Just Scratching the Surface - Willie Mays September 21, 1955 Polo Grounds - New York Willie Mays of the New York Giants swatted two more homers in yesterday's double header with Pittsburgh, giving the 24-year-old baseball star fifty for the season. Mays, who tops the majors in home runs this season, joins only six other players in baseball history ever to hit 50 or more in a single season - Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Hack Wilson, Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize. Mays batted .317 and hit a total of 51 homers in 1955, and walked more times , 72, than he struck out. Striking out just 60 times in over 600 trips to the plate. Note: one can only speculate on how many more career homers Mays would have hit if he did not spend the 1952-1953 seasons in the US Military, as it was Mays crushed 660 career homers.