That there was a time when any endeavor would be universally regarded as the National Pastime seems quaint in retrospect.

So it was in the early 50s with baseball.

Johnny U hadn’t transformed pro football yet. The NFL still had local telecasts.

College pigskin was also regional. Two platoons. T formations. Five bowl games.

The NBA style was stiff and slow with teams in Fort Wayne and Syracuse. Before Bill Russell and the Joneses that is.

Kentucky, Indiana, Philly and maybe North Carolina were the only places where fans really cared about college hoops.

Hockey as today was but a niche.

But baseball . . .

A highlight of the day would be pitch and catch with your dad after dinner. The rhythm and arc of the ball at twilight, the thwack of 108 stitched horsehide into leather.

Imitating Stan Musial’s stance in the park with an imaginary man on 1st. Marveling how thick the grip on my pal Lynn’s genuine Al Rosen Louisville Slugger.

Hearing at the pool snack bar that Pirate Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings. Then lost the game in the 13th.

There was the World Series, which always seemed to be between the Dodgers and the Yankees. It was played during the day when you were in school. The lucky kids had a teacher who would turn on the radio.

Most of us didn’t.

There was the October day when my pal Larry’s dad, a baseball freak, picked him up and advised that Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game.

Then there was ’54.

The Catch.

It justifiably remains as iconic a play as ever was in American sports.

Willie Mays taking off on a dead run before the pitch even reached Vic Wertz’s bat. The over the head basket catch in the Polo Grounds’ endless centerfield, the swirl and whirl throw that held Larry Doby at 3d.

So energized were the Giants, gobsmacked were the Indians, heavy underdog New York swept Cleveland.

Whether Willie Mays was the best in the history of the game is obviously open for debate. He is in the conversation.

He’s the best I ever saw. Unfortunately but once in person when he was a Met and well past his prime. I knew the real score but just had to pay my respects.

But I will argue with whomever that nobody else has ever played the game with such skill, such joy, such panache. With a seeming ease that belied what a crafty student of the game he was.

My favorite quote of the many I’ve read today, when ironically the day after his passing the bigs are prepping to play a game at Rickwood Field, where Mays once roamed as a Birmingham Black Baron, is from Tallulah Bankhead. (Look her up.)

“There have only been two geniuses in the world. William Shakespeare and Willie Mays.”

One story as shared by baseball fanatic George Will:

In 1963, in a game of a sort that will never again be played, Spahn, then 42, and another future Hall of Famer, Juan Marichal, 25, both pitched shutouts into the 16th inning. Marichal threw 227 pitches, Spahn 201. The Giants won 1-0 when Spahn gave up a walk-off home run. You know who hit it.

If ever there has been a stern reminder that life is way different than it was in my youth, it is the passing of Willie Mays.

I’m grateful on a gray weekday afternoon at Shea, I got to say hey.

— c d kaplan