The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (39 page)

Despite the flap over his Pensacola ball playing, Ted was virtually forced onto the Jacksonville base’s team. The Fliers, as they were known, also had Charlie Gehringer, the famed Tigers second baseman, on their roster. (Gehringer, who had played his last season in 1942, wanted only to coach, but said he was made to play by the base commanding officer, an ardent sports fan, who otherwise threatened to “send you so far they won’t know where to find you.”)

One day Karl Smith, Ted’s pal from Pensacola, appeared. “I came back after my first tour of combat,” Smith said, “and I was at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, and the first day on the base I saw him, and he said, ‘Hey, Bush, where the hell you been?’ I says, ‘Out trying to win this war while you been playing ball here,’ and he died laughing.… I got shot down over Tokyo, and he wanted to hear every damn word of it.… He felt he really didn’t get to do what he set out to do: that was to be a fighter pilot.”

On August 3, Williams received his orders for the Pacific and was given a month’s leave before he had to report to his departure point—San Francisco. On August 6, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and, three days later, on Nagasaki. On September 2, when Williams was in San Francisco, Japan surrendered, and the war was officially over.

But once orders were in the pipeline, the ship of state turned slowly. Ted was obligated to continue on to Hawaii, arriving on September 4 for what would be a final four months of duty marked by anticlimactic boredom, sporadic ball playing, and mounting impatience to be released. The war, after all, was finished: he would see no action, and he had no desire to be kept on as a mere baseball prop, even in paradise.

Which seemed to be mostly what the Navy had in mind when it ordered Williams and the other major leaguers in its Hawaii employ to stage another “World Series,” this time with those attached to American League teams on one side and those attached to National League teams on the other. Though Ted was indifferent to the series and was plagued by a bad cold, Johnny Pesky, who was in Honolulu and suited up for the Americans, felt certain that his pal would rise to the occasion during a key moment in one game. The AL was trailing 5–4 in the ninth when Ted came up with one out and runners on first and second.

Pesky said, “There were about 30,000 servicemen packed into the
stands at Furlong Field, and you can imagine how they were rooting and yelling. This was their spot. In the better seats, there was enough gold braid to start a mint, admirals galore, with four-stripers—captains, and such lesser lights as commanders, draped in the back.

“I’ve seen Ted enough times up at the platter in the clutch to know his thoughts. I watched him. He was gripping that bat so hard that I expected to see sawdust falling around his feet. He was wiggling around and setting his stance. It was that old determination I had seen so many times.”

Pesky still wasn’t worried when Braves lefty Lou Tost got two strikes on Ted. But then Tost jammed him, and Williams popped up weakly to the catcher, the ball rising no more than thirty feet in the air.

“Ted didn’t wait for the catch,” Pesky continued. “The second he saw what he had done, he tossed that bat into the air, and I mean into the air, as high as he could throw it. There was a Navy photographer kneeling down who didn’t see the bat go up. Detroit’s Dick Wakefield was the next hitter, and when he saw what was coming down near the photographer, he yelled and then stuck out his own bat to prevent the photographer from getting hit.

“The crowd booed and shouted at Williams. As he headed toward the bench, Ted gave some of the photographer equipment a kick that sent it airborne. Silently, Williams continued to the bench.

“Ted Williams hasn’t changed a bit!” Pesky concluded.
⁴⁸

On November 25, 1945, Ted and some sixteen hundred other servicemen gathered in Pearl Harbor, where it all had begun. They climbed aboard the USS
Texas
—a 573-foot battleship that had seen duty in World War I and had shelled Axis-held beaches in the North African campaign of World War II before being sent to the Pacific for the battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa—then set sail for home.

Nine days later, on December 4, they arrived in San Diego, a port of call no longer home to Williams but part of his emotional fabric nonetheless. Waiting on the docks, amid the cheering throng, were two people who represented the past and future of Ted’s life: his aging mother, “Salvation May” Williams, and his new wife, Doris Williams.

