Willie McCovey and Willie Stargell “The Other Willies”
1983 was a standout season for baseball’s Willies. Speedsters Willie McGee and Willie Wilson were All Stars. As was Blue Jays’ slugger Willie Upshaw, who drove in one hundred and four runs, batted .306 and posted a 136 OPS+. And while not an All Star, on a per game basis, Royals’ first baseman Willie Aikens was every bit as good as his Torontonian namesake, hitting .302 and posting a 149 OPS+. Willie Randolph was quietly excellent once again, accumulating 3.3 WAR as the Yankees’ every day second baseman. And meanwhile, in Philadelphia, middle reliever Willie Hernández was eating innings and earning the job as the future closer for the Detroit Tigers, where—just one year later—he’d win the Cy Young award and an MVP award and a World Series ring. As much as 1983 was the year of Cal and Eddie, it was equally—if not more so—the year of The Willies.
Today, the only active Willie in Major League Baseball is Willie Calhoun, whose -2.0 career WAR besmirches the name that was once associated with baseball royalty. One hundred and thirty two years ago, Wee Willie Keeler helped the Orioles of the National League win their first pennant, collecting two hundred and nineteen hits, twenty-two triples and a .371 average. The five foot, four inch outfielder would go on to have eight consecutive two hundred hit seasons and nearly three thousand hits in his Hall of Fame career. In spite of his .341 career average as his oft-quoted motto (“hit ‘em where they ain’t”), though, Wee Willie was not the game’s greatest Willie. No, that distinction belongs to “The Say Hey Kid”—Willie Mays—arguably the most complete player to ever put on a baseball uniform. Except, possibly, for that other Willie. Willie Wells.
Though much less famous than his Major League successor, Willie James Wells was—according to many—the best hitter, fielder and runner in all of the Negro Leagues for two decades. As comparison, his 162 game averages split the difference between Stan Musial and Willie Mays. Wells stole more bases, drove in more runs and hit more doubles on a per game basis than either legend. Moreover, he was a flawless defensive shortstop and third baseman. And yet, his extraordinary per game WAR (.048) still looks slightly up at Mays’ (.052). With the exception of the thirteen games he played for the Birmingham Barons in 1948, Willie Mays played his entire career in an integrated sport, suggesting that his competition was greater than what Wells (or Babe Ruth, for that matter) faced. Otherworldly as he was and unknown as he still is, Willie Wells is likely just the second greatest baseball Willie of all time.
Or was he? What about Willie McCovey, Mays’ longtime teammate, who won an MVP award and three home run crowns on his way to five hundred and twenty one career round trippers—the same exact number as Ted “The Kid” Williams? Or how about Willie Stargell, the Pirates’ legend who also won an MVP and two home run crowns en route to four hundred and seventy-five dingers—the exact same number as Stan “The Man” Musial? Where do those Willies stand on the Mt. Rushmore of baseball Willies?
Willie McCovey had two forty home run seasons and five more thirty home run campaigns. Willie Stargell, meanwhile, had two forty home run seasons, four with thirty or more and one with twenty-nine. McCovey had 2,211 base hits and 1,555 RBIs. Stargell had 2,232 hits and 1,540 RBIs. Both were left handed. Both were defensive liabilities. They were born two years apart and they played in the National League together for roughly nineteen seasons. Whereas McCovey never won a World Series title, Stargell had two rings. “Stretch” operated as the taller, little brother of the greatest center fielder of his time (Mays) while “Pops” played half his career in the shadow of the second greatest right fielder of his generation (Clemente). Both men struggled with left handed pitching and—especially later in their careers—persistent knee injuries. Perhaps most amazingly, both men retired with an .889 career OPS and 147 OPS+. McCovey was two inches taller than Stargell, who was substantial in his own right. But, of all the Willies in all of baseball, no two were so similar as McCovey and Stargell.
