The date was September 29, 1954, the location: New York’s Polo Grounds. The occasion: Game 1 of the 1954 World Series between the Giants, the home team and champions of the National League, and the Cleveland Indians, a club that had won an incredible 111 out of 154 games to take the American League pennant. The event: an acrobatic catch and throw by Giants center fielder Willie Mays.

Was it the best play in the sport’s history? Some claim it was, although the how, where, when and who of the moment all might also have contributed to its legendary status.

A Big Catch in a High Stakes Moment

In the top of the eighth inning, with the game tied 2-2, the Indians were threatening. Larry Doby, the second African American to play in the major leagues, was on second base; Cleveland infielder Al Rosen was on first.

Vic Wertz, the Indians’ powerful first baseman who had driven in Cleveland’s two runs, was at the plate. With the count at two balls and one strike, Wertz launched reliever Don Liddle’s pitch about 420 deep into center field. It looked for sure as if the ball would either clear the fences for a home run or land deep in the outfield and score at least Doby and perhaps Rosen too.

But as soon as the ball left Wertz’s bat, Giants center fielder Mays took off in pursuit. He raced toward the center field wall, glancing over his shoulder to check the ball’s trajectory, and caught it just shy of the boundary. Then he wheeled around and threw the ball to second, preventing Doby from running home and scoring.

The game stretched into extra innings before pinch-hitter Dusty Rhodes scored the home run that won the game for the Giants. New York would go on to sweep the series 4-0.

So Good It Was Like an ‘Optical Illusion’

The play was immediately celebrated. Commentating for NBC television, Jack Brickhouse declared, “Oh my! Caught by Mays! … Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet with a catch which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.”

James Hirsch, author of Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, says Mays’s play remains so well-known that sportscasters still reference it some 70 years later. “I was watching a game in which the first baseman was running down a foul ball, his back to home plate,” Hirsch recalls. “He catches the ball over his shoulder and, right on cue, the announcer says, ‘That’s a Willie Mays catch!’”

The award for the World Series’ Most Valuable Player, which was first handed out in 1955, carries Mays’ name in recognition of what is universally known in baseball as, simply, “The Catch.”

So why does “The Catch” still resonate decades on?

Logistics of The Catch

For one, it was extremely difficult. In a video breaking down the play, ESPN noted that Mays ran 90 feet at an average of 14 mph while tracking the ball over his shoulder, and extended his arms just one-tenth of a second before the ball hit his glove. Had he done so a mere three-hundredths of a second later, he would have missed the ball by two feet.

Still, outstanding plays in the outfield are de rigeur in major league baseball. Mays’ own manager, Leo Durocher, said at the time that “Willie makes catches like that every day.” According to Major League Baseball official historian John Thorn, “Mays did not even believe that that that catch was his very best. He thought that a catch he had made as a rookie in 1951 was superior.”

Major Players in the Mix

Part of the reason for its enduring fame is the context: it was the opening game of the World Series at a time when that was the biggest annual sporting event in the United States. It was a World Series for which the Indians were prohibitive favorites. Had Doby and Rosen scored, giving the Indians the lead, they might never have relinquished it. At the very least, they would have been favored heavily in the rest of the series.

Another element was Mays himself. Born in 1931 in what Hirsch calls “the outposts of Alabama,” he had broken into the major leagues in 1951, just four years after Jackie Robinson and Doby had broken the color barrier in baseball.

Mays had won Rookie of the Year honors for his electric skill as both a batter and fielder. And then he spent two years in the Army, returning with much fanfare for the 1954 season. Great things were expected of him—and he delivered, winning the National League batting title and MVP honors.

Hirsch notes that, whereas other great baseball players are defined by numbers—the number of home runs they hit in a season or a career, or the number of consecutive games in which they appeared—Mays was celebrated for the way he played the game. The Catch, he argues, was emblematic of that overall skill.

“He just played the game at a different level in so many ways,” he says. “And so, him making that catch was the perfect exclamation point to an extraordinary season.”

Television Captured the Play for the Ages

Finally, the play was broadcast live on television, a medium that was just beginning to explode in popularity. When the World Series was first  televised in 1947, just over 8,000 households in the United States had TV sets; by 1954, fully 65 percent of American households had one. Furthermore, notes Hirsch, the 1954 series was the last to be broadcast in black and white, signifying the end of one era and transition into a new age.

In other words, argues Thorn, the fact that television and newsreel cameras captured this moment by this player ensured that “it endures in baseball lore in a way that is even beyond its athletic ability.”

Immediately after the game, Cleveland manager Al Lopez was emphatic in his praise—even though the play ultimately cost his team’s victory.

“That was the greatest catch I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Just the catch, mind you. Now put it all together. The catch. The throw. The pressure on the kid. I’d say that was the best play anybody ever made in baseball.”