Costacos Collection Announces Inaugural NFT Drop with Baseball Legend Willie Mays
Washingtoner/10137414

SEATTLE - Washingtoner -- Today, the Costacos Collection announced its inaugural drop will feature one of the most respected legends in professional sports, Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays. The 90th Birthday Celebration Drop will take place this Sunday, October 24, as an ode to Willie's iconic number and two days before the start of the 117th World Series. For the fifth year, the MVP of the Fall Classic will be recognized as the "Willie Mays World Series Most Valuable Player."

Willie will be donating all proceeds from the drop to his Say Hey Foundation's effort to honor the people who gave him a start in life, by establishing a baseball academy for underprivileged youth where he grew up in Alabama, and to restore the historic baseball facilities at Rickwood Field where Willie started his career with the Negro League Birmingham Black Barons. Mays said, "I've never forgotten the people who supported me, taught me, and helped me find my way. I want every child to have the same chances that I had, and this gives me a way to do that starting in my original hometown. Rickwood was the first place I ever got to see professional ballplayers, and I want these kids to learn the game and be inspired the way I was." Rickwood Field itself serves as a central theme of the drop's art.

More on Washingtoner

• Air Force Veteran Sean Douglas Delivers Powerful Suicide Prevention Presentations to Hundreds of Marines at Camp Pendleton
• Breathwork Certification in Seattle, Washington State: First Pacific Northwest Date Set
• Author Robert A. Robinson Introduces Anarchy at the AYP:
• Renew Integrative Health Publishes Updated Peptide Therapy Guide to Help Patients Understand Their Options
• AI Agents Are Getting Their Own Computers. HRTech Leading in Vertical Harness Development

The first drop tells the story of Willie's path to the majors, from Fairfield Industrial High in Birmingham, to the Negro American League, culminating with his move to the New York Giants with whom he would win the Rookie of the Year Award in 1951. The various edition pieces capture the key themes and statistics of those periods, and the 1/1 hero piece adds to the story with a number of never-before-seen personal documents and images from Willie's journey - most notably, a copy of Willie's high school diploma, in which he was assigned a career in "cleaning, dyeing, and pressing." Willie recalls that all Black kids were assigned trade careers, while white kids "on the other side of the barbed-wire fence" were able to choose their paths and professions. Willie's journey to becoming one of America's most beloved sports figures and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom was only possible because of baseball and the people of Fairfield and beyond who helped him chart a different path. The NFT art piece includes a voiceover in which Willie's powerful story is told by Bob Costas, who will join Mays in donating to the baseball academy and Rickwood Field restoration project.

More on Washingtoner

• UK Financial Ltd Announces Two-for-One Upgrade of Maya 3 to Maya 3G Token Using Chainlink Cross-Chain Technology
• Critical FDA Milestone much Closer as Preservative-Free Ketamine Review Advances: NRx Pharmaceuticals (N A S D A Q: NRXP)
• Spokane City Council Passes Community Safety Sales Tax
• AutoProIT Achieves Cyber Essentials Certification, Reinforcing Its Commitment to Secure Digital Transformation
• DayPass llega a ChatGPT y Claude

http://www.costacoscollection.com