Before the era of heavy weight training ushered in and everyone tried to become a muscle bound slugger, there was the speedier, more strategic game. One of the last players to specialize in this kind of play without hardly any power was “Mousey” Maury Wills. Despite only weighing 170 pounds, Wills was a genuine star, capturing the NL MVP Award in 1962 and appearing on 15 Hall of Fame ballots.
One of eleven children, Maurice Morning Wills was born on October 2, 1932 in Washington, D.C. He was named after an insurance man named Morning, a friend of the family. He started playing baseball in a semipro league at age 14, and starred in three sports (baseball, football, and basketball) in high school. He signed with the Dodgers in 1950 but didn’t make the big club until 1958, spending eight years in the minors. It was a long, hard road to the Majors, and Wills tried many different things, including switch hitting, to move up in the system. In 1959, the year after Pee Wee Reese retired, Wills came up and hoped to become the Bums’ starting shortstop. He batted .260 in 83 games and was the regular by 1960, hitting .295 and topping the NL with 50 stolen bases. Wills promptly defended his stolen base title for six consecutive years. His best overall season was 1962, when he played a record 165 games, set a new MLB stolen base record (104; topping Ty Cobb’s 1915 mark of 96), and scored 130 runs en route to the NL MVP Award (barely beating out Willie Mays, who in all honesty probably should have won the Award, but that’s another matter). Although he was best known as a base thief, Wills also specialized at bunting and other small ball strategies, including the Baltimore Chop. The Dodgers won a lot of 1-0 games riding the arms of Koufax, Drysdale, and company, and Wills often provided that lone run.
After the 1966 season Wills was traded to the Pirates, and he gave them two strong seasons. However, after a great 1968 season (.278 average, 52 swipes), the Pirates left him unprotected in the 1969 expansion draft, and Wills became a member of the Montreal Expos. The “honor” was short lived, however, as the Dodgers got him back after 47 games and he hit .297 the rest of the way.
Wills had a couple more productive seasons, even finishing sixth in the MVP voting in 1971 at age 38. However, as players get older, their legs start to fail them, and Wills didn’t have much else to offer at that point. After hitting .129 in a short stint in 1972, Wills was released by the Dodgers, never again to play in the Majors. It was a nice career; he had an MVP Award, 2,134 hits, 586 stolen bases, and three World Series rings. In 1977, Wills’s son Bump made it to the Texas Rangers and hung around for six seasons in the Big Leagues. He too was a base thief, with 52 in 1978 and 196 in his career.
After his career Maury Wills appeared on 15 Hall of Fame ballots, but never did make it in. He was a very good player, but he lacked power and didn’t walk much for a little guy (career OPS of .661). Though he wasn’t the biggest player on the field, he always made a big impact. He passed away on September 19 of this year at the age of 89.
Interesting, and makes me wish he had made the majors earlier. Played 8 years in the minors and still got 2134 hits? If he could have played some of those years in the bigs, and gotten to 3000 hits, we would probably look at him a lot differently.
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