|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Willie Mays
Baseball Hall of Fame
I was the first black in that particular league. And, we played in a town called Hagerstown, Maryland. I'll never forget this day, on a Friday. And, they call you all kind of names there, "nigger" this, and "nigger" that. I said to myself -- and this is why Piper Davis came in -- in my mind, "Hey, whatever they call you, they can't touch you. Don't talk back." Now this was on a Friday. And the Friday night I hit two doubles and a home run; they never clapped. The next day I hit the same thing. There was a house out there in the back there, I hit that twice. Now they started clapping a little bit. You know how that is, you know, they clapped a little bit. By Sunday there was a big headline in the paper: "Do Not Bother Mays." You understand what I'm saying? They call you all kinds of names. Now this is the first two games I played. By Sunday, I come to bat, they're all clapping. And I'm wondering, wait a minute, what happened to the Friday, what happened to the Saturday?
View Interview with Willie Mays
View Biography of Willie Mays
View Profile of Willie Mays
View Photo Gallery of Willie Mays
|
|
|
Willie Mays
Baseball Hall of Fame
When I came back in 1951, I didn't start in New York, I started in Philadelphia. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, that was my first game. I think I went 0 for 12, or 0 for 13, or whatever, and I'm really, really worried because in the minors I'm hitting .477, killing everybody. And I came to the majors, I couldn't hit. I was playing the outfield very, very well, throwing out everybody, but I just couldn't get a hit. I didn't strike out a lot. And I started crying, and Leo came to me and he says, "You're my center fielder; it doesn't make any difference what you do. You just go home, come back and play tomorrow." I think that really, really turned me around because the next day I hit a home run off of Spahn for my first hit. And, then I went another ten games, another ten at bat without getting a hit, and then I blossomed up right quick.
View Interview with Willie Mays
View Biography of Willie Mays
View Profile of Willie Mays
View Photo Gallery of Willie Mays
|
|
|
Craig McCaw
Pioneer of Telecommunications
I'm very dyslexic, so that forced me to be quite conceptual, because I'm not very good at details. And because I'm not good at details, I tend to be rather spatial in my thinking, oriented to things in general terms, rather than the specific. That allows you to step back and say, "What's the easy way? How do I get through this easily?" It also makes you very intuitive. You tend to look at things, and you don't want to read so much; reading is harder for a dyslexic. So you become very quick, very intuitive in understanding what the point is. And that's good with ideas. And so, I feel blessed about that.
View Interview with Craig McCaw
View Biography of Craig McCaw
View Profile of Craig McCaw
View Photo Gallery of Craig McCaw
|
|
|
Frank McCourt
Pulitzer Prize for Biography
The men got out of work, out of the factories and the timber yards and the cement factories at 5:30. They would come home on Friday night, most of them, wash themselves to here, from here to here, never below. No, people didn't touch themselves with water from one end of the year to the other. They'd come home, wash their hands, throw water on their faces, have their Friday night tea, which was an egg because it was Friday, and then the women would give the price of a few pints and they'd go out and they'd have a few pints, talk, sing a few songs, come home, have tea, go to bed, and go to work the next morning. Five thirty, they were out. By six o'clock most of them were home for that wash and their tea. The Angelus would ring all over Limerick in all the churches and the women would wait, but my mother would wait on tenterhooks. If he wasn't home by 6:00 o'clock, boom, boom, bong, bong all around the city. If he wasn't home by the time the Angelus rang, he wasn't coming home and then she'd sink deeper and deeper into the chair by the fire, because we knew then the wages were gone and he'd arrive home after the pubs were closed, roaring and singing down the lane, "Roddy McCorley Goes to Die," and all the patriotic songs. He grieved over Ireland and didn't care if we starved to death that night and the next day.
View Interview with Frank McCourt
View Biography of Frank McCourt
View Profile of Frank McCourt
View Photo Gallery of Frank McCourt
|
|
|
Frank McCourt
Pulitzer Prize for Biography
The minute I opened my mouth then they'd say, "Oh, you're Irish." Suddenly I'm labeled. I wasn't a human being. In Ireland I was just a low-class type, but here I'm a low-class Irish type, an Irish low-class type. So I didn't know. Somehow I had to deal with that. "Oh, you're Irish." And at that time, that was 1949, there was still some kind of a lingering residue of prejudice against the Irish. People used to tell me, all the people, up and down New England (I'm in New York) there would be signs saying, "No Irish need apply." And even the Irish-Americans would listen to me and they'd patronize me. I was a bit simple as if I had just come off a farm. And I knew better than that. I knew I was better than that. People who -- Irish-Americans who were running elevators and working as porters, they were looking down on me, and I knew then that I was again at the bottom of the heap.
View Interview with Frank McCourt
View Biography of Frank McCourt
View Profile of Frank McCourt
View Photo Gallery of Frank McCourt
|
| |
|
