Kid at the batting cage asked me what the hardest throw in baseball is, and I said it's the one you make after you've already done something insane. He didn't buy it. So I told him about the Polo Grounds, 1954, eighth inning, 2-2, Vic Wertz hitting a ball 420-some feet into the deepest center field anybody ever built.

Everybody replays the catch. Back to the plate, ball over the left shoulder, cap coming off. Fine. But watch what Mays does next: he spins, plants, and fires it back in from four hundred feet away, and Larry Doby, who had already gotten most of the way to third on a ball that should have been a triple, has to turn around and go back to second. Two runners rounding the bases, both of them stopped dead and sent home, so to speak. That's two outs' worth of work in one motion, and the throw is the half nobody puts on a highlight reel.

And look. Vic Wertz went 4-for-5 that game. A triple, a couple of singles, the hardest ball he ever hit in his life, and Cleveland lost 5-2 in extras and then lost the Series 4-0. He hit it perfectly. He just hit it to the one man on earth running that direction. I think about Wertz standing between first and second watching the whole thing unravel, and I'm not sure baseball ever gave anybody a worse deal on a better swing.