When Willie Mays was traded to the Mets in May 1972, a journeyman named Jim Beauchamp was wearing No. 24 for New York.
That was Mays’ number.
If anyone thought that would cause a conflict, concerns were silenced when Beauchamp took the jersey off his back and handed it to the “Say Hey Kid.” Beauchamp would instead take No. 5.
“I think he earned it,” Beauchamp told Newsday.
That moment would endear Beauchamp to Mays, who surprised him with a brand new set of Louisville Slugger golf clubs in his locker the following day.
Mays played just 69 games for the Mets that season, hitting .267 with eight home runs. The following year, Mays would struggle at the plate, batting .211 with just six home runs.
Prior to an August 1973 game against the Cincinnati Reds at Shea Stadium, Mays came over to Beauchamp in search of a lighter bat. “I’m tired, lemme use your bat,” Beauchamp’s son, Jim, recounted. “Sure, Willie,” Beauchamp replied.
Wielding the 33-ounce, 35-inch bat (two ounces lighter than his own), Mays hit his sixth homer of the season in front of a crowd of 30,000. It was No. 660 of his career, and would ultimately be the last. In his following at-bat, Mays cracked the bat on a fly-out to center field.
Beauchamp’s teammate, Ed Kranepool, watched as a bat boy began to throw the splintered lumber into the trash.
"Hey Jim, that's your bat, you better grab it. That might be Willie's last homer," Kranepool said.
Beauchamp grabbed the bat and kept it in his locker for the remainder of the season, having Mays autograph it later that year, though the signature has largely faded.
Mays announced his retirement the following month and hung up his cleats for good following the Mets’ World Series defeat to the Oakland A’s in October.
The bat remained with Beauchamp, who stored it in his gun case as a “trophy.” Over 20 years later, he had Mays sign a letter of authenticity on Atlanta Braves stationary — he served as Bobby Cox’s bench coach for the Braves in the ‘90s — reading “Jim Beauchamp has in his possession the bat I hit my last Major League Home Run with.”
The bat was left to his family after Beauchamp’s death in 2007.
Beauchamp had relayed a message given to him from Mays at some point in the decades since his retirement, asking him not to sell the bat until after Mays had passed away. The family honored Mays’ wishes, holding onto the memento from the final home run of the slugger’s career, keeping it largely unknown to the collecting hobby until last month.
After Mays died in June, the family finally decided it was time to sell the bat, eventually making contact with California-based SCP Auctions.
SCP immediately sent the bat in for authentication at PSA, looking to verify the incredible story. Not only did PSA/DNA find the bat was authentic, assigning it a grade of PSA/DNA 10 — calling it a “perfect example of a Mays game used-bat from the period” — but thanks to the heavy coating of pine tar, they were able to photo-match the bat to Mays’ final home run.
“We’re always apprehensive at first,” SCP Auctions founder David Kohler told cllct. “But once I got it in-hand and started looking at photos, I started to think it looked authentic.”
Once PSA was able to provide the documentation authenticating the bat and validating the story of provenance, Kohler realized the magnitude of the find.
“It’s one of the highlights for sure,” Kohler said of all the discoveries he has encountered and sold over his decades in the industry, including the bat used by Babe Ruth for his first home run at Yankee Stadium in 1923, which the auction house sold for $1.265 million in 2004.
Kohler says auction houses and dealers have been vying to sell Mays’ personal collection for years, but he never wanted to sell it, making a bat like this all the more rare.
One of the few consequential bats from Mays’ career to sell publicly, used in the infamous “Roseboro Game,” sold for $55,000 in 2012. Another used by Mays in the 1955 All-Star game sold for $62,730. A bat described as possibly used for Mickey Mantle’s final home run sold for $89,625 in 2013.
Kohler thinks the Mays bat has the chance to far surpass these marks when it sells at SCP’s upcoming auction, which runs from Nov. 6-23. PSA's game-used bat expert John Taube believes it could sell for between $250,000 - $350,000.
“There's certain numbers: When you say 660, that's Willie Mays; 714, Babe Ruth; 755, Hank Aaron … there’s that number,” Kohler said. “And this is the bat.”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.