When It Comes to Mays’ Catch, Hall of Fame Drops Ball

SALEM, Ill. —  The glove Willie Mays used to catch Vic Wertz’s 480-foot fly ball in the 1954 World Series is in a safe-deposit box in this Southern Illinois community, not in the Hall of Fame.

Craig Liddle, a 43-year-old science teacher who wore the glove as a youngster, would like to change that.

Liddle’s father, Don, was the New York Giant pitcher who threw the pitch that Wertz hit to the deepest part of the Polo Grounds, where the wall was 505 feet away.

Mays’ spectacular over-the-shoulder grab in Game 1 kept the score tied, 2-2, and the Giants won in the 10th on a three-run homer by Dusty Rhodes. New York went on to sweep Cleveland.

The following year, 6-year-old Craig Liddle took a trip on the Giants’ team plane.

“Dad and I started talking about my wanting to start playing ball,” Liddle recalled. “I told him he was going to have to buy me a glove, and he said he would. In the clubhouse at Sportsman’s Park (in St. Louis) the next day, Willie came up to me and said, ‘I understand you need a glove to play baseball.’ He gave me a glove and said it was the one he used in 1954 and part of 1955, and because he had broken in a new glove and was finally comfortable with it, I could have the old one.”

Liddle remembers he didn’t take good care of the glove at first, leaving it out in the rain a few times before he realized its significance.

A curator at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., told Liddle several years ago that permanent display couldn’t be guaranteed.

“The important thing is that the glove is seen by the public,” Liddle said. “It’s their glove. I’ve just been the caretaker all these years. I don’t want the Hall of Fame to show the glove for a while and then have it wind up in a warehouse.”

Bill Guilfoile, assistant director of the Hall of Fame, said this week he hopes to work out an agreement with Liddle to get the glove for Cooperstown.