Years from now fans of Barry Bonds will have a bottomless pit of video memories to keep them warm. High quality, expertly documented, digitally remastered, surround-sound memories.

Which is to say Barry Bonds fans will have it a lot better than Willie Mays fans have it now.

Bonds has overtaken Mays, his San Francisco Giants forefather and real-life godfather, as the third-most prolific home run hitter in major league history. After the big home run, Bonds' fans, with half an effort, were able watch it at least a dozen times before they went to bed.

Maybe they’ll wonder about the legend their hero has leapfrogged. "Who is this Willie Mays?" they may ask. "What made him so good? Can you show us?"

The Willie Mays fan will be at a loss. Mays played for 22 seasons. He is considered the game's greatest living player. He is hailed as a baseball savant, an impossibly clutch performer and an astonishingly entertaining player to boot.

Empirical evidence? Only a handful of examples come to mind, none of them sufficiently illustrative of the Mays legend.

A grainy image of Mays hauling in Vic Wertz's drive, wide receiver style, in the 1954 World Series.

Footage, apparently shot from the end of a bungee cord, of a blast Mays hit during his four-homer game against Milwaukee in 1961.

Mays singling off Whitey Ford during the 1962 World Series, seemingly gazing into the horizon as he speeds around first base at warp 7.

The Game of the Week catch from 1970 in which Mays, less than one month from his 39th birthday, runs full speed at the cyclone fence at Candlestick Park, soars above the barrier to snag a would-be home run from Cincinnati's Bobby Tolan, crashes into Bobby Bonds (Barry's father), lands with a thud and somehow manages to hold onto the ball.

A 42-year-old Mays falling down while chasing a fly ball during the 1973 World Series.

That's about it. Which makes the Mays legend a tough read for members of a generation who are provided multiple replays of Bonds when he so much as points to the sky.

The lack of video validation makes the Mays legend a more ethereal treasure. The numbers you can look up for yourself. They are impressive enough — 660 home runs, 338 stolen bases, a .302 career average — though not as impressive as they were before the Arena Baseball era blasted off in the mid-1990s.

Mostly the Mays legend lives on in the hearts and minds of people fortunate enough to have seen him play, or to have spoken with people who saw him play. And you know what? It's almost better that way.

Because it's one thing to know that a frightened, 20-year-old Mays went 0-for-12 to begin his major league career before belting a roof-clearing home run off Warren Spahn at New York's Polo Grounds. It's quite another to hear what Giants manager Leo Durocher, then in his 26th major league season and a one-time teammate of Babe Ruth, had to say after that game:

"I've never seen a (censored) ball get out of a (censored) park so (censored) fast in my (censored) life."

Thanks to video big brother, the ball Bonds hit to pass Mays will never go farther than he actually hit it. Mays was a hero of the transistor age, when the mind's eye still had a voice, when heroic deeds happened in some far-off place free from worry and strife, and could assume larger-than-life proportions.

To have experienced the Mays magic in real time was to have heard it largely second-hand, from Giants announcers Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons. You sat in your back yard on a lazy summer afternoon and the miracles just poured out of your radio. It was like wishing on a faraway star. Mays set a record in August, 1965 by hitting 17 home runs in a single month when such a feat was simply out of the question. Imagine being 9 years old and hearing that unfold before your very ears.

This is why, though his exploits were real and amazing enough, the Mays legend bordered on apocryphal. And that made the rare occasion when you could actually watch him in person (or through the fuzzy lens of pre-cable TV) even more powerful.

He was more than a complete ballplayer; he was a comprehensive athlete. He was smart, too. They say he would throw to the wrong base on purpose, allowing runners to move up behind his throw, thereby forcing his manager to walk the next batter. They say he would purposely strike out on a pitch in his first at-bat to bait the pitcher into throwing him the same pitch later, when the game was on the line.

They said a lot of things about Mays. But for a Mays fan, it wasn't what was said that was important. It was the feeling you got on those rare occasions when you saw him at the plate, a bat in his hand, his lips pursed, his cap folded and tucked neatly in his back pocket, his back knee cocked, his hands back and at hip level, his eyes riveted on the pitcher.

It was a pose that reeked of possibility. And here is where the Bonds fan can relate. To see Mays at the plate was to believe anything could happen. The game could always be won. No pitcher was too imposing. The Giants could win the pennant! Man could walk on the moon! We could have peace in our time!

He was God-like, even to his teammates. When a thing needed doing, he did it. Former Dodger Ron Fairly, speaking for a generation of awed and frustrated Mays opponents, once said that Mays would do whatever it took to beat you. If it was a hit, he got the hit. If it was a throw, he made the throw. If he needed to score from second on a fly ball out, he'd do that.

Take it from someone who once saw Mays score from first on a bunt — it isn't all hype. And virtually none of it was captured for posterity. So Bonds fans will have to take our word for it. And understand that what they are seeing today from their man Barry is the next best thing.

No disrespect intended.

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