TED WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN BASEBALL LEGEND

TED WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN BASEBALL LEGEND

Ted Williams has always been a sports hero I’ve admired since childhood. Not for his personality, as he was certainly lacking in social skills, but for his determined discipline to be the best he could be. He didn’t just play baseball, he made it a science. He studied every pitcher as scientist might study something through a microscope. He practiced swinging the bat with great discipline. He set the example of striving for excellence through hard work.

Leigh Montville has written a book about Williams Ted Williams, the biography of an American hero which I enjoyed very much. Williams was certainly one of the greatest baseball hitters of all times. He was only a teenager when he suited up in 1939 as a Boston Red Sox. In 1941 he had a .406 hitting season, an absolutely amazing record that six decades later is still an achievement to be admired.  Williams_3Known as "The kid" or "The splendid Splinter" or "Teddy Ballgame" Williams played with such greats as Dom Dimaggio and Johnny Pesky. He played 19 seasons of baseball before retiring with a career batting average of .344 and 521 home runs. One of his home runs was hit so far they painted the seat where it landed in red.His .551on base percentage was a record for 61 years. Willaims was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

  In his prime, Theodore Samuel Williams entered World War II as a Marine Corps fighter pilot where he was assigned duty as a flight instructor at Pensacola. He was released from the military in 1946 only to be recalled to active duty in 1952, at thirty four years of age, for service in the Korean War. It again interrupted an outstanding baseball career. In 1953 he was flying a mission when his plane was hit disabling his hydraulic and electric systems. All the red warning lights came on and the plane was difficult to control. A fellow pilot saw he was in trouble and pulled close but couldn’t communicate due the dead radiWilliams2o. The pilot was able to lead him in the right direction back to base since all of the plane’s instruments were out. His plane was on fire, but Williams wasn’t aware of it. With the landing field in sight there was an explosion when the wheel door blew off. He was unable to slow the plane down and hit the field at twice the recommended landing speed for his F-9. The plane finally skidded to a stop at the end of the field. His plane was on fire. He popped the canopy and got out in a hurry. The plane was destroyed by fire, but Williams was unhurt. Ted was awarded the Air Medal for his combat missions. He ended up flying 38 combat missions. Military took a total of five years out of his best years of baseball.

Williams had an ongoing battle with sports reporters for his entire career. He called them "knights of the typewriter" when he was wasn’t calling them more profane names. He describes his attitude about sports writers in his memoir My Turn at Bat and it wasn’t favorable. With fans, they admired him as a player, but tormented him on the field and he responded in kind. He was fined for making obscene gestures towards booing fans and treated the fans in the left field where he was playing with contempt. He refused to tip his hat as he rounded the bases after a home run even with fans cheering him. It was not until the 1999 All Star Game, long after his retirement, when Williams had thrown the ceremonial pitch and while walking back to the dugout, he tipped his hat to cheering Boston fans for the first time in his career. On the other hand, with individual fans, especially sick children, Willaims devoted hours and money. He was always very private about the personal contributions he made to the sick children. Long hours of visits with kids in hospitals and individual children plus financial assistance, especially to those with cancer, were always done privately and was something he never would talk about.

In retirement he was under contract with Sears to promote their fishing equipment and later agreed to manage the Washington Senators. His last season as manager was in 1969. He was not a very good or successful manager. He also sponsored a baseball camp for kids in Massachusetts. The Ted Williams Baseball Camp was the creation of Al Cassidy and his vision inspired Williams to financially back it as well as participate with the children attending the camp for many years.

He was a life long fisherman. His fly fishing and deep sea fishing was, next to baseball, his passion. He was an excellent fly fisherman. He devoted his off season to fishing and was inducted into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame in 2000.

He was married and divorced three times. He had two daughters and a son. The son came back into his life after his retirement and became involved in promoting Williams memorabilia. He had his father autograph bats, balls and other materials which were sold. The son was controversial and many saw him as manipulating his father in order to make money for himself. When Williams died, the son, John Henry, announced there would be no funeral and flew his body to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. The company was in the business of freezing dead people with the idea that some day medical science might advance enough to give them life again. In spite of the public outrage, there Williams head was separated from the body and both were put in cryonic suspension, a deep freeze container. This was done over the objections of his daughter by his first marriage who sued to force the terms of his will be carried out. It provided for cremation. But the son claimed the will had been revised by a scribbled note on a napkin signed by Williams which called for cryonics. His daughter maintained that Williams had a habit, before autographing memorabilia, to warm up by practicing signing on scraps of paper including napkins. Her suit maintained that the son had forged the note on an already signed practice paper. She finally abandoned the suit when she said she ran out of money.

Ted Williams was two time American League Most Valuable Player, led the league in batting six times and won the Triple Crown twice. Williams hit a home run in his final time at bat on September 28, 1960 at Fenway Park. He died July 5, 2002 as one of Baseball’s greats.

One thought on “TED WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN BASEBALL LEGEND

  1. In l952 Ted Williams and my path crossed in Yokuska, Japan, Ted Williams put on a hitting seminar for us stationed on the base. I remember at the time I did not know how big a deal this was, being a l7 year old out of Montana but as years passed the incident has grown bigger each year. CB

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