This story by senior editor Ron Smith — under the headline “Splendid, indeed” — first appeared in the July 15, 2002, issue of The Sporting News, capturing the mercurial nature of Boston icon Ted Williams’ life as he said he strived to have people say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.”
He slugged and slashed a wide baseball swath through Boston and the American League, captivating fans with the sweetest swing since Shoeless Joe Jackson and frustrating them with a cocky, outspoken, arrogant and often-acerbic personality that generated enduring controversy. Long after his career ended, Ted Williams was equal parts baseball god and public relations monster, a complex superstar who spent two incredible decades carving out legendary status among the game's elite all-time performers.
Ted Williams was 83 when he died last Friday (July 5, 2002). He will be remembered not only as a baseball hero but also an American hero, a proud veteran of World War II and the Korean War. He lost 4% of his prime baseball years in service to his country, and so it seems wholly appropriate that baseball — that America — lost one of its best when it did, smack in the middle of the baseball season, just one day after Independence Day.
To fully appreciate the baseball talents of a player known affectionately as The Kid, The Splendid Splinter, and Teddy Ballgame, you need look no further than the numbers: a .344 career average, sixth highest of all time; 521 home runs; 1,839 RBIs; 1,798 runs scored; 2,654 hits; 19 All-Star Game selections; two American League Triple Crowns; and a pair of A.L Most Valuable Player Awards — figures that could have been considerably higher if not for his military service.
TSN Archives: Ted Williams, a hitter first, a hitter always (Nov. 14, 1994)
Yet Williams' temperamental outbursts were as remarkable and explosive as when his bat met ball. Williams was smart, self-confident and generally cheerful and fun to be around. But he could not handle criticism, and certain members of the competitive Boston media incurred his wrath, which he never failed to communicate. No player was more analyzed, dissected, critiqued, praised, condemned or misunderstood than Williams, who compounded his problems with mocking demonstrations and obscene gestures directed at fans.
Love him or hate him, you had to marvel at the dedication with which Williams attacked his craft. He was the masterful technician, the man who turned hitting into a science, and a perfect blend of skills raised him to a plateau few have visited. The incredible eyesight, the lightning reflexes, the perfect timing, the powerful wrists and forearms and the unwavering patience were well-defined components of an unnervingly efficient hitting machine.
"A man has to have goals for a day, for a lifetime," Williams explained. "That was mine: to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.’"
Baseball's current stars surely accorded him that honor in 1999 during the All-Star ceremonies in Boston. Williams was introduced as one of the top 30 players on baseball's All-Century team. Williams, 80, and burdened by health problems, was driven onto the field at Fenway Park in a golf cart, where he was surrounded by players from both All-Star teams in an emotional scene near home plate. The game was held up for 14 minutes while the greatest hitter of the last six decades laughed and talked with his admirers, comfortable at last on baseball's center stage. It proved to be his last baseball-related appearance.
THE PRODIGY
"I remember the first time I ever saw Ted Williams," recalled longtime teammate and friend Dominic DiMaggio. "It was 1937 and we were both in the Pacific Coast League, me with San Francisco and Ted with San Diego. I was sitting beside our manager, Lefty O'Doul, in the dugout watching Ted take batting practice. Lefty took one look at Ted and said, ‘There's the next Babe Ruth.’ And Lefty O'Doul was the greatest hitting teacher I've ever known."
Williams had been born there in San Diego on August 30, 1918, to an itinerant, apparently disinterested father and a mother concerned first with her work as a member of the Salvation Army. Often left to fend for himself, Ted devoted most of his free moments to baseball and his secondary passions, hunting and fishing. It was not uncommon to see the gangly Williams swinging a bat in his backyard well into the evening hours or powering line drives to the outer reaches of area fields. Kids from the modest North Park neighborhood were recruited, often with Ted's lunch-money nickels and dimes, to pitch batting practice or shag balls.