On January 12, 1946, Ted was officially relieved of active duty after three years and two months of service.

A
s 1946 began, postwar America was exultant, euphoric, and eager for the return of a prosperous normalcy. Much of this giddy optimism was channeled into the resumption of Major League Baseball, which was eager to replace the cast of also-rans that had stocked its rosters in the war years and reinstall its varsities. Led by Ted, who was now twenty-seven, and Joe DiMaggio, more than three hundred players who had been off with the Armed Forces were now back home, preparing to reclaim their former positions with the start of spring training.

Attendance would soar in the coming season as fans (a good number of them back from overseas themselves) flocked to see their favorite returning stars. Twelve of the sixteen teams, including the Red Sox, would set attendance records, and overall, 18.5 million fans came out to watch big-league baseball, a new high.

Boston’s prospects looked brighter than they had in years. The Red Sox had finished seventh among the eight American League teams in 1943, fourth in 1944, and seventh again in 1945. Now the Sox’s nucleus of Ted, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr was back, as were pitchers Tex Hughson, Joe Dobson, and Mickey Harris. The pitchers would be joined by Dave “Boo” Ferriss, who in his rookie season in 1945 had gone 21–10. There were other changes: Jimmie Foxx had retired, Jim Tabor had been sold to the Phillies, Joe Cronin was now the manager only, and Rudy York, the powerful, right-handed-hitting first baseman, had been obtained in an off-season trade with the Tigers and was expected to tattoo the wall at Fenway.

News of Ted trickled back to Boston from San Diego, where he had stayed since arriving from Hawaii. Lacking a home base after being away
for three years, he and Doris had moved in with May Williams and stayed at the family homestead for a few months. It was Ted’s first extended stay in San Diego since he’d joined the Red Sox, a chance to reconnect with his divorced mother and to have May get to know Doris.

Joe Cronin came to San Diego to visit Ted and reported back to the team’s beat writers that he had found his star enthusiastic about the upcoming season, hoping to play in 150 games and confidently predicting that the Red Sox would win the pennant. Then the
Globe
’s Hy Hurwitz flew out for his own assessment after Ted signed a $40,000 contract for the ’46 season—a $10,000 raise from 1942. Hurwitz found Ted chipper, cryptically noting without elaboration that after three years of military life Williams “appeared to have a far greater respect for his fellow humans.”

Ted told Hurwitz that he now weighed 195, seventeen pounds more than what he played at in 1942, but he promised to be down to 185 by the end of spring training. “I’ve been living an easy life, sitting on my big fat duff,” he said. “I’ve got fat and bumpy. I haven’t any wind. But I’m not worried. I’ll get into physical condition easily. I’m not an old man, you know. The main thing is to get back my swing and the old eye on the ball.… I can hardly wait to start swinging again.”
¹

In early February, Ted and Doris set out from San Diego by car for the long drive across country to Florida. They wanted to arrive early and do some fishing before Williams joined his teammates in Sarasota. Joining them for the trip was another San Diegan, Earle Brucker, a former catcher, now coach for the Philadelphia Athletics, and his wife. To a
Sporting News
reporter, Brucker dished that it had been quite a ride with the Kid, then held forth about Ted’s eccentricities, calling him “the most nervous man in the world… like a humming bird on a hot griddle.”
²
In the mornings, they would get up early and drive. Ted would be at the wheel, of course, driving fast but skillfully and safely. They would go maybe fifty or a hundred miles before stopping for breakfast. Ted would jump out of the car, hurry into the restaurant, and place his order of orange juice, eggs over, and coffee before Doris, Brucker, and his wife had even set foot in the establishment. Then Williams would go over to the magazine rack and flip through anything dealing with hunting or fishing. When his orange juice arrived, he’d return to the table, gulp it down, and go back to the magazines until his eggs were served. Then he’d inhale the eggs, toast, and coffee, and as soon as he was finished, he would stand up and say, “Let’s go!” even though his traveling companions usually hadn’t even been served yet. Back on the road, Williams
would demand that the others join him in contests to see who could first read the letters and numbers of license plates on approaching cars, and he would incessantly question Brucker about the new pitchers who had come into the league during the war.

