The 78-year-old African-American baseball great from San Francisco rode AF1 from Michigan to St. Louis along with President Obama, who's throwing the first pitch at tonight's All-Star game. Also, turns out Hank Aaron will be sitting in the box with Obama tonight.

Mays came back on the plane to talk to the press pool. He said his only advice to Obama on throwing the first pitch was that he should "follow through." Any political analogies? Here's more in the enjoyable print pool report from Politico's Carol Lee:

Mays spoke with reporters and signed autographs for about 10 minutes. . . . Wearing a Giants baseball cap during his first flight on Air Force One, Mays spoke emotionally about POTUS’s election.

“I reminded him that I dreamed about this day,” Mays said when asked what he and POTUS had been talking about. “Not being on Air Force One, but dreamed about someone in my race being president. Not knowing that anyone would be. But I reminded him that I cried for most of the night in Chicago.”

Mays said "that tells me all the things I went through it was for good things. So I’m just proud of him, you know. He may be proud of something else. But I’m proud of him, what he stands for.”

Lee writes that Mays also "chided poolers who were Dodgers fans, and others who were for the Cubs" and "took issue when a member of the pool predicted the American League would win tonight’s game. 'Wait a minute,' Mays said. 'When I played, we didn’t lose a game – we didn’t lose a game from 1954 to 1973. And you say that American is gonna win? Who they got?'