Farewell to a Giant: Remembering Willie Mays, the Greatest Baseball Player and a Reluctant Civil Rights Icon

How does one eulogize a Giant? Figuratively and literally. Willie Mays died this week at 93, and baseball lost the greatest player ever to suit up. And with his death, there are only two remaining players alive that were part of the Negro League.

Mays, although born in Alabama, the southern experience of being born in the 1930s is similar to one that cou…