‘Say Hey Willie Mays’ Director Nelson George Explains How He Managed To Convince The Notoriously Private Willie Mays and Barry Bonds To Participate In His Documentary

(Editor’s Note: This interview with director Nelson George about the HBO documentary Say Hey, Willie Mays originally published in November of 2022, but we have republished it tonight to honor the memory and legacy of Willie Mays, who passed away tonight at the age of 93.)

If you peruse through any extensive video library at your fingertips, whether on television or online, you are bound to run into documentaries on sports icons who loomed larger than life not only during their athletic careers, but in the decades since their on-field retirements. With each passing year, stories are retold or unearth that continue to burnish the legends of Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, among others, to ensure that every generation understands what made them transcendent figures in sports and society.

Yet, after years of attempts to bring his story to life, one of the most otherworldly but fiercely private players to ever grace a baseball field decided to let the world back in.

Willie Mays, long considered baseball’s greatest living player, is the subject of a stirring and informative new documentary from HBO Sports, Say Hey, Willie Mays! Produced in conjunction with Company Name and UNINTERRUPTED, the premium cable network and streamer profiles a dynamic athlete with humble beginnings in Alabama and the last vestiges of the Negro Leagues before seizing a life-changing opportunity with the then-New York (baseball) Giants. Mays dazzled the masses at the famed Polo Grounds in Harlem and ballparks across the National League for several years until the Giants moved westward to San Francisco, changing the sport forever in the process.

Capturing the life of a living legend for the screen took the skills of another heavy hitter – director Nelson George carries a metaphorically mighty bat himself, as a journalist, author, culture critic and filmmaker. Deftly weaving his own love for music and sports with the histories of the places Mays would call home, George not only refreshed the unforgettable on-field moments of yesteryear for today’s audience, but also brought a spotlight to the tougher moments in Mays’ life, which include a stinging rebuke from an outspoken Robinson on race and politics. 

George spoke with Decider about the lengthy process of producing Say Hey – from building trust with Mays to navigating the coronavirus pandemic to connecting with baseball’s most polarizing figure… who just happens to be Mays’ godson.

DECIDER: When most people hear your name, it’s music journalism that comes to mind as you’ve written numerous books and worked on several films about musical figures and eras. Yet this is your first foray into sports in some time. What brought you back into telling this story and to sports in general?

NELSON GEORGE: Well, I did a book, as you mentioned, elevating the game history of black men and basketball back around 1990 (Elevating The Game: Black Men and Basketball). But I’ve always been a big sports fan. I had Knicks season tickets for basically the entire Patrick Ewing era. I grew up in New York as a Yankee fan and a Giants fan. I grew up with Yankee second baseman (and former Mets manager) Willie Randolph in Brownsville, and we played stickball together. So sports has always been a passion of mine. I’ve written a number of sports pieces over the years and I’ve always found that sports – especially Black athletes – and the connection between that and music is very, very powerful. 

I had this idea I used to call ‘the BA,’ the Black athletic aesthetic. And what I meant was the idea of how the improvisational nature of our music also fits into sports – this ability to take a sport that has been done a certain way, for years or the so-called right way, and to bring our personality and flavor to it. And that’s actually one of the reasons that Willie Mays was such a fascinating character. As we say in the doc, “he put something on it.” It’s hard to imagine now how radical that basket catch was, and still is since no one does it anymore. This idea that you wouldn’t catch the ball the traditional way, but catch it at your waist was a radical thing in the 1950s and ’60s. Willie brought innovations to the game. He was not afraid to challenge an outfielder – Willie’s philosophy was that “he has to make a perfect throw to get me.” 

Multiple producers have tried to get Mays to tell his story for years to no avail, yet he finally agreed. How did it all come together?

Basically the team of Company Name, which is Shawn Stewart and Colin Hanks, and the guys from LeBron James’ company (which produces UNINTERRUPTED) have been trying to get Willie to do a documentary for years. Willie, until this documentary, never really agreed to be in anything. 

He’s a very private guy. And he’s not someone, especially as he’s got and older, to tell stories out of school so, but he finally did agree. We met with him face to face, in San Francisco. I think it was September 25th, 2019. And he gave us our blessing then and then obviously COVID happened. And so we couldn’t interview him until we’ve been immunized.

With all of the potential homes for Say Hey, why HBO? It’s a premium network that has undergone some significant shifts over the years, especially as its sports group isn’t as robust as it once was.

They wanted it! We pitched it to a number of places. And they’re the ones who really stepped up and said, we want to we want to do this. So it was really that, and they were very supportive throughout, including getting Barry Bonds.

Since Mays remains such a private person, was it a lot of work to build some trust, some rapport with you or did he surprise you with how candid he could be? 

We did two days back-to-back. A lot of the major story points that he talks about came on the second day, where the first day was almost a feeling out.

He would ask me things like “how long have you been doing this?” I said “forty years,” and he’d say “I dunno… I dunno… I may have to school you here!” And he kept saying “I have to inform you, young man.” He definitely challenged me that first day to see what I was made of. Which I think is pretty much how an athlete would feel out a possible opponent. And once he found out I can do this, he thought “okay, I can be loose.”

