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Running at top speed with his back to the plate, Willie Mays gets under a 450-foot blast off the bat of Vic Wertz. (AP Photo)

• "The Catch": 56k | 300k

It was hailed as the most amazing defensive play those in attendance at the Polo Grounds that day had ever seen.

Millions tuning in to one of the earliest national television broadcasts of the World Series would say the same thing. Many millions more have seen it since, and the vast majority would have to agree.

It became known simply as "The Catch," a divine, unique play made by the incomparable Willie Mays, accomplished in a most dramatic setting.

Mays' catch of a smash off the bat of Cleveland's Vic Wertz in the eighth inning of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series stands as one of baseball's signature plays. "The Catch" was made on Sept. 29, 1954, but it lives on almost 50 years later as perhaps the most replayed and renowned defensive play in baseball history.

He said it at the time, and he says it today: Don't count Willie Mays among those surprised that he made that play -- even if he started from shallow center field and wound up in the vast depths of the Polo Grounds, and even if it's questionable any other man on the planet could have done it.