"In the 1959 All-Star Game in Pittsburgh, Willie Mays drilled a drive to deep right-centerfield. The Tigers' Harvey Kuenn, playing center, gave chase but couldn't get it.

Bob Stevens of the San Francisco Chronicle, who daily watched Mays make his case as the best all-around player in the game's history, sympathized with Kuenn. Stevens summed up the play this way:

"The only centerfielder in baseball who could have caught it just happened to hit it."

At his best moments in center, the Tigers' Austin Jackson evokes Mays. But in listening to Jackson now, it becomes clear he also has a desire to hit more like Mays -- who had lots of extra-base power -- and not so much like the stereotyped, single-producing, slap-hitting leadoff man."