I met up with Larry at the SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) convention in the old Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. On Saturday June 29 in the big ornate ballroom they had a Talkin' Ted Williams Forum, hosted by Bill Nowlin. Speaking about Ted were Dick Flavin, a local comedian and banquet speaker, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Joe Cronin’s daughter Maureen. Flavin, Pesky & DiMaggio had recently driven down to see Ted in Florida. Dom calls him almost every day. It's amazing how these three and Bobby Doerr -- teammates from the West Coast -- have stayed so close all these years. Flavin gave a comic rendition of “Teddy at the Bat” which he'd premiered in Ted's living room. Maureen told how, as a little girl, she had a crush on Ted, who always called her "sweetheart." Then one day she was with him in a coffee shop, and he called the waitress "sweetheart". She also told of Ted autographing a baseball for a woman and adding his hotel room number under his name. Being a veteran of Boston baseball banquets, I was able to tell Larry some of Johnny's jokes before Johnny even started them. But it was all in good fun. Someone from the audience asked Dom to compare Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio as hitting coaches. Domenic said that Joe didn’t go out of his way, but would give someone advice if they asked for it. Ted was giving everybody advice about hitting, all the time. You couldn't stop him!
Later on I found the room where people were selling books, and bought a few. Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime were in there and I spoke to them for a while. They didn’t have a copy of their brand new book, but they asked a lady at the Ted Williams table. She had already packed up to leave, but she kindly stopped and pulled the book out of her bag. I stood there looking through it for awhile, torn between wanting to read the whole thing and wanting to give it back so she could get out of there.
On Sunday June 30 Norman and I went to the Boston Common to see a vintage baseball game. Bill Nowlin was organizing things and then even played a little outfield for the SABR all-stars. Norman and I hung out with Jim Prime for awhile, talking about Nova Scotia and baseball.
Then on Friday July 5 Ted died. It was so strange – I had just been listening to Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio talk about him.
David and Martin and I had Mexican food at the Baja restaurant a few days later and our conversation turned to Ted Williams. Bill Nowlin had recently published an article in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine about Ted’s Latin heritage (his mother’s people were Basques, by way of Mexico). Martin felt that Ted’s Mexican ancestry was significant. He said that if people in the Forties and Fifties had known about this, Ted would not have been such a hero – because of the extreme anti-Hispanic prejudices of that era. I was skeptical. May Veznor Williams’s Mexican background was always well known. I saw one biography that even blamed Ted’s temper on his “Mexican blood!” There were Cuban major leaguers in the 1920’s – light-skinned only, of course -- and Mel Almada of Mexico played in the Red Sox outfield before Ted got there, 1933-1937.
We also talked about Ted’s military career, how he flew with John Glenn and crash-landed his jet in Korea. How he bitched about being recalled to the Marines, but then got 100% into it. Baseball is great for arguing and telling stories. Here are some more:
My father worked with a fellow named Martin (different Martin) who was from Ireland and used to work on John Huston’s estate over there before he came to America. This Martin liked fishing and one year he met Ted at the Sportsman’s Show in Boston, where Williams used to give fly fishing exhibitions. The two became friends, maybe because Martin didn’t know anything about baseball and so he didn’t idolize Ted. Every year Ted when would come to Boston for the Sportsman’s Show, he would telephone Martin. “Hey Irish!” he’d yell in that big booming voice.
Bill G., a guy I used to work with, somehow got to meet Ted when he was about 12 years old and Ted was in his early twenties. Williams took him for a ride in his car, a shiny late model in some flashy color, and drove through the streets of Boston yelling at the pretty girls along the way. They went to some event (maybe a boxing match at the Garden), This Bill and Bill’s father and Williams, and Ted was loud and raucous, with no tie on, and having a great time for himself. Something Bill would remember forever.
Bill G. told me another story about a time when Ted was in Sancta Maria Hospital in Cambridge for some injury or other. After he was discharged, a man showed up and announced that he was there to measure the feet of all the nuns, who were the nurses there. Mr. Williams had ordered new shoes for all of them.
