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Willie Mays bought castle-like suburban home on East Coast to escape racism in San Francisco

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Willie Mays bought castle-like suburban home on East Coast to escape racism in San Francisco

Willie Mays bought a 15-room mansion in a New York City suburb to escape housing discrimination in San Francisco and remained under the radar, as rumors swirled about a crumbling marriage.

When the New York Giants moved to the Bay Area in 1957, buyers didn’t want to sell to Mays, despite his superstar fame, because owners “stand to lose a lot if colored people move in,” Mays said in an interview, according to James Hirsch’s biography about Mays’ life.

“Down in Alabama where we come from, you know your place,” Mays said in an interview, according to Hirsch. “But up here, it’s a lot of camouflage. They grin in your face and deceive you.”

The racist housing debacle made national headlines, which he wanted to avoid. He bought a castle-like home 3,000 miles away in New Rochelle, New York, for $75,000 in 1960 from Samuel and Pauline Zaretsky, according to the deed obtained by Fox News Digital.

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Hall of Famer Willie Mays tips his cap during introductions for the first game of the World Series between the Giants and the Detroit Tigers on Oct. 24, 2012, in San Francisco. (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP, File)

New Rochelle, nicknamed the “Queen City of the Sound,” is about 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan and is the seventh most populated city in New York state.

Mays and his first wife, Margherite, were among the first Black families who moved into the upscale, secluded section of the north end of the city. 

The headline in The New York Times on May 28, 1960, read, “WILLIE MAYS BUYS WESTCHESTER HOME; Neighbors in New Rochelle Welcome Negro Family to $75,000 Stone House.”

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City historian Barbara Davis told Fox News Digital that they mostly stayed to themselves and lived in the city for a short time. 

Mays traveled coast to coast between his rental home in San Francisco and his New Rochelle palace, which is estimated to be worth about $2 million today. 

Willie Mays bought this home in New Rochelle in 1960 after encountering racist housing practices in San Francisco following the Giants’ move from the Big Apple to the Bay Area. (New Rochelle Public Library)

The headline in The New York Times in May 1960 about Willie Mays buying a home in a New York City suburb. (New York Times Archives)

Mays is honored in the city’s walk of fame outside the public library, along with other baseball greats like Mariano Rivera and Lou Gehrig, and cultural icons like Ruby Dee. 

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“New Rochelle can be proud to claim an association with part of this baseball history, as Willie Mays, the ‘Say Hey Kid,’ lived in a 15-room Normandy style mansion at 90 Croft Terrace in the early 1960s,” his plaque read. 

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The plaque includes blurbs about his childhood in Alabama, stats of arguably one of the greatest players ever and, of course, a reference to “The Catch,” the iconic image of Mays running to dead center field to catch a fly ball directly over his head in the 1954 World Series. 

The baseball legend’s death last week seemingly brought the nation together. 

Willie Mays of the New York Giants goes back to catch the ball hit by Vic Wertz of the Cleveland Indians during the World Series on Sept. 29, 1954, at the Polo Grounds in New York. (Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios/Getty Images)

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READ: DEED OBTAINED BY FOX NEWS DIGITAL

Like Mays’ reported comment about “camouflaged” racism in San Francisco, the gorgeous home hid turbulent times in Mays’ first marriage, according to Hirsch’s biography. 

About a year or two before the Mays family moved to New Rochelle, Margherite downplayed rumors of a crumbling marriage. 

They went through a public separation that included allegations of Mays’ ex-wife’s lavish spending habits. Their seven-year marriage, from 1956 to 1963, ended in divorce. 

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Their animosity toward each other was detailed in the reporter’s biography – titled “Willie Mays. The Life. The Legend,” including instances where Mays slept at the opposite end of the home. 

The Walk of Honor plaque for Willie Mays in New Rochelle, New York, walk of fame. (City of New Rochelle)

Willie Mays visits PS 46 in Harlem, next to the site of the former Polo Grounds, where the New York Giants played before moving to San Francisco in 1958, on Jan. 21, 2011 in New York City. (Michael Nagle/Getty Images)

Mays remarried to Mae Louise Allen. They were together until she died in April 2013 at the age of 74, and Margherite died at the age of 84 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in July 2010. 

As for his playing days, Mays’ career stats include 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, a career .301 batting average, 1,909 RBIs and 339 stolen bases. 

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He still holds the MLB record for most putouts by an outfielder with 7,095. In fact, he’s the only outfielder to record over 7,000 career putouts. 

He played for the Birmingham Black Barons in the Negro Leagues from 1948-1950, the New York Giants from 1951-1957 (with a two-year gap in ‘52 and ’53, when he served in the U.S. Army), the San Francisco Giants from 1958-1972, and the New York Mets from 1972-1973. 

He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, and into the New Rochelle Walk of Fame in 2014. President Barack Obama presented Mays with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

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Northeast

Brown University shooter confessed in videos to planning attack for long time, showed no remorse: DOJ

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Brown University shooter confessed in videos to planning attack for long time, showed no remorse: DOJ

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Federal prosecutors on Tuesday released transcripts of short videos they say were recorded by the gunman responsible for a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor in Massachusetts.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said investigators recovered an electronic device containing the videos when they executed a federal search warrant on Dec. 18, 2025, at a storage facility used by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, whom authorities described as “the Portuguese national responsible for the senseless murders.”

The videos were recorded in Portuguese and later translated into English, prosecutors said. In the recordings, Neves Valente described the attack as the culmination of long planning.

“It’s done. It was, it was six months, man. Not six months, six semesters. Uh. I had already planned this for a little more,” he said in one video, according to the transcripts.

