Ted Williams’ name first appeared as a professional ballplayer in The Sporting News in the issue dated Nov. 26, 1936 — under a headline on Page 8: “San Diego Counting Strongly on Young Home-Town Player” — speculating that Williams, 18, “will most likely be seen in left field for the Padres in the 1937 Pacific Coast League.”
Across the next seven decades TSN covered The Kid like no other publication.
TSN was there when he broke in with the Red Sox in 1939 (”Rookies Jim Tabor and Ted Williams Measure Up as Regulars”), when he neared the stated goal of being “the greatest hitter who ever lived,” batting .406 in 1941, when two decades later as his Hall of Fame career wound down, and then when he admitted failure as a major-league manager, and as the game’s elder statesman he talked hitting with columnist Dave Kindred and, finally, when the Splendid Splinter passed away in 2002.
Here, across seven decades, are seven noteworthy excerpts from the hundreds of stories The Sporting News ran about Ted Williams, a Boston icon and national treasure:
Nov. 20, 1941
Hall of Fame baseball writer Dan Daniel wrote eloquently about Williams’ feat of batting .400 in ’41, noting how long it had been since a player had accomplished the feat. The irony, of course: No one has done it sense.
IN ACHIEVING the major league batting championship of 1941 with an average of .406, Theodore Samuel Williams of the Boston Red Sox and San Diego, Cal., turned in a classic performance, which had not been matched in his circuit since 1923, when Harry Heilmann of the Tigers hit .403, and in the Big Time since 1930, when Bill Terry reached the .401 level for the Giants.
To hit .400 is the ambition of every major leaguer who owns any pretensions to outstanding skill. Confront a star with this question: "Which of the three power titles would you rather have the runs driven in, the homers, or the batting laurels at .400?" and he would reply, without hesitation, that he would choose the distinction which today belongs to Williams.
At first blush, hitting .400 seems unattainable. When you consider how severe is the task for the majority of major league hitters in striving for the 300 mark, you appreciate that .400 is something to attain only after an arduous climb to the Matterhorn peak — If a player has power, physique, fortitude, luck, stick-to-itiveness, proper environment, and gameness. And he must get the breaks. Investigation proves that while .400 is fabulous, that average really has been accomplished no fewer than 30 times in the major leagues as we know them today. If you wish to include the old American Association, which was the National League's running mate in the days when grandpa was a boy, the total is 41. The trick was accomplished 11 times in that loop of the eighties.
Read the full story here.
Aug. 27, 1958
Daniel returned to the topic of Ted in 1958, as Williams was about to turn 40. Daniel — writing under the headline “What’s in Future for Splinter at 40?” and accompanied by four photos of Williams, ranging in age from 19 to 39 — foreshadowed Williams’ future as a manager, albeit not as the Red Sox’s skipper but rather the sad sack Senators.
BOSTON, Mass. — Even genius gets old. This fact is most pronounced in professional sport, and Theodore Samuel Williams is a professional ball player.
The time has come to examine Ted from the standpoint of age, of performance, of what might be his future. In short, is it in the mind of Tom Yawkey to make Williams the manager of the Red Sox?
Williams is not he kind of man who would be likely to let the press in on his desires or intentions in baseball. He has an odd viewpoint. Perhaps it is all wrong, perhaps it best suits and fits the man in his peculiar position. But he has kept his plans to himself — that is within the past year.
Boston baseball writers tell me that a couple of years back Williams did discuss his future. He indicated that when his playing days were finished he wanted to continue in the game.
Ted referred to managerial possibilities, and said that when and if the time came, he would an an apprenticeship in the high minors before tackling a major job.
Does this still hold? Would Williams care to go off to, let us say, Minneapolis, where he played in 1938 to learn how to run a club?
Or is Theodore ready now, or at some future date not too distant, move into the leadership of the Red Sox? Only he knows, and he won’t talk.
