[jsfriedm]

This may not help much, because I can't say how high the bump will be or how lasting it will be. But my suspicion is, when Mays passes (and I hope not for a while), that there will be a tremendous amount of attention paid to it around baseball. I think they will introduce some kind of Willie Mays Award, there might be a push to retire 24 around baseball, and most importantly, I think there will be a move to sort of canonize him as the Greatest of All-Time. Baseball doesn't quite have its Gretzky, Jordan, or Brady, and while most would say Babe Ruth, the problem is that now that they have declared the Negro Leagues to be Major Leagues, it is problematic to have a GOAT who played segregated baseball. So Willie Mays seems like a logical choice for many reasons. I think future generations of baseball fans will hear much more about Willie Mays than Mickey Mantle because of this.