I went to the Ted Williams tribute on Monday July 22 at Fenway Park and it was moving. I sat way up in back of the bleachers. The Marine Band was there, and for some reason it felt to me (though I don't remember it) like the day Ted was honored before he went off to fight in Korea. I was nostalgic for a New England that doesn't really exist any more -- tonic and five-cent trolley rides and the corner spa and screen doors that slammed.
Dom DiMaggio gave a wonderful talk, and so did John Glenn. It was like a big Irish wake with 25,000 of Ted's closest friends stopping by and everybody sitting around telling stories about the deceased and even the man's faults are now just an occasion for laughter. Everyone laughs a bit and gets teary-eyed at other times and then we all file out quietly. We've laid old Teddy to rest, God bless him. There really will never be another one like him.
In early August the BHS received in the mail a review copy of Ted Williams: Pursuit of Perfection. This is the book I had glanced through, at the SABR convention. It seems to fit right in with my ideas about who Ted Williams was. He’s the man who left a million people with a million stories to tell.
I liked the Bobby Knight story about the fishing trip he took with Ted to fish for salmon in the Soviet Union in 1991 Knight says:
Curt Gowdy loves Ted, and Curt had told me, “Now, you can’t treat him like he’s your idol. I mean you’ve got to get on his ass because he’s going to get on yours.”
On the plane trip to Russia Ted proposed a “contest” to pick the five greatest men of the 20th century. Knight continues:
…Then I mention Martin Luther King and let me tell you, Ted gave as good an answer as a guy could give. He comes back with Joe Louis. He said, “I’m going to tell you why Joe Louis. He was the first black man that blacks around the country could listen to, and look up to, and follow and pay attention to on a national basis. Every black person in America listened to Joe Louis fight and we’re talking about back in 1936 and 1937, not the sixties.
Knight proceeded to needle and argue with Ted through the whole trip and they had a great time. I saw the ESPN show of this; it’s quite good. Ted gets a salmon on the line and shows how to guide it where you want it to go. I have never fly-fished but I have watched people do it. “Regular” fishing mixes finesse with brute strength. Fly fishing, on the other hand, is almost totally finesse -- and Williams was a master at it.
Jerry McKinniss of ESPN, says:
Another thing – I was so impressed with how he handled fish with his rod after he hooked them. You could tell that Ted was a conservationist. He has absolutely no desire to kill fish, ever. He has no desire to prove what a great fisherman he is by showing you his big catch. If he has fooled a fish to the point of making it strike – even if he doesn’t catch the fish – then that is a bit of a victory for him. Ted’s challenge was just between him and the fish.
There are some extraordinary photos in this book – including the only color photos of Ted hitting a home run (Fenway Park July 27, 1960 off Bob Shaw of the White Sox). These were taken by Dr. David L. Pressman, who was a friend of Ted’s. Pressman says:
As a player myself, I recognized that on certain days the same bat would feel great and on others it would feel dead. I realized that the bats sometimes absorbed moisture. I came up with the idea of baking my bats over the embers of a coal stove before each game – even in summer – to dry out the wood, because I had figured out that even bats with lacquer can absorb up to two ounces of moisture on a damp or humid day. I gave this tip to Ted through Tabby Ryan, who was Ted’s Louisville Slugger rep.
He would weigh every bat before the game. Not that he didn’t know the original weight from the factory, because he checked that when they came in. Ted modified my coal stove method by putting every bat in the clothes dryer at the ballpark with a bunch of towels. Everybody else had to wait until Ted finished with his clothes dryer. He would each bat again until the bats stopped losing weight, which told him he had driven out all the excess moisture…
Ted measured the distance of his hits using his unbaked bats and those he baked; the difference he found was 65 feet.
Pursuit of Perfection is certainly an appropriate title for this book. It also includes an audio CD with interviews, game calls, etc. The publisher asks that I mention that the book costs $39.95 at local bookstores, or by calling 877-424-2665, at www.sportspublishingllc.com or from www.amazon.com.
(reviewed by David Nevard 2002)