San Francisco connects two icons in honor of Willie Mays’ birthday
Willie Mays turned 85 on Friday and the City of San Francisco found an amazing way to pay tribute to a true American legend. 
Though baseball fans around the world hold Mays in high esteem, he is associated with San Francisco as much as any sports star or famous face ever has been connected to any other place. So it’s appropriate, genius even, that the city has named one of its famous cable cars after Mays. It even got the car number right, selecting No. 24, which was also Mays’ jersey number.
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The car in question was originally built in 1887 and then rebuilt in 1958, the year the Giants and Mays came to San Francisco from New York. The idea for the tribute came from Malcolm Heinicke, who is a friend of Mays and his attorney. He approached Mayor Ed Lee with the idea last June when the Giants were visiting the White House to celebrate their 2014 World Series title with President Barack Obama.
“What better way to honor one San Francisco icon than with another?” Heinicke told the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Mays played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball and amassed 660 career home runs and 3,283 hits with a lifetime batting average of .302. He played nearly his entire career with the Giants, outside of 135 games in the 1972 and 1973 seasons with the New York Mets.
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Kyle Ringo is a contributing writer to Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo
