Remembering baseball legend Ted Williams

After Ted Williams retired, a reporter asked him if he would do anything differently if he could play his career all over again. "Yeah," answered Williams, who spent more time in the batting cage than anyone else. "I'd take more batting practice."

It is well known that Williams, who died last week, was blessed with more pure ability as a hitter than almost anyone else, and that he was gifted with keener eyesight than most, but that willingness-even determination--to outwork everyone was the third ingredient in his rise to immortality.

He was also willing to out-think everyone else as a sharp student of his sport. Dom DiMaggio, Joe's all-star brother who played center field for the Boston Red Sox, once told me of the exchange that frequently took place after Dom started the game as the Red Sox leadoff hitter. If he failed to reach base, he would be trotting back to the Boston bench as Johnny Pesky followed him into the batter's box and Williams emerged from the dugout to hit after Pesky.

Williams, who never spoke at a normal decibel level, would holler, "Where was the last pitch, Dommie?" Or he'd ask, "What's he throwing?" Or, "What did you hit?"

In DiMaggio's disgust at failing to get a hit, he would shrug, Williams off with, "I don't know."

Williams would explode at that answer. With him, not knowing was worse than not getting a hit. He would scream at his close friend, "How the hell can you not know? What kind of a dummy are you? No wonder you didn't get a hit. Don't be so damned dumb!"

Williams's analytical ability surfaced again during spring training one season when the Red Sox were barnstorming their way north to start the season. They stopped in Louisville, Ky., home of the Hillerich & Bradsby factory, where the Louisville Slugger bats are manufactured. Williams made sure to tour the plant, taking his teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, Bobby Doerr, with him. They arrived a halfhour before the factory opened. Doerr told me later, "He was just dying to get in there"

When they did, Williams told one of the lathe operators, "Anytime you see any pin knots in the wood, stick those bats in my bag." Williams believed pin knots were harder wood, which in turn would help him to hit the ball harder. The lathe operator didn't forget and, sure enough, a shipment of bats with pin knots arrived at Boston's Fenway Park later. But it wasn't just a good memory on the part of the lathe operator. "When Ted walked away," Doerr remembered, "he handed the guy a $20 bill."

Contrary to today's hitters, Williams was a firm believer that a lighter bat was better because you could generate more bat speed. At the All-Star game in Detroit in 1941, when he hit the most dramatic home run in the history of that event and went on to hit .406 for the season, he met Mr. Hillerich himself in the lobby of the Book-Cadillac Hotel. Doerr was there that time, too, and remembers the conversation:

WILLIAMS: "Mr. Hillerich, I want to get some 32-ounce bats."

HILLERICH (throwing up his hands): "Ted, you can't get good wood with a bat that light."

WILLIAMS: "What good is the wood if you can't handle it?"

At the end of that 1941 season, he was less excited than others over his feat of hitting .406. In a comment even more refreshing today, he told reporters, "What the heck, I figured if I'm getting paid $30,000, the least I can do is hit .400."

Much has been written since Ted died that he never tipped his hat to the fans because of his love-hate relationship with them during his playing career. That much is true, but the complete story goes beyond that.

May 12, 1991, was Ted Williams Day at Fenway Park. The fans went wild in their applause,for him. Williams was visibly moved, and he told the fans - they were his fans now - how much it meant to him "knowing you guys really did love me." Then he pulled out a Red Sox cap =-and tipped it to his fans,

Mr. Gilbert, a former reporter for the Washington Post is the best-selling author of 21 books, seven of them on baseball, including (with Duke Snider) The Duke of Flatbush.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jul 15, 2002
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