Gingrich and Mays: A fair comparison?

Back when there were only 20 major league teams, most knowledgeable baseball people recognized Willie Mays as the game’s best all-around active player. Skeptics maintained that was only because Ted Williams had retired, Mickey Mantle was in his dotage, and Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson, and Roberto Clemente didn’t play in large media markets.

But in his prime, Mays was the best: His combination of speed, power, defensive skills, arm strength and enthusiasm were unmatched in his (or maybe anyone’s) era.

Willie Mays celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this month. Maybe that was what brought him to mind three weeks ago when a former political superstar declared his candidacy for next year’s Republican presidential nomination.

But the Mays I pictured when I heard of Newt Gingrich’s intention to become America’s 45th chief executive wasn’t the uber-talented package of boyish energy whose running, back-to-home plate catch of Vic Wertz’s drive in the opening game of the 1954 World Series would become arguably the single most-remembered play in his sport’s history, nor the 12-time Gold Glove winner who until the onset of the Steroid Era had hit more home runs than anyone in the history of the game besides Babe Ruth or Aaron.

The Mays Gingrich’s announcement conjured up was the over-the-hill 42-year-old relic who stumbled through his final season as a part-time first baseman and outfielder with the New York Mets after inadvertently staying on the national stage for one act too many.

Newt Gingrich was a true mover and a shaker in the 1980s and 1990s. Elected 10 times to Congress, the self-proclaimed champion of moral values and avowed enemy of runaway government spending co-authored the Republican Party’s “Contract with America” in 1994. The following year he was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year after leading a GOP revolution that ended four decades of Democratic control of the House of Represent-atives, and ultimately resulted in his being named its speaker. He later served as the public face of Republican Congressional opposition to Bill Clinton, relentlessly upbraiding the then-president for his tawdry extramarital dalliance with a White House intern half his age.

But just as Willie Mays inevitably lost the ability to get around on a big league fastball, the swaggering and abrasive Gingrich eventually began losing his skills as well, as his imperiousness and perceived arrogance made him an increasingly polarizing figure. In 1997 he became the first-ever House speaker to be reprimanded by his fellow representatives for ethics violations. By the time he resigned from Congress the following year, his second marriage was foundering, as he had been having an affair with a woman 23 years his junior ”“ one who became the third Mrs. Gingrich in 2000. The former speaker’s philandering made great fodder for his many detractors, particularly given his own frequent public pontifications regarding President Clinton’s unfaithfulness.

In 2009, Gingrich publicly converted to his wife’s religious faith, one he claimed to have fully embraced years ago. But he and his devout Catholic spouse engaged in six-plus years of an adulterous relationship before actually getting married, giving the former speaker’s legion of critics ample reason to again question his sincerity. The former speaker is clearly more devoted to his present spouse than he was to the first two, though; the $500,000 line of credit the avowed fiscal conservative maintains at Tiffany’s has helped him keep the current Mrs. Gingrich far more stylishly bejeweled than either of her two predecessors were.

In his latest book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” a presumably kinder, gentler Gingrich describes Democrats as “left-wing radicals [who] present as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”

More recently, the former (and likely future) Fox News pundit chided the commander-in-chief for not taking military action in Libya, only to reverse himself two weeks later after the president had done the very thing Gingrich himself had been advocating. This provided official verification that the Georgia Republican’s transparent hypocrisy isn’t limited to issues involving personal morality. Then shortly after officially announcing his candidacy, Gingrich established himself as an equal-opportunity offender, backpedaling furiously from some statements he made on Meet the Press criticizing Republican congressman Paul Ryan’s proposed plan to overhaul Medicare, remarks which outraged most of his remaining supporters on the right.

The similarities between the fading Mays of the early 70’s and the washed-up Gingrich of today are striking, but when I mentioned them to a good friend of mine he dismissively pooh-poohed my analogy.

“Comparing someone who impacted our nation’s history with a person who merely excelled at playing a child’s game is invalid and unfair,” he sniffed dismissively.

After a brief period of thoughtful reflection I realized my friend was right. Comparing the two men is grossly unfair ”“ to Willie Mays.

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