Williams may have been short on parental supervision, but he developed meaningful relationships with teachers and coaches at local Herbert Hoover High and with the parents of friends who gave him the attention he didn't get at home. He was articulate, engaging and a quick study in anything relating to baseball. Friends and teammates marveled at his ability to read pitchers, and he never was lacking in confidence.
As an outfielder with the minor league Padres in 1936, Williams was spotted by Red Sox general manager Eddie Collins, who had made a West Coast swing to sign another Padres player, second baseman Bobby Doerr. It didn't take long for Collins to notice Williams picture-perfect swing — “Ted stood out like a brown cow in a pasture of white cows," Collins said — and he returned to Boston with Doerr under contract and Williams under an option that the Sox would exercise after the 1937 season.
Williams blew into the Red Sox's 1938 spring training camp at Sarasota, Fla., and quickly caught the attention of the Red Sox veterans and manager Joe Cronin.
"I'll never forget the day in spring training that a newspaperman said to Ted, 'Wait until you see Jimmie Foxx hit,’” Cronin recalled years later, referring to the Red Sox's star, who had hit .338 two seasons before and Ted shot back, ‘Wait until Foxx sees me hit.’”
Williams did not win a job with the team that spring. He was assigned to Class AA Minneapolis of the American Association, where he ravaged pitchers with a .366 average, 43 home runs and 142 RBls. He also argued with fans, played lackadaisically in the field, sat down on the grass when things got dull and jousted verbally with manager Donie Bush.
After getting a 1939 call to Boston, Williams became an instant favorite at Fenway Park, hitting .327 with 31 homers. He also led the American League with 145 RBis, 40 more than Foxx. The only dent in his popularity resulted from an August game in which Williams, mired in a slump, hit a bases-loaded pop fly to center field and brooded all the way down the first base line. When the ball fell between fielders, Williams was forced to hold at first with a two-run single. Boston fans showered him with boos, and Cronin yanked him from the game.
Williams followed that spectacular rookie season, with a .344 average and 113 RBis in 1940.
"He has the rare strength and coordination to be badly fooled on a pitch and still get wood on it," Indians player/manager Lou Boudreau said. "He hits balls right out of the catcher's glove."
Unfortunately for Williams, he also suffered his first serious breach with Boston fans during that impressive second season, triggered, typically, by a defensive lapse.
"I made up my mind in my second year never to tip my hat to the fans," Williams said years later. "I'll never forget that game. I struck out and followed with an error in the field. Then I heard it. They really gave it to me good. When I came into the dugout, I swore I'd never again tip my hat, no matter how much I was cheered."
Williams remained true to that promise, and his defensive mistakes almost always were greeted derisively by Boston fans. He moved from right field to left, learned to play Fenway Park's left field wall masterfully and became a better-than-average outfielder, but he never escaped the perception his glove work was a liability.
"I have to laugh when they rap Williams' fielding," said Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby. "His fielding? Defense becomes unimportant when you have a hitting talent like his."
In 1941, Williams recorded perhaps his most memorable feat. Not since 1930 had anybody in baseball topped the magic .400 plateau. Williams entered the final day of the 1941 season with an average that would have rounded off to .400 if he had accepted Cronin's offer to sit out the season-ending doubleheader against the Athletics. But Willams, decreeing, "I don't care to be known as a .400 hitter with a lousy average of .39955,” played both games and collected six hits in eight at-bats, finishing at .406.
TSN Archives: Ted Williams, 22, hits .406 for Red Sox (Nov. 20, 1941)
He also led the A.L. in home runs (37) and runs scored (135) and finished fourth in RBis (120), yet finished second to the Yankees' Joe DiMaggio in voting for the MVP award. It was the first of several slights that friends and teammates attributed to Williams' bad relationship with the press. It also was the beginning of what would become a career-long link with DiMaggio.
DiMaggio's MVP selection was not without merit. That was the year he hit in a record 56 consecutive games. He also drove in 125 runs and led the Yankees to a pennant (and ultimately a World Series championship). Williams came back in 1942 to win the AL Triple Crown with 36 home runs, 137 RBls and a .356 average and lost again in the MVP voting, this time to Yankees second baseman Joe Gordon, who batted .322 with 18 homers and 103 RBis for another pennant winner.
