Maury Wills was 10 years old. He had no shoes on his feet. His baseball glove was actually a brown paper bag he’d pounded a pocket into to help snare ground balls.
“I was one of 13 children,” said the 81-year-old former Los Angeles Dodgers great who will address the Southern League All-Star Game luncheon Tuesday at the Chattanooga Convention Center. “We lived in the projects in Washington, D.C. We slept four or five in a bed. But I had a good childhood.”
On this particular summer day, his future adulthood was about to switch from uncertain to unbelievable. Dropping by a baseball clinic conducted by Washington Senators second baseman Gerald “Jerry” Priddy at the playground Wills and his buddies frequented in 1943, shoeless Maury was asked to field a few ground balls.
“His uniform was perfectly in place; he spoke well; I was very impressed,” Wills recalled. “We were used to seeing black semi-pro players on weekends, Bingo Long-type teams, with their caps on sideways, wild uniforms, a pint of whiskey in their back pockets. And we wanted to be just like them. But this guy was completely different.”
Priddy asked Wills to get about 30 feet from him and throw the grounders back.