Willie McCovey: Giants great remembered as ‘Hall of Fame human being’
As soon as Willie McCovey’s physical ailments began to prevent him from joining baseball’s greats in Cooperstown every July for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, they started coming to him.
Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Joe Torre, Vin Scully and many more would ride the elevator to the third floor at AT&T Park to visit McCovey, who watched every game from a booth when his health allowed.
They felt that no visit to San Francisco was complete without saying hi to Mac. And yet, the truest measure of McCovey as a person was not how baseball’s royalty treated him, but how he treated the game’s commoners: current ballplayers, stadium employees and fans.