DUTY CALLS
Williams was at the top of his game when the winds of war swept across the land and gobbled up the peak years of numerous major league careers. Such future Hall of Famers as Bob Feller and Hank Greenberg already had heeded Uncle Sam's call when Williams enlisted in the Navy Air Corps in 1942. He never saw combat in World War II but missed all of the 1943, '44 and '45 baseball seasons.
In 1944, he married Doris Soule, the first of his three wives. The two had one child, Barbara Joyce, but the marriage ended in 1955.
During the war, Williams still managed to get enough batting practice time to stay sharp, and he quickly got back into the groove after his return.
Williams was well on his way to another stellar season in 1946 when he hit three homers and drove in eight runs in the first game of a July doubleheader against Cleveland. When he stepped to the plate in the nightcap, Indians manager Boudreau gave him a surprise. The Indians shifted their defense dramatically to the right, with three infielders on the first base side of second base, and the center fielder shifted toward right center. They were daring him to hit away from his power, but Williams, a dead pull hitter, ignored the shift. He would see it off and on over the years, but intense pride kept him from deviating from his hitting routine.
How effective was the shift? Two months later, he got his revenge, hitting an inside-the-park home run against a shifted Indians defense in a 1-0 victory that clinched the only pennant of Williams' career. But his year came to an unhappy end when he batted a meager .200 in the World Series and the Red Sox lost a seven-game heartbreaker to the Cardinals.
A WILD RIDE
The late 1940s. were like a continuing roller-coaster ride for Williams. After signing for $70,000 in 1947, he won another Triple Crown — a .343, 32-homer, 114-RBI effort — to match Rogers Hornsby's 1920s Triple Crown double. But again he was denied the MVP award. DiMaggio, a .315 hitter with 20 homers and 97 RBis, edged Williams by a single point after one writer did not even list Williams on his ballot.
In 1948, writers stirred up a hornet's nest when they delivered the shocking news that Williams was off fishing in Florida while his daughter was born in Boston. He survived that controversy and claimed his fourth A.L. batting championship with a .369 mark.
TSN Archives: Dave Kindred on Ted Williams, a nod to a god (July 15, 2002)
After posting career highs of 43 home runs and 159 RBis in 1949, Williams struggled through a difficult 1950 season. He missed 10 early-season games with a viral infection and 55 more after fracturing his elbow in the All-Star Game at Comiskey Park. But the nadir may have been a May 11 doubleheader against the Tigers at Fenway Park. Still seething over a first-game error that drew the wrath of fans, Williams let a Vic Wertz line drive skip past him with the bases loaded. He then jogged back to the wall to retrieve the ball and lobbed it to the infield as three runs scored. Fans bellowed their dissatisfaction as Williams left the field between innings. He fired back an obscene gesture that he emphatically repeated two more times. He issued a public apology the next day, but his deed could not be undone.
In April 1952, Williams began another stint in the military, this time a 17-month tour of duty with the Marines in the Korean War. Three days before reporting, he hit a game-winning home run against Detroit in his farewell contest. Red Sox fans, more forgiving than their temperamental star, honored Williams during pregame ceremonies and then roared their approval when he connected for a two-run, seventh-inning shot off Dizzy Trout.
It might have been like that all the time for the stubborn Williams if he had been willing to make one simple gesture. "If he'd just tip his cap once, he could be elected mayor of Boston in five minutes," Collins once said. “I don't think he'll ever do it."
THE HERO
Williams then spent the better part of two seasons playing a different, more dangerous kind of game. Unlike in World War II, he was an active participant in the Korean conflict, flying 39 combat missions and barely escaping with his life.
On February 16, 1953, Williams, a captain by rank, was flying an F-9 Panther jet over enemy territory when he was hit by small-arms fire. He then, flew his burning plane back over enemy lines, crash landed it on an allied airfield and escaped from the cockpit seconds before the plane exploded in flames.