Aug. 17, 1960
"The Player of the Decade award was created in 1955 by J.G. Taylor Spink, publisher of The Sporting News, acting on a suggestion from Bob Feller,” Bob Burnes wrote in TSN in the summer of ‘60. “Because he was so impressed with the idea, Publisher Spink activated the award at once in1955 (Stan Musial won it that year). After this award in 1960, it will be made every 10 years.” Thus, appearing under the headline, “WILLIAMS PICKED AS PLAYER OF THE DECADE Splinter Cops ‘Bible’ Award in a Walkaway” and accompanied by a cartoon declaring him “Tops Among Titans," The Sporting News, a.k.a. “the Bible of Baseball,” honored Teddy Ballgame as his career was coming to a close.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox. greatest hitter of modern times and one of the outstanding batsmen in the history of the major leagues, has been named the recipient of The Sporting News’ second Player of The Decade award — and it went to him by acclamation.
The Sporting News contacted veteran players and writers in various major league cities, seeking candidates for the award and leading to later balloting. From all precincts came back the identical word:
"Save yourself the trouble. It's Williams in a walk. No one is close to him."
Thus, at the finish of his career (Williams has indicated this will be his last season), Boston's Splendid Splinter, who has received virtually every award and won every title available to him, receives the accolade which terms him the best of the best.
Oct. 17, 1970
In his first year as manager of the Senators, Williams led Washington to an 86-76 finish in 1969, three years after his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, earning AL Manager of the Year honors. But the Senators finished 22 games under .500 (70-92) in 1970, frustrating Williams as evidenced in this story by Merrell Whittlesey.
WASHINGTON, D. C. — “Have a good winter" is the traditional parting message of ballplayers as they prepare to scatter after the final day of the season.
That was not exactly Ted Williams' message to the Senators after they ended the season with 14 consecutive defeats.
The manager bluntly told his ball club that in going down the roster he could find only eight, and maybe 10 men, who played to their potential and the other 15 or 17 should take stock of themselves over the winter and be prepared to do better in 1971.
The names were not revealed to protect the guilty.
The miserable finish left a pall over the Senators’ front office. Plans for a season-ticket sale must be put aside until the memory of the 14-game losing streak is dimmed. The Senators have been slogan conscious in recent years.
Somebody suggested using, “We'll Have More Fun in ’71.” It would be almost impossible to have less.
Spoiler alert: The Senators had less fun, going 63-96 in 1971, their last season in D.C. Williams managed the Texas Rangers one year, resigning after a 100-loss season. “Winning as a manager is the most exhilarating feeling in the world,” he said in the Oct. 14, 1972, issue of The Sporting News, “but constant losing produces the exact opposite.”
June 25, 1984
Columnist Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald accompanied Mickey Mantle to a newly opened Babe Ruth museum exhibit in Baltimore, where Ruth was born. In wandering the exhibit, Mantle mused about the player he most idolized — and it wasn’t his fellow Yankee.
Mantle walked over and peered into another glass-enclosed case labeled The 500 Homer Club. He looked back at his own likeness beside those of (Hank) Aaron, Ruth, Willie Mays (660), Frank Robinson (586), Harmon Killebrew (573), Jimmy Foxx (534), Ted Williams and Willie McCovey (521). Ernie Banks and Eddie Mathews (512) and Mel Ott (511). He kept staring at Williams' picture.
“Ted Williams,” Mantle said softly, “My No. 1 idol.”
A female visitor standing nearby heard him. “Ted Williams,” she said. “Wasn't he a singer?”
Mantle was flabbergasted. “A singer? Ted Wiliams? My God, lady. You must be thinking of Hank Williams.”
“Oh," the woman said.
Mickey rolled his eyes and turned back to Ted's picture. “Williams was more real to me than Ruth because I played against him so much. The greatest damn hitter that ever lived … greatest I ever saw, anyway
“You know how much I idolized Ted? Even after I retired in ’68, when I would be down in the Keys on vacation, I would go by Ted's house in Islamorada and just drive around there hoping he would come out.”
The man with Mantle asked him why he hadn't gone up and knocked on the door
“Naw,” Mantle said. “I didn't want to bother him. I told you, with me he was No. 1.”
Nov. 14, 1994
Come on down, Williams beckoned contributing writer Dave Kindred to Florida. The reason: There would be a new Hitters Hall of Fame adjoining the since-shuttered Ted Williams Museum in Hernando, Fla. Come on down, Williams beckoned. Let’s talk. And they did, fortunately for readers of The Sporting News, who were treated to a story with one of baseball’s greatest hitters written by one of sports’ greatest writers. “He doesn’t see well, and he walks with a wobble, the result of a stroke nine months ago,” Kindred would write. “The good news is that at 76 he still is animated in conversation, bright and booming, sassy and passionated.”