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DISPATCH RECORDS FROM BROWN UNIVERSITY SHOOTING CAPTURE CHAOS OF DEADLY CAMPUS ATTACK

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts released this image showing the man identified in deadly shootings of Brown University students in Rhode Island and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor in Massachusetts. (Justice Department)

Authorities said Neves Valente identified Brown University as his intended target but did not provide a motive for shooting students at Brown or for killing the MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro, 47. Prosecutors said the investigation into a motive will continue.

Two Brown students, Ella Cook, 19, and Muhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were killed in the Dec. 13 shooting on the Providence, Rhode Island, campus, and nine other people were wounded, authorities said. Just two days later, Loureiro, a professor at MIT, was killed in Brookline.

In the transcript, Neves Valente repeatedly refused to express remorse.

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“So, what has been done now… I’m in a storage space in Salem, I’ve had this here for three years, I think. I still have money. … I am not going to apologize, because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me.” He also rejected that mental illness was to blame, saying: “that’s all bull—- excuses.”

“I am – I am sane,” he said. “I’ve always been, more or less [sane].”

Neves Valente also said President Donald Trump was right to “have called me an animal, which is true.”

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“I am an animal, and he is also, but uhm, I have no love–I have no hatred towards America, I also have no hatred at all. This was an issue of… of opportunity.”

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Despite its role as Brown University’s highest governing authority with direct power over presidential oversight and long-term strategy, the board of trustees has declined to comment in the wake of the murders that exposed serious lapses in campus security. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

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Prosecutors said Neves Valente “showed no remorse” during the recordings and blamed victims for their deaths.

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In the transcript, he criticized people’s responses during the shooting, saying, “Because they were kind of stupid.”

He also dismissed how the world would view him after he carried out the mass shooting on the college campus.

 “I don’t give a d— about how you judge me or what you think of me,” he said, while also saying, “I also have no interest in being famous.”

Images of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente displayed on a projector screen at a news briefing in Providence, Rhode Island. The 48-year-old former student and Portuguese national has been identified as the gunman behind a mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine. (Andrea Margolis/Fox News Digital)

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Throughout the transcript, he focused on the injury he sustained, saying: “As you can see, my eye is kind of f—– up.”

Neves Valente said that he was injured in what he called a “shell round” that “bounced” into his eye.

A split image showing multiple still frames from the surveillance video taken near Brown University of a person of interest before and after a school shooting. (FBI Boston)

An autopsy previously found Neves Valente died by suicide two days before his body was discovered in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire.

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Authorities said Tuesday they do not believe there is any ongoing public safety threat associated with the shootings and that additional updates will be provided.

Fox News Digital’s Michael Ruiz and Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.

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Boston, MA

Florida-based breakfast chain makes Boston debut with newest location

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Florida-based breakfast chain makes Boston debut with newest location


Boston just got a new breakfast spot that’s serving up freshly made juices and dishes from morning until the afternoon.

Florida-based chain First Watch opened its first Boston location at 777 Boylston St. on Wednesday, Jan. 7.

The opening marks the second First Watch location in Massachusetts, joining its Hanover restaurant that opened in January 2025.

The inside of First Watch’s first Boston location, located at 777 Boylston St.David Cifarelli

First Watch was founded in Pacific Grove, California in 1983. The company later moved its headquarters to Bradenton, Florida in 1986 and is now headquartered in Sarasota.

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Before breaking into New England, First Watch was recognized in other markets for its modern take on breakfast, brunch and lunch food. All dishes are made to order using fresh ingredients in a kitchen without heat lamps, microwaves or deep fryers.

Staples include the Lemon Ricotta Pancakes — a mid-stack of whipped ricotta pancakes topped with lemon curd, strawberries and powdered cinnamon sugar — and Million Dollar Bacon — four slices of hardwood smoked bacon baked with brown sugar, black pepper, cayenne and a maple syrup drizzle.

First Watch
First Watch’s popular Million Dollar Bacon served at the chain’s Boston location.David Cifarelli

First Watch also offers seasonal items that rotate roughly five times a year. Sample offerings during the winter include the fan-favorite B.E.C. Sandwich — a bacon, egg and cheddar sandwich served on griddled artisan sourdough bread — and the Strawberry Tres Leches French Toast that’s made with challah bread and topped with strawberries, dulce de leche, whipped cream and spiced gingerbread cookie crumbles.

First Watch’s fresh juice program is a company staple as well. The juices are made in-house every morning and change based on the season. Examples include the “Morning Meditation,” “Kale Tonic,” and “Purple Haze.”

First Watch also serves Project Sunrise coffee, which is made from coffee beans sourced by women coffee farmers in South America.

First Watch Boston is open 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily.

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First Watch Boston
The outside of First Watch in Boston, located at 777 Boylston St.David Cifarelli





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Pittsburg, PA

Commanders sign athletic former Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback

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Commanders sign athletic former Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback


The Washington Commanders have signed former Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Darius Rush to a reserve/future contract, the team announced.

Rush joined Washington in August after he was released by the Cleveland Browns, and spent the entire season with the team. Now, he will get a chance to showcase what he can do in the offseason and make a roster push.

Rush was also previously with the Kansas City Chiefs, but was waived/injured at the beginning of training camp.

The Steelers released Rush in last October, freeing him up to become a member of the Chiefs. He initially made the active roster, but after a rough preseason, the team went in another direction to locate some help, which they found in James Pierre.

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Rush, a 2023 fourth-round pick out of South Carolina by the Indianapolis Colts, was cut by the Colts out of training camp. The Chiefs proceeded to claim Rush off waivers following his release, before the Steelers then signed him weeks later in 2023.

With Pittsburgh, Rush took on the role of dimebacker against the Tennessee Titans a season ago, playing 21 snaps in his NFL regular-season debut. He would win a starting gunner role to start the year in Pittsburgh, but not hold onto it after pressure from Pierre.



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