You mentioned that HBO helped secure Barry Bonds, whose brilliance on the field is overshadowed by both his long-suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs and a combativeness with the media which covered his career. However, we see him in a completely different light in this documentary as he talks about his legendary godfather. How did your team approach him to speak on camera? 

In the film, you see Willie’s 90th birthday party, and you see Barry next to Willie as well as when he cuts the cake. We talked to Barry that night, he was interested in doing it, but you know… is there anybody who’s had fewer good friends than Barry Bonds in the last 20 years? (Chuckles.) So it took HBO and the UNINTERRUPTED team a lot of conversations with him and his team about what we’re going to talk about what our intentions were. He was very concerned about if this was going to be a ‘gotcha’ interview.

We finally got him, and he was the last one to do the doc. And his level of emotion, his level of love was really amazing. We had basically interviewed him for 90 minutes to two hours and had most of our major questions answered. He went on for another half hour just talking baseball. He gave us some insight just about hitting and the science of hitting – just like Einstein-level shit!

Was the process of building trust with Bonds similar to that of Mays or were there other factors at play?

With Willie, it took a long time for him to agree. Producers had been after him for several years. And I think he finally came to a time when he got closer to 90 that he thought like I really should do this.

Barry loves Willie. And that was, you know, the fact that Willie cosigned it definitely (helped), but he’s still reluctant. I don’t think he’s done a sit-down interview since he played, probably.

Say Hey gets fairly deep into the relationship between Mays, Barry Bonds and Barry’s father Bobby, who was Mays’ teammate for several seasons. In some ways because of Barry’s involvement, did you have concerns that his presence could overshadow Mays, the actual subject of the film?

I thought that, but with this idea of mentorship, which became the theme of the film, you really needed, Barr, because the relationship between Willie, Bobby and Barry is one of the central baseball relationships or sports relationships of the last 20, 25 years. You have this great player who mentors the father, and then meets (Bobby’s) son, who idolizes him. So it’s a very interesting relationship of the three men. And so, Barry had to be in it. And he knew “this is an interview about Willie Mays, and about the legacy of Willie and how Willie had helped you.”

1957 is a pivotal year in sports history as at the end of the season, both the Dodgers and Giants would leave New York City for Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. As often told in relation to the Dodgers, some bitter feelings were brewed in Brooklyn, yet Manhattan’s side isn’t often rehashed. This film appears to speak up for Harlem – particularly what we see as Willie’s view of Harlem. What went into that creative approach?

That’s definitely one of the things that was very clear is that that Jackie Robinson’s story and the Brooklyn story has dominated the narrative of their leaving. But ultimately, the Giants were as big as they took Willie Mays. That’s a huge part of our narrative. You know, (San Francisco) wouldn’t have wanted the Giants if it wasn’t for Willie. 

The Harlem part was one of my favorite sequences. And one thing I tried to do in the film is to link music to certain sequences in the film. We found this incredible Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington song. And you blend that over the stories about Willie, and it just takes you to a different place. And it fit very well. I tried throughout the film to find pieces of music that we can build storytelling around. 

As just about any Black public figure during his playing days, Mays found himself as the subject of explosive racial discussions of the 1960s, which are in Say Hey. The most stirring involved retired Jackie Robinson, who once criticized Mays for not publicly speaking out on issues concerning African-Americans. Yet even in a documentary about his life, Mays doesn’t speak about the direct personal impact on racism. Instead, you reflected on Mays’ reply and had others speak about Robinson’s comments (sociologist Todd Boyd, activist Harry Edwards, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown). What was the goal of framing the discussion in this way?

So Jackie, when he first gets there, he shuts up and plays baseball. But as time goes on, he got more aggressive on the field and a little confrontational even to the to the racism encountered. And then when he retired, he became very, very much more overtly a civil rights champion. 

My impression is that (Willie) felt very insecure being a spokesperson. And he always felt that Jackie was more qualified to do that because of his background and his intellect. So in the film, we have the sort of debate between the two of them. That was in ‘68. When Willie made that comment, that’s the only film I could find the only substantial civil rights comment, you know, that really made at length, especially after the criticism. And the only reason he even did that, quite honestly, was that Jackie didn’t just attack Willie. Jackie also attacked a couple of other his Black teammates for being too passive in his opinion.

Finally, it’s clear that there were so many stories that had to be left on the cutting room floor due to time and production constraints. After spending over two years on this project, is there anything in particular you wish viewers were able to see that didn’t make it in the movie?

Because it was an interesting thread, but it wasn’t as emotional engaging, ultimately, was Willie and Mickey Mantle. They came in the same year in 1951. Yeah, they were both stars in New York, they were very friendly. They would talk to each other about how much money they were being offered! And then of course, they both got kicked out of baseball, so it was an interesting thread.

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

Jason Clinkscales is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Whole Game, and his work has been featured at Awful Announcing, The Week and Dime Magazine. A New York City native, he is also a former media research analyst in both television networks and advertising agencies.