Getty Images/Ringer illustration The baseball legend won over a divided city and country with his talent, not his talk In November 1957, two months after the New York Giants struck a deal to move the franchise to San Francisco, Willie Mays placed an offer on a brand-new home. This house was on Miraloma Drive, in a placid section of the city adjacent to the upscale planned community of St. Francis Wood. A span of glass windows offered a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean. Mays and his wife, Marghuerite, made an all-cash offer. And Walter Gnesdiloff, the contractor who built the house, refused to take it. Gnesdiloff claimed that his hands were tied. He said that his business would suffer if he sold this house to a Black man. That the neighbors and the so-called "neighborhood improvement clubs" had already besieged him with telephone calls. One neighbor said publicly that he "stand[s] to lose a lot if colored people move in." Mayor George Christopher's aides found them another home in a neighborhood that a local social justice advocate said had "become heavily Negro in ownership." Mays and Marghuerite insisted on sticking with their offer on the Miraloma home. Christopher, sensing a...