Jim O’Donnell: Without Willie Mays, would there be ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas?’
WHEN THE CUBS OPENED a four-game series at San Francisco Monday night, all of the Giants wore No. 24.
The gesture was a fitting tribute to Willie Mays, who died at age 93 last week.
There was a time in America — especially after Cleveland saddened some future altar boys by trading Rocky Colavito to Detroit — when two names loomed far larger than all others on the Major League Baseball marquee:
Mays and Mickey Mantle.
That was it.
SURE THERE WERE regional heroes, like Ernie Banks and Henry Aaron and Al Kaline and Ted Williams.
But May and Mantle were top of the heap.
The fact that both reached superstardom in New York City when The Big Apple was the unquestioned media capital of the planet played into it.
But so did their five-tool transcendence.
MAYS TRANSCENDED INTO A WHOLE DIFFERENT REALM when he unwittingly helped pave the way to the enduring animated holiday classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
The back story:
In October 1962, Mays and the Giants dropped a supremely classic World Series to the Yankees. Game 7 at Candlestick Park ended with a 1-0 NY win when infielder Bobby Richardson snagged a vicious Willie McCovey line drive with Mays on second, Matty Alou on third.
(Suburban link: McHenry native Chuck Hiller was SF's starting second baseman that afternoon; He later won a World Series ring as a coach with the dreaded Whitey Herzog and the 1982 champion Cardinals.)
AN AMBITIOUS YOUNG TV PRODUCER in San Francisco named Lee Mendelson was struck with an optimistic vision for the following autumn:
Why not a network special spotlighting Mays and getting cameras into backstage MLB slots where none had been before?
NBC was the logical home since the Peacock Network held both radio and TV rights to the 1963 Series. Corporate bosses green-lighted the project. Sporty Giants owner Horace Stoneham was all aboard.
So on Sunday night, Oct. 6, 1963, Mendelson's “A Man Called Mays” aired.
(Even in its original black-and-white, the 60-minute documentary remains fascinating period viewing on YouTube — the drop-ins with Leo Durocher and Casey Stengel are charmingly synthetic and historic.)
The program ran a respectable No. 2 in Nielsens, since CBS was featuring scandal-teasing Elizabeth Taylor in the first “million-dollar TV special” twirling about her native London.
ONE MAN WATCHING was hard-core Giants fan Charles M. Schulz. His “Peanuts” comic strip was then 13 years old and rapidly gaining ascent as a pop cultural phenomenon. His home drawing studio was a little more than an hour north of Candlestick in the Sonoma County town of Sebastopol.
Mendelson then had a second vision, as he would tell media historians: “I had just done a special on the best baseball player on the planet. Why not one now on the worst — Charlie Brown?”
The hurdle was entree to Schulz, who was growing protectively aware of the ancillary gold mine he was sitting on. Mendelson called, his primary bona fides being the Mays/NBC special.
Schulz acquiesced. The two men proved to be creatively simpatico. Schulz needed a facilitator to expand “Peanuts” from print into saleable video and Mendelson became the channeler.
THEIR FIRST COLLABORATIVE EFFORT was a documentary with limited animation titled “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.” It failed to find sponsorship and never aired. (The title would be reloaded atop a 1969 film.)
Back to the drawing board, and Mendelson proposed a holiday special. Schulz hopped on it, with his concepts reflecting many of the straightforward values of his Minnesota childhood.
A Time magazine cover in April 1965 further credentialed “Peanuts,” Coca-Cola moved into the frame with serious seed backing. Animator Bill Melendez and jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi were added to the team.
And on Thursday night, Dec. 9, 1965, CBS presented “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Eventually, it would win both Peabody and Emmy Awards and remain a mood-setting, holiday hand-it-forward well into the current millennium.
WHETHER WILLIE MAYS EVER saw or savored the Linus and Lucy Yuletide classic is unknown.
But in a subsequent “Peanuts” strip, Schulz paid clever tribute.
Charlie Brown is in a spelling bee. He's asked to spell “maze.”
“M-A-Y-S” is his reply.
From Sebastopol to the current Oracle Park and beyond, that will win it every time.
STREET-BEATIN':
Sean McDonough touched flawless with his brilliant ABC/ESPN play-by-play on Game 7 of the Florida-Edmonton Stanley Cup Final. His call equaled the contest for engagement and memorability. (Analyst P.K. Subban is a star with notable potential beyond hockey broadcasting.) …
Tom Ricketts and all Cubs staff involved deserve nothing but five-ivy kudos for the Ryne Sandberg statue dedication. Although the idea of forever-young Bob Costas as a senior statesman of the game forces some rough calendar calculating. …
Far too predictably, on an almost nightly basis, NBC News has Lester Holt shilling for the web's upcoming coverage of the Paris Olympics. Maybe producers can land Claudine Longet and a hologram of Maurice Chevalier for Holt to interview. …
And Eddie Zaleski, on quick-fix possibilities for NBCSCH's futilely redundant White Sox coverage: “They should move Steve Stone to play-by-play, Ozzie Guillen to game analyst and stick the postgame cameras in any Bridgeport bar willing to have them.”
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.