Willie Lee McCovey was not the tallest player in the game—that would have been spectacled slugger Frank Howard—aka ”Hondo,” aka “The Capital Punisher.” And McCovey’s ranks just fifth in home runs for the 1960s, behind—get a load of this list—Harmon Killebrew, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson. But there might not have been a hitter more feared than “Stretch,” who led the league in Intentional Walks four times, and whose long arms and broad shoulders punished baseballs for twenty plus seasons. Joe Torre once described the abject fear that McCovey inspired among opposing infielders terrified by the prospects of a line drive screaming towards them. And in “Ball Four” Jim Bouton recounted pitchers making “whimpering animal sounds” in response to McCovey destroying baseballs in BP.
More than perhaps any player of any generation, McCovey embodied the idea of “speaking softly and carrying a big stick.” Outside of the batters’ box he was quiet and genial. But he was a murderous force at the plate, and especially to right handers, who he bloodlessly punished. Hobbled by arthritic knees, limited by mediocre defense, capped by a surplus of organizational talent, suppressed by a pitcher friendly ballpark and overshadowed by the greatest Willie of all time, Willie McCovey might have hit six or seven hundred home runs at a different time or a different place. But instead, he had to settle for a first ballot Hall of Fame career and a deadlock as the third (or second depending on where you stand on Willie Wells) greatest baseball Willie of all time.
While Mays and McCovey were teammates, frequent roommates and constant companions, the latter’s twin flame was actually playing for a different team, twenty-five hundred miles away. Like McCovey, Wilver Dornell Stargell was affable and cordial, an exuberant leader on the field, but also a mild-mannered superstar who preferred to remain outside of the spotlight. At “merely” six foot, two inches, Stargell was not quite so tall as McCovey. And over time, Pop’s waist expanded a couple belt notches beyond Stretch’s. But if you took a mallet and gently tapped on Willie McCovey’s head for twenty-one seasons, you’d probably end up with Willie Stargell, who similarly terrorized right handed pitchers, who was also hampered by bum knees and adverse park factors, and who excelled in the shadow of a more dynamic and pressworthy teammate (Roberto Clemente).
For the first eight years of his career, Stargell played at Forbes Field which, while spacious and generous for ground ball hitters, was brutal for sluggers. It’s been said that no one hit more four hundred and fifty foot outs than Willie Stargell, who was responsible for seven of the eighteen balls ever hit onto the eighty-six foot high roof at Forbes’ right field and who, in 1978—at the ripe age of thirty-eight—hit a five hundred and thirty five foot homer in a game against the Montreal Expos. Willie hit more home runs in the Seventies anyone else—more than Yaz and Reggie—and in far fewer at bats. Aside from walks, there is virtually no difference in the career stats of Stargell and McCovey. And if you neutralize the numbers for ballpark conditions and then squint your eyes, you could not tell the two players apart.
Beyond their shared first name and their doppelgänger stats, McCovey and Stargell co-represent an enduring Major League Baseball archetype: post-Jackie-and-Larry, post-Hank-and-Willie MLB stars. Stretch and Pops were MVP, Hall of Fame sluggers young enough to appreciate the monumental importance of their predecessors and old enough to recall the ugliness of baseball’s recent past. The two Willies respectfully thrived so that Curt Flood could brazenly protest. They demurred so their teammates—Mays and Clemente—could shine.
For years Stretch and Pops waited in line, accepted platoons and deferred surgeries. As young men, they were gigantic, athletic, brawny sluggers. By the end of their playing days, they were thicker and slower, but also universally revered and beloved. McCovey’s 1977 “Comeback Player of the Year Award” and Stargell’s 1979 MVP award were given as much (some would say “more”) on the basis of lifetime achievement as for their statistical performance. If Willie Mays was the untouchable standard, McCovey and Stargell—together—represented the enduring greatness of goodness. Mays broke the mold so that Stretch and Pops could form a new one—a mold which Willies named Randolph and Wilson could chase and which Willies named Upshaw and Aikens could swing for. It’s a mold that might now be impossible to fill. Which is why, I fear, that once Willie Calhoun either retires or is optioned back to the Minors, there will be no Willies left.