Everyone has seen it. In slightly decayed black-and-white footage, a center fielder, wearing the number 24, turns his back on a well-struck baseball and, apparently without looking and using some weirdly powerful, instinctive positional guidance, races at top speed toward the stadium wall—and then reaches out in front of his body, back still turned, still running hard, and catches the ball. (Then, in one fluid action, he spins and throws.) It is Willie Mays, of the New York Giants, in Game One of the 1954 World Series, hauling in a shot by the Cleveland Indians’ Vic Wertz. Thousands of plays have happened since, catches as magnificent and many more meaningful, and yet there it is, the one and only.
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