Mays was the superior all-around player, no question. Three things about that catch:
1. The Giants brought in a reliever just to pitch to slugger Vic Wertz, who hit that 460' shot flagged by Willie in the '54 Serious. After Willie's splendid catch, when the reliever entered the dugout, he said, "Well, I got my man."
2. Vin Scully has always maintained that Willie agrees with him that was not his best catch; rather it was a dive on the warning track in left-center against the Dodgers in Ebbets Field.
3. Next time you see Willie's famous catch, make a point to look to his left. You'll note the center field fence just disappears--a ball could roll 600' from home plate. The reason is that was how the spectators left the Polo Grounds, because the grandstand backed into Coogan's Bluff, by walking across the field and through that center field exit. That's what led to Merkle's Boner in '08. He knew the fans were charging onto the field and he wanted to avoid being engulfed, so rather than touching second base on the batter's game-winning single he just headed straight to the dugout. Johnny Evers spotted that and did the rest.
Ruth didn’t get the 3000 hits to go with the homers. Williams would have been the best hitter if he hadn’t lost years serving his country. There is a nice exhibit at Cooperstown showing his batting average by pitch location. No surprise that a fat pitch over the heart of the plate was over .500.
Do not mention Barry Bonds as a great hitter. We will never know how good a hitter he really was. I would put Pete Rose in the HOF before Bonds. The sad thing is Bonds could have made it to Cooperstown without the “help.” My theory as to why Barry did the juice is because of the legacy of his dad, Bobby Bonds. Bobby was considered to have been an underachiever; every year he was expected to post .330/30HR/100RBI numbers but he never met those numbers. Maybe Bobby was an underachiever, maybe the expectations were unrealistic and unfair. But Barry grew up hearing those things about his dad. He was determined that nobody was going to say the same things about him.