Three years after Jackie Robinson joined Major League Baseball, Mays became the first black player to appear in the Class B Interstate League, four levels below the majors. But much of the country remained rooted in Jim Crow laws and mentalities. Throughout the Giants’ weekend series at Municipal Stadium against the Hagerstown Braves, Mays stayed in a separate hotel from his white teammates and endured racial epithets from fans.
“It didn’t take me long to realize that Hagerstown was the only town in our league below the Mason-Dixon line,” Mays wrote in his 1988 autobiography, “Say Hey.” “When I first walked on the field, I heard someone yelling, ‘Who’s that nigga walking on the field?’ But I didn’t let it bother me.
Seventy-four years ago this month, a lasting bond was forged between arguably the greatest baseball player of all time and a small town 70 miles northwest of D.C. Mays, who died the last week at 93, has never forgotten Hagerstown, both for his role in launching his career with the Giants and for the way they treated him. Over the next decades, he recounted his experiences in books, documentaries, interviews and even in his 1979 Hall of Fame induction speech.
The city hasn’t forgotten Mays, either. Although he never played for a local team, several iterations of Hagerstown baseball franchises have seen Mays’ No. 24 jersey retired since 2004.
The newest of these franchises is the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars, an independent Atlantic League expansion team that plays in a stadium a mile from where Mays took the field. On Tuesday, in their first home game since Mays’ death, the Flying Boxcars presented a video tribute and observed a moment of silence in his honor.
“He’s probably one of the top five players of all time, so it’s always been a source of pride in our community that Willie Mays played his first game at Hagerstown Municipal Stadium,” said Flying general manager Boxcars, David Blenckstone. “It has always held a special historic place in the history of minor league baseball in Hagerstown.”
But for some, Mays’ experience in Hagerstown remains a neglected aspect of the town’s history. The hotel in the Jonathan Street area where Mays once stayed is now the parking lot of a church. Municipal Stadium was demolished in 2022. Meritus Park, a new downtown stadium that opened last month, does not yet feature a permanent tribute to Mays.
Tekesha Martinez, who is Hagerstown’s first black mayor, said Mays’ history with the city is “not well celebrated, told (or) known in Hagerstown or our county.”
“All I know are bits and pieces of the story,” Martinez said. “If I had known there was someone like Willie Mays walking down Jonathan Street, playing in our town…I would have been more proud to be from Hagerstown as a black woman.”
Mays grew up in Jim Crow Alabama, but the racism and segregation he encountered in Hagerstown left a lasting impression. When he played in nearby DC and Baltimore, there were no restrictions on where he was allowed to stay. “But here in Hagerstown, located halfway between these towns, I could not stay with the rest of the team,” he wrote in his autobiography.
The Giants tried to support Mays. A group of White’s teammates snuck into his room at the Harmon Hotel and slept on the floor to keep him company. His manager, Chick Genovese, ate with him at segregated restaurants around town.
Yet his time with the Giants was Mays’ first experience as the only black player on his team. When Mays played in the Negro Leagues with the Birmingham Black Barons, he and his teammates faced racism together. In Hagerstown, he experienced it alone.
“It was the first time I ever went anywhere alone, because even when I was on the road with the Barons in a segregated situation, at least we were all separated at the same time in the same place,” Mays wrote.
The legacy of Mays’ experience in Hagerstown endures not only for the baseball star but also for the town. In 2004, the Hagerstown Suns, the city’s now-defunct minor league franchise, invited Mays back. When he agreed, it became an opportunity – 54 years later – for Hagerstown to make amends.
“I thought it was important for the community to have this moment — a second chance with Willie Mays, so to speak,” said Kurt Landes, the former Suns general manager who organized Mays’ visit. “Certainly, everyone knew that their first time in the community was not received positively. … So it was an opportunity for the community to be excited to welcome him back (and) excited to have the opportunity to redeem themselves.” Everyone felt it was a bit of a homecoming.
On Aug. 9, 2004, Mays, 73, was the guest of honor in a city that once mocked him. He filled the ballroom of a downtown hotel, where, according to a Hagerstown Herald-Mail story, some attendees paid as much as $1,000 for an autograph and a private meeting. As Landes introduced him to thunderous applause, Mays began to cry.
Later in the day, Mays returned to Municipal Stadium, before a game between the Suns and the Asheville Tourists. He met the players, threw out the ceremonial first pitch and received a standing ovation.
“He came back under much different circumstances than when he was here in 1950,” said Dan Spedden, a longtime Hagerstown baseball fan who attended the ceremonies. “He was very gracious about it. … He covered well in his book how he was treated here in 1950, but when he came back in 2004, I didn’t see any of that animosity or anything. He was just happy to be here and happy to have been so well received.
While many fans left that day with autographed memorabilia, Landes kept a unique souvenir. After learning Mays loved homemade chili, Landes and his wife filled a slow cooker with the family recipe and brought it to the stadium. Mays enjoyed three full bowls and Landes kept Mays’ spoon as a souvenir.
“I put it in a frame, and it was in my basement,” said Landes, president and general manager of the Class AAA Lehigh Valley IronPigs. “And then my wife and I, whenever we made chili from there, we called it Willie Chili.”
Shortly before Mays’ visit, then-Mayor William Breichner announced that the city would rededicate a street that ran alongside Municipal Stadium in Mays’ honor. But nine months later, the City Council voted to keep the old name, East Memorial Boulevard, after a group of veterans argued the street should be a commemoration of their service.
Some saw the incident as a re-emergence of Hagerstown’s past.
“Willie Mays is a veteran,” said Spedden, president of the Hagerstown/Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Perhaps the stain of this segregation has not really disappeared. There is still a part of it that lingers in many people, and it manifested itself in a way that dismayed and embarrassed me.
A few years before his death, Mays said he had reconciled his history with Hagerstown.
“They wanted to try to make up for the sadness I felt all those years earlier,” Mays wrote in a 2020 follow-up memoir, “24.” “The way I imagined it, I couldn’t blame the whole town. I wasn’t hurt by the city in 1950. I was hurt by the people. It was good that I went back.