forties and a solid addition to the Mets, at least for one season.