After fishing for ten days, Ted made his usual dramatic and tardy entrance in Sarasota on February 25. He and Doris pulled in to Payne Park at 1:00 p.m., a few hours after the first morning workout. The writers and photographers swarmed them. Before long, Ted had dispatched Doris off to Boston in their car to apartment-hunt. Then, trailed all the while by the press, he launched into a four-hour star turn of constant motion, chatter, wisecracking, complaining about the chigger bites all over his legs from fishing, posing for pictures, ordering new bats, talking up the Sox’s chances this year—and, of course, hitting.

Since Williams had not played nearly as much baseball in the service as most other major leaguers, he regarded the 1946 spring training season as essential to getting his batting eye and rhythm back. His hands were soft from not swinging a bat ad nauseam, so he would have to develop blisters and then a layer of calluses (batting gloves would not come into regular use until the 1960s, after Ted retired). He would use a thirty-seven-ounce bat to help build his strength and hone his reflexes so that his customary thirty-three ounces would feel like a feather by opening day. He’d continue to sweat off the extra pounds he’d put on during the war, and he told the writers he’d started the process by playing handball with some old pals in San Diego.

Ted was friendly to the writers but still wary of them. When a
Time
magazine reporter told him he seemed more approachable now, Williams had a curt reply: “I’m always nice enough in the spring, until I read what those shitheads write about me.”
³

Before long, Ted let it be known that he had his groove back. “I really think I’m hitting the ball farther than I ever did,” he told Huck Finnegan of the
American
after smashing a few bombs over the right-field wall in Sarasota. “I haven’t got that old wrist snap yet, but I’ll have it by opening day.… The ball looks big to me. My eyes seem sharp as ever. On the whole I’m well satisfied with my stay here.”

So was Joe Cronin. “You’re looking at the greatest hitter who ever lived,” the manager told Finnegan. “Yes, I’ve seen Ruth and all the rest, but Williams is number 1.”
⁴

The more Ted played, and the more success he had, the more confidence he developed and the more he felt entitled to tell the world how good he was. There would be his garden-variety batting-cage braggadocio,
which he would display by demanding that Pesky or Doerr or Dom DiMaggio tell him whether he was not the greatest hitter who ever lived. And before they could even robotically answer, “Sure, Ted,” Williams would say, “Damn right.”
⁵
But he went a step further in an early April interview, telling Grantland Rice that, yes, he did in fact think he was the greatest hitter who ever lived.

After pronouncing Williams a likely candidate to surpass Ty Cobb’s lifetime .366 record—even though Williams was much more of a power hitter than Cobb—Rice said that the most interesting thing about Ted was not his hitting but “his philosophy of competition and life in general.”

First, Williams pointedly disagreed with Rice’s contention that the greatest hitters were simply born that way and that working hard left room for only marginal improvement. He also passionately preached the power of positive thinking, reiterating his belief that the reason he didn’t win the batting title his rookie year was because he simply didn’t
think
he was as good as the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Jimmie Foxx, even though he was. That had been a “big mistake.” Now, he said, “it’s my angle you are only going to be as good as you think you are. You’ve got to have that target to aim at.… I can tell you I’m shooting at nothing less than a .400 season. I still tell you I think I’m the greatest hitter baseball has ever known. Why? Because I have to think that way to ever be the greatest hitter. Suppose I’m wrong? Then what? I’ll still hit pretty well and I’ll still keep on thinking I’m the best. They can’t arrest me for that. If you are aiming at a target, why not pick the top one?”
⁶

Ted’s chutzpah notwithstanding, perhaps the most intriguing story of the spring had been the emergence of a fledgling professional baseball league in Mexico, which by the end of March had successfully staged guerrilla signings of several American major leaguers, notably Vern “Junior” Stephens, the power-hitting St. Louis Browns shortstop, and veteran Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen.

