SAN FRANCISCO – The Say Hey Kid is as popular as ever.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Giants honored Willie Mays<\/strong> on his 80th birthday Friday night with a ceremony befitting a baseball legend, complete with a celebratory letter from President Barack Obama<\/strong> and a video tribute that included everyone from Commissioner Bud Selig<\/strong> to singer Tony Bennett<\/strong>. Mays<\/strong> was driven on a golf cart from center field to the mound and received a roaring standing ovation from a sellout crowd of more than 42,000 at AT&T Park. At one point during the montage, Mays<\/strong> was wiping his face and pulling down his old Giants cap.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m just so happy,’\u201d said Mays<\/strong>, wearing a black coat over a sharp gray suit, white shirt and orange tie on a chilly night by the bay. \u201cWhen you have people like you guys to come out and cheer for me, it’s just a wonderful, wonderful feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n The video shown on the center-field scoreboard before the Giants rallied to beat the Colorado Rockies 4-3 in the opener of a three-game series highlighted the Hall of Famer’s career. It also included birthday wishes from Hank Aaron<\/strong>, Bill Cosby<\/strong> and former President Bill Clinton<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Home Run King Barry Bonds<\/strong>, the godson of Mays<\/strong>, had a seperate video played after the fifth inning thanking Mays <\/strong>for his guidance over the years. Bonds<\/strong>, fresh off a federal perjury trial in which a jury convicted him on one count of obstruction of justice, said it has been “an honor for me and my family to be a part of your life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAN FRANCISCO – The Say Hey Kid is as popular as ever. The San Francisco Giants honored Willie Mays on his 80th birthday Friday night with a ceremony befitting a baseball legend, complete with a celebratory letter from President Barack Obama and a video tribute that included everyone from Commissioner Bud Selig to singer Tony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n