How to get one by Willie Mays

I was originally going to title this post Clock Management, but using a hall of famer's name seemed the better move.

Quick backstory on this post.

Last Saturday night in Everett, the Aquasox were facing the Boise Hawks. It rained and forced an 80 minute delay before the start of the game. One of the Hawks outfielders slipped on the warning track in the bottom of the second inning and...

The Boise Hawks forfeited their Northwest League game against the Everett AquaSox on Saturday night after manager Jody Davis pulled his team from the field over what he maintained were unsafe playing conditions.

Davis came out to talk to umpire Matt Mullins for several minutes before instructing his team to leave the field. During the ensuing delay of nearly a half-hour, there were discussions between the umpiring crew and Northwest League president Bob Richmond.

"We had a number of calls," Richmond said. "I understand he took his team off the field and refused to put the team back on the field."

When play resumed, Gebbers returned to his spot on second base and Evan Sharpley moved into the batter's box. The Hawks, however, never left their dugout.

Davis, a former manager of the Peoria Chiefs, has since been suspended six games for his decision. Plus, there is talk of some financial restitution for the Aquasox. If you click on that link up top, you will notice that the Sox are wearing their tie-dye uniforms. That means it was Frogstock, one of their big nights of the season, if you remember from the days of our Mariner affiliation.

That is the set up to this Kirby Arnold blog post at the Everett Herald. There are some interesting stories before the Willie Mays part so click through to see them, but the Say Hey Kid stuff is below and stolen in full. Sorry, Kirby.

[O]ne of my favorite tales is from the days Bob and Margaret Bavasi owned the team. In the early years, they were affillated with the San Francisco Giants and known as the Everett Giants.

Bavasi was able to get Willie Mays to appear for autographs before one game, and he promoted it so well that the line of fans waiting for Willie's signature stretched around the ballpark. The bigger problem was that Mays arrived only about 15 minutes before the start of the game, and then informed Bavasi that he would sign autographs only until the game began.

Bavasi looked at the long line of autograph seekers and figured it would take a half-hour or longer to get them all an autograph, and the last thing he wanted was for any of his fans to wait so long and go home empty-handed.

So Bavasi pleaded with Mays, but the legend was insistent. He told Bavasi that he would sign until gametime, and when he heard the National Anthem, he was outta there.

That's when Bavasi made a couple of astute observations. First, he noticed that Mays never looked up as he signed. Second, he noticed that Mays wasn't wearing a watch.

So Bavasi left the autograph table for a few minutes and spoke with the umpires, then with Everett Memorial Stadium PA announcer Tom Lafferty. He told them the situation and asked that the game not start until he gave them a signal.

As the last person in the autograh line approached the table, well past the scheduled starting time, Bavasi sent word to Lafferty, who played the Anthem over the stadium sound system.

The umpires started the game and Willie Mays never realized how long he'd actually spent signing autographs in Everett.