The Mexican challenge had been brewing since February, when five brothers—all import-export tycoons who claimed to be worth between $30 million and $50 million—began threatening to break up the American professional baseball monopoly. The leaders of this fraternal initiative, Jorge and Bernardo Pasquel, were colorful, gun-toting characters predictably portrayed in the American press as Mexican bandito caricatures. When the Pasquels announced that they intended to make six-figure offers to Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, and Stan Musial, they had the full attention of A. B. “Happy” Chandler, the
former Kentucky governor and senator who had become commissioner of baseball in 1945.

The Pasquels’ timing was good. They knew that the returning major leaguers who had been off at war were thirsting to make up for lost earnings and that Chandler was also confronting baseball’s first stirrings of labor unrest. Dom DiMaggio of the Red Sox, for instance, resentful that Boston had merely tried to renew his contract for his prewar salary of $10,000, consulted a lawyer to determine if he was actually bound to the Red Sox or could become a free agent and sell his services to the highest bidder.
⁷

Players who were demoted to the minors after serving their country at war sued under the GI Bill of Rights, which required that service personnel had to be rehired at their former jobs for at least a year unless they were physically impaired. And in April, the American Baseball Guild would be formed in Boston, a first attempt at a union that would establish a minimum salary and the right of arbitration.

It was in this climate that Ted agreed to an early March meeting with Bernardo Pasquel in Cuba, where the Red Sox had gone to play an exhibition game against the Washington Senators. The meeting was brokered by
Globe
writer Roger Birtwell, who wrote a colorful front-page account of the session, which took place over a rickety wooden table in a Havana barroom.

Birtwell, who had a ghostly complexion and spoke with a fey, aristocratic accent, described Pasquel as “a mustached Mexican out of the pages of O. Henry.” The meeting came about when Pasquel told Birtwell he was prepared to pay Williams $500,000 for three years if he jumped to Mexico. After some more conversation about the brothers’ grandiose plans, which included building a fifty-thousand-seat stadium in Mexico City, Birtwell went down to the hotel lobby and staked out Ted, hoping to arrange a meeting for him with Pasquel, which he would then witness and have the scoop on.

When Ted appeared, shortly after 11:00 p.m., Birtwell was waiting and told him of Pasquel’s offer. “Ted,” the writer said, “you’re going to meet this chap eventually. You might as well meet him now.”

“Where is he?” Williams bellowed, whereupon Pasquel materialized and, speaking broken English, engaged the Kid in some preliminary small talk. Ted noticed that Pasquel wore several diamond rings and sprayed out saliva as he spoke.

“Have you signed Bob Feller?” Williams asked.

“Why not?” replied Pasquel cryptically.

“Well, if you’ve got Feller, I’m going to stay in the American League,” Williams cracked.

Birtwell wasn’t sure either man was understanding the other, so he hustled them off to a bar, where he would snag an interpreter. But to Birtwell’s and Pasquel’s dismay, Joe Cronin and clubhouse man Johnny Orlando were there having a drink. Williams tried to introduce Pasquel to Cronin, but the manager wanted no part of the Mexican entrepreneur and refused to shake his hand.

Pasquel secured the services of an interpreter and led Williams off to a corner table. Birtwell sat down with Cronin and Orlando. “Oblivious of dark-eyed senoritas who frolicked about the vicinity of the table, Pasquel went to work on Williams with great vim,” wrote Birtwell. “He talked earnestly and rapidly, constantly grabbing Williams by the shoulders and arms.”

Cronin watched this scene unfold while plotting to disrupt it. He ordered Orlando to crash the meeting and just tell Pasquel that he was Williams’s interpreter. Orlando walked over, but Pasquel refused to let him sit down. Then Cronin himself got up and, waving off a flurry of protests