“Say Hey, Willie Mays!”, the new HBO documentary, starts with a shot of Mays’s hands gripping a baseball bat.
His fingers writhe around each other like a knot of snakes and the viewer immediately understands that there is a whole film in this image. Three of his digits don’t even touch lumber: ring and pinky finger of his top hand rest oddly on the index finger of the bottom pointing back towards the catcher, while the thumb, fore and middle finger of his right hand strangles the top of the handle. His body poised for the next pitch, his hands are a clock, a pendulum swinging between relaxed and constricted, timing the pitcher’s motion, the release of the ball with when to grip, hold, strike.