Williams returned to Boston a hero and didn't take long to resume his battering of opposing pitchers. At age 35, he hit .345 in an injury-plagued 1954 season and resumed his bickering with Boston media and fans. In 1957, at 39, he became the oldest batting champion in baseball history with a .388 average. Williams supplemented that lofty figure with 38 home runs, but the A.L. MVP went to Mickey Mantle of the Yankees. Two writers had listed Williams ninth and 10th on their ballots.
Williams came back in 1958 to claim his sixth batting title with a .328 mark. Career home run No. 500 came on June 17, 1960, and two months later he hit No. 512, passing Mel Ott on the all-time homer list to assume third place behind Babe Ruth and Foxx.
The '50s also were stained by Williams-generated controversy. Twice he was fined for spitting gestures directed at fans and writers, and his blunt comments frequently generated negative headlines. A 1955 divorce only added to the discord.
When the 42-year-old Williams ended his career in 1960, he went out in style. On September 28, having announced he would be playing his final game at Fenway Park, Williams was honored in a brief pregame ceremony, then connected for an eighth-inning home run off Baltimore's Jack Fisher, his 29th of the season. Afterward, true to form, he refused to take a curtain call as delirious Boston fans chanted his name. Williams then ran somberly from the field as Carroll Hardy was sent out to replace him in left.
NEW CHALLENGES
Free of the demands of baseball in retirement, Williams devoted the same sort of passion to fishing that he had once reserved for the game. He would rise early, head to the water with fishing gear in hand and return in the evening, ready for bed. The next day he would repeat the routine.
While Williams became known as an expert fisherman, his second and third marriages foundered. Lee Howard, a socialite model from Chicago, married Williams in 1961, but the union was short. He married Delores Wettach in 1968, and they remained together for five years. His final marriage produced two children — John Henry, born in 1968, and Claudia, born in 1971.
Three years after his first-ballot election to the Hall of Fame in 1966, Williams acceded to the pleas of Washington Senators owner Bob Short to manage his team. A hefty salary and an ownership stake helped lure Williams back into the spotlight, and he proved surprisingly adept at imparting the wisdom he gathered over the years to the young squad.
Williams directed the Senators to a fourth-place finish in 1969 and managed for three more seasons, including the franchise's first as the Texas Rangers. Tired of the strain and wanting to devote more time to fishing and to young John Henry, Williams left the game again. (Oddly, only two weeks before his father's death, John Henry, 33, signed a contract to play for the Red Sox's team in the rookie Gulf Coast League.)
After stepping down as the Rangers manager, Williams made occasional appearances at old-timers' games, became a regular at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, tutored young Red Sox hitters in spring training and enjoyed his status as one of the greatest of the greats. His battles with fans and the media seemed to recede from the collective memory, and Williams apparently relished his newfound acceptance. His No. 9 was retired in ceremonies before a 1984 game at Fenway Park, and in 1991, on the 50th anniversary of his .406 season, he was honored with Ted Williams Day, which he marked by tipping his cap to Boston fans.
Williams' final, stirring appearance at Fenway Park will not be forgotten by anyone who witnessed it in person or on television. One by one the greats of the game were introduced and hailed by the Fenway Park crowd. Hank Aaron ... Stan Musial ... Mike Schmidt ... Ernie Banks ... Willie Mays ... Bob Gibson. Never has there been such a collection of baseball talent on a single field, and the reception for each was thunderous.
But when Williams was introduced, everyone — the media, fans, the legends and the players who would play the All-Star Game — knew they were witnessing something special. As he shared intimate conversations with players and when he mustered up the energy to lift his frail body and stand, with Tony Gwynn by his side, to throw out the first pitch, there were few dry eyes.
That appearance is a symbol and the enduring image for the life and career of Ted Williams — a man who lived for and gave everything to the game of baseball in his prime, now giving everything he had for the game and the next generation of superstars.