Say what? The trading of Willie Mays

Next time you need a quick trivia question to win, say, an adult beverage at the neighborhood establishment, remember the name Charlie Williams.

He is the pitcher who is shipped, along with $50,000, by the New York Mets to the San Francisco Giants 53 years ago today for the once-great-but-now-fading Willie Mays.

Charlie Williams

While Williams puts in serviceable seven seasons with the Giants, Mays spends a mostly unremarkable season-plus with the Mets.

The difference, of course, is Mays’ name helps sell tickets in the city where his Hall of Fame career starts in 1951 with the New York Giants.

“When you come back to New York,” Mays later says, “you come back to paradise.”

Mays’ first game back in “paradise” with the Mets comes three days later against, of course, the Giants.

Willie Mays homering in his first Mets game

And, yes, he homers against his former teammate with a solo shot in the fifth inning off Don Carrithers to snap a 4-4 tie in a game New York eventually wins 5-4 before a Sunday afternoon crowd of 35,505 at Shea Stadium.

The homer is Mays’ first as a Met and 647th of his career.

He retires after the 1973 season with 660 homers, which at the time ranks third all-time behind only Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (713 through 1973 with 42 more to come in his career).