Wills Helped Keep Dodgers a Step Ahead

Ernie Banks never got in a World Series. Neither did Rod Carew.

But they got in baseball’s Hall of Fame on the first bounce.

Maury Wills got in lots of World Series. But he never got in the Hall of Fame. In 20 bounces.

To me, that is one of the great injustices of the grand old game. It has always rankled.

I always considered Maurice Morning Wills as the original L.A. Dodger. In many ways, the man who made the franchise.

The Dodgers finished next to last in 1958, the year the club moved to Los Angeles. The very next season, they won the World Series.

The principal difference between the team that finished seventh in the National League and the one that won it all was Maury Wills. Everyone else on the roster save one--Wally Moon, traded from the St. Louis Cardinals--had been on the team when it came over from Brooklyn.

It’s impossible to overstate Wills’ importance to the Dodgers and thus to baseball itself. He was the difference between seventh and first.

Baseball has always been obtuse when it comes to appreciating Maury Wills. Consider, for example, he spent nine years in the minor leagues before the game in its wisdom brought him up where he belonged, to the major league level. He is Exhibit A in the game show called, “What Is So Smart About Baseball?” Leaving Wills in double-A is like keeping Pavarotti singing used-car jingles, having Olivier play a butler.

Wills didn’t come into the big leagues with drums rolling, bands blaring, carpet unfurling. They sent him a bus ticket and the name of a motel to check into and put him on 24-hour recall. He was a 27-year-old rookie, and they brought him to L.A. to back up Don Zimmer at shortstop. Period. They merely wanted him to turn the occasional double play, but Wills ran the team right into the pennant and the championship--not so much with stolen bases as with his aggressive, take-the-extra-base daring.

Wills had to wait for the steal sign in those days. His speed, while impressive, was not blazing. And it took the Dodger manager, Walter Alston, some time to realize that Wills stole as many bases with his brains as he did with his feet. Wills well remembers the afternoon of an exhibition in Spokane when the skipper came to him thoughtfully and said, “You’re my leadoff man.” He paused a minute and then added: “By the way, you don’t have to wait for the steal sign anymore.”

Wills responded by swiping 50 bases to lead the league in 1960.

Still, nothing prepared baseball for Wills’ statistics in 1962, when he became the first major league ballplayer to steal more than 100 bases. His total of 104 not only broke Ty Cobb’s record of 96, he broke the National League record--set by Bob Bescher of Cincinnati--by 23 bases. That record had stood for 51 years, Cobb’s for 47.

To get an idea of how imposing a feat Wills’ steals were, you have only to know that in 1938 Stan Hack led the National League in steals with 16. And as late as 1950, Dom DiMaggio led the slow-freight American League with 15. Wills stole that many in two weeks.

He not only stole bases with his brains, he hit the same way. Every at-bat was such a cat-and-mouse game that Maury’s nickname on the club was “Mouse.”

No one ever did so much with so little. Wills had no power. He hit 20 home runs in his career, but only a handful of them went out in the air. He hit the most ground-ball homers of anyone in the game, and his “home runs” usually came when he beat the tag at home plate.

Outfields played him so shallow that he probably hit the only triple against Willie Mays. Wills could never stand there and admire his home runs. He was too busy rounding second.

He revolutionized the game. Not until 1980 would anyone in the American League--Rickey Henderson--steal 100 bases. And in the National League, only Lou Brock and Vince Coleman were to hit the century mark.

Base stealers today have one incalculable advantage: They are often speeding along on artificial surfaces as built for speed as Olympic lanes. In Wills’ heyday, only the Houston Astrodome had a sprinter-friendly synthetic surface. He ran on the same surfaces as lions did. In fact, in San Francisco, they used to water the surface until it resembled the Okefenokee Swamp.

Wills had the greatest slide since Cobb. It didn’t matter on the rare occasions when the throw beat him because Wills could slide away from or under the tag.

He got picked off base by that old adversary of the athlete--drugs and booze--at the end of his career. It was hard to believe because Wills had always been this purposeful, committed individual throughout his career--you never saw him dawdle over anything. He went through life as if he were stealing second. But cocaine proved to have this balk move to the bag that Maury had difficulty figuring out.

Still, getting picked off didn’t mean Wills was out. He got picked off first in a World Series once--and beat the throw to second.

He did that this time, too. Slid under the tag. Wills is safe now. As usual.

I caught up with the old thief by ship-to-shore phone the other day as he was en route to Alaska on a cruise ship where he is a lecturer.

“My sobriety is working fine and has for years,” he said proudly. “I blame myself for not thinking of it sooner. Every day is a treasure. I don’t have any money, but I’m a rich man. You find material things in life are far less important than the spiritual. The gold in your life is not a metal.”

Wills is one of a cast of stars who will be honored at the third annual Sports Legends West dinner at the Regent Beverly Wilshire on June 7. Proceeds go to the Paralysis Project of America, an organization dedicated to the more than half-million Americans brought low by spinal cord injuries.

The Hall of Fame did something the rest of baseball couldn’t do--it let Wills die on third base. Kept him from scoring.

But the veterans committee has a chance to override this oversight. They finally put Phil Rizzuto in this year--30 years late, but where he belongs.

Baseball kept Wills out of the league he belonged in for nine years, kept him off of the honor roll he belonged on for 16. They should simply vote their conscience. Give him a small lead and hold the door open for 3.3 seconds.

Wills will go in standing up. He won’t even have to slide.