The master of 90 feet dies at 89

Maury Wills stole bases and earned greatness with the Dodgers.

As a kid he saw Cool Papa Bell play in Washington. As a mentor he helped give Dave Roberts a career. In between Maury Wills marched toward baseball history in 90-foot stages, a literal dirt road. He could handle a bat and a glove, for sure, but he could also dominate a game and a season and a series without one.

Wills died on Tuesday at 89, one more face removed from the minimalist Dodgers of the 60s, the ones who went to three World Series in four years and lost a 3-game National League playoff to San Francisco in 1962. That was the year Wills pursued the stolen base record with Gretzky-like gusto. In 1960 he had become the first National League player in 37 years to steal 50. In 1962 Dodger Stadium opened, hostile to sluggers. With years of 2-1 games on the horizon, Wills’ sphere of influence grew like a harvest moon.

Ty Cobb had the major league record with 96 steals. Wills broke that easily, with 104 in 117 attempts. No National League team stole as often as he did, and he also played 165 games, thanks to that playoff.

A couple of misconceptions grew. One is that Wills ushered in an era of speed. That actually came much later, with Lou Brock (118 steals in 1974) and then Rickey Henderson. In 1962, teammate Willie Davis sstole 32. That was second in the league to Wills’ 104. As always, Wills was a one-man trend.

The other is that the Dodgers needed a GPS to get around the diamond unless Wills was on base, kick-starting th e carousel. Actually Frank Howard hit 31 home runs in 1962, which was herculean in that park, and Tommy Davis drove in 153 runs. Those Dodgers weren’t the reincarnation of the Hitless Wonders. That happened in 1965, when Wills did not hit a home run, stole 94 bases (again, more than any N.L. team) and finished third in the voting for Most Valuable Player, the award he won in ‘62.

That was the season when no Dodger hit more than 12 home runs and pitcher Don Drysdale was seventh on the club with seven. L.A. had 103 sacrifices, 23 more than anyone else in the league, and Wills was in the midst of it all, taking hard glove slaps against his legs, sliding the way he’d seen Bell slide on those hot afternoons in Washington.

And that was the team best-identified by Drysdale’s response to the news that Sandy Koufax had thrown a no-hitter. “Did we win?” he asked.

“Wills is worth 10 to 15 wins to that team,” said Charlie Metro, the Cubs’ manaager. Catchers saw Wills breaking for second and threw hard — to third. In a league made muscular by Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Frank Robinson, Wills was the neutron bomb. You could pitch around the sluggers, but not Wills.

He led the league in steals in six consecutive years and wound up with 586, plus a .281 average and 2,134 hits. Not bad considering he didn’t escape the minors until he was 26. He was down there from 1951 through most of 1959, blocked by Pee Wee Reese and his own strikeout habits. Minor league manager Bobby Bragan encouraged him to pinch-hit, and Dodger instructor Pete Reiser urged him to embrace line drives and grounders the other way.

“He has taught everyone how important fundamentals are again,” said Birdie Tebbets, the Cincinnati manager.

But there was an anxiety about Wills, manifested in how hard he chased the show-biz dreams and other dangers.

The Dodgers traded him to Pittsburgh after he begged off a Japan trip to get his knee healed, then stopped in Hawaii to play the banjo on stage with Don Ho and Sammy Davis Jr. He claimed he was having an affair with Doris Day, the epitome of show-biz blondeness, and the Dodgers lectured him about the nefarious nature of interracial relationships.

While in Pittsburgh, a declining Wills remained a clubhouse force. In 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated shortly before Opening Day, and Wills rallied the Pirates to threaten a boycott. Other clubs joined in and commissioner William Eckert had to move the season back two days. Two months later Robert Kennedy was killed as well, and again baseball took a decent interval.

Eventually Wills was felled by a cocaine addiction that, he estimated, cost him $1 million one year. That is the most cited reason why the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee has slammed the door on him, even though he was far more recognizable and consequential than many current members. But, in truth, there weren’t enough great seasons in Wills, not the way he insisted on playing.

In the Dodgers’ final seasons in Vero Beach, Fla., they built an instructional sliding are that they designated as “Maury’s Pit,” and he urged Roberts to turn his speed into a weapon. Now Roberts wears Wills’ No. 30 as he keeps winning division championshipd as the Dodgers’ manager.

And, as he fought addiction and tried to patch an explosive relationship, Wills unfortunately accepted the job as the Seattle Mariners’ manager. He took over in August of 1980 and got fired quickly in 1981, with a record of 26-56 and a series of comical blunders, like calling in relievers before warming them up.

But for a few years there, Wills was a towering inspiration for every kid who had 12 siblings, every dreamer who was too small and every prsopect who signed for $500. And, fortunately, he played in an era when impact was prized. He won that 1962 MVP even though Mays had 49 home runs and 141 RBIs and Robinson led the league in slugging, on-base percentage and OPS (which wasn’t recognized by then). Today’s MVP voters tend to low-rate a player’s actual contribution to a team’s pennant run and pay more attention to WAR, an abstraction that Mays led with 10.5 in 1962. Robinson was 8.5. Wills was 6.0.

No matter. From watching the games (in a time when they were almost never televised nationally), the writers knew the identity of the most instrumental man. And it wasn’t the only year that Maury Wills ruled the toughest 90 feet in baseball.