Ted Williams is hitting. Always has been, always will be. Ted Williams is sitting by his pool on a sunny Florida day. He has an imaginary bat in his hands, and his fingers are moving, as if the phantom stick of wood were a musical instrument under his touch. He twists his hands on a thin bat handle that only he feels. There comes to his old hero's handsome face a look of boyish delight, for he sees, and only he sees, a baseball coming his way. Oh, my. The joy of putting good wood on a baseball is eternal, and here is Ted Williams about to have fun …
"Hoyt Wilhelm's pitching. And Hoyt Wilhelm's all time for me. I'd get up against Hoyt Wilhelm and his first knuckleball, you could see it good but it was moving. The second one, it's moving more and you'd foul it off and you'd say, "Geez, that's a good knuckleball.' And now he throws you the three-strike knuckleball. It's all over the place, and you're lucky if you don't get hit with it because you don't know where the hell it's going. You could swing at it AND GET HIT BY IT!”
Ted Williams is 76 years old, and his voice is a kid's. He talks in italics and explosions of italics. The words become an actor's monologue given texture by gestures and sound effects and body language so precise that when he flutters a hand, doing a butterfly's flight, you, too, can see the Wilhelm knuckleball on its way. Oh, my, Williams bites his lower lip. He turns his hands around the bat. He narrows his eyes, and the game is on. A half-century ago they called him The Kid. Perfect.
When Ted Williams is hitting, as he is at this moment by the pool, every nerve ending in the kid is alive to the precious possibility of a line drive off a distant fence. He calls them blue darters and scorchers. Now he is hitting against Hoyt Wilhelm, whose knuckleball confounded hitters for 20 years.
"I was always looking for Wilhelm's knuckleball because, geez, you were going to get it. I never will forget this one day. It was in Baltimore. And the ball got halfway to the plate. And I said ..."
The kid's eyes pop wide open. Astonishment.
"I said, ‘Fastball!’”
Williams all but leaps from his chair to get at it
“BOOM! LINE DRIVE TO RIGHT FIELD!”
Then comes a smile soft with pleasure. "I don't think I ever saw another fastball from Hoyt Wilhelm.”
Read the full story here.
July 15, 2002
The end came in midsummer, four decades after he played his final game. Three years after he had electrified a Fenway Park crowd and beguiled future Hall of Famers like Cal Ripken Jr., Tony Gwynn and Ken Griffey Jr. at the All-Star Game at Fenway Park, Williams, 83, died July 5 in Florida. The Sporting News cover was an image of a boyish-looking Williams and the words: “The Splendid Splinter.” Inside, senior editor Ron Smith summed up a legendary life:
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. 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-plus seasons 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.
Read the full obituary here.
In the same issue, Kindred harkened back to his afternoon in the Florida sunshine with Williams, talking hitting, fishing and more, "the chance to be in the presence of greatness."
History isn't dust. It's life. To sit with Ted Williams at age 76 is to know the Williams who 53 years earlier hit .406. It is to know the Williams of John Updike's story who hits a home run in his last at-bat, on a September day in 1960, and ignores the Fenway Park crowd's roar, circling the bases "as he always ran out home runs — hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap."
Players and umpires tried to persuade Williams to come out of the dugout and acknowledge the beseeching fans. But he had never done that and he didn't do it then. Updike wrote, "Gods do not answer letters."
All he ever wanted, Ted Williams said, was to walk down the street and hear people say he was the greatest hitter who ever lived. Maybe he was. Give him back the four-plus seasons he gave us during World War II and as a fighter pilot in Korea, maybe he leaves Babe Ruth behind.
We told him so in his old age. There came a day of celebration in 1991 at Fenway Park. As he walked to a microphone, he carried a Red Sox cap. With that kid's smile, he tugged the cap on. "They say there's one thing I never did," he said. Then he lifted high the cap. Gods do answer letters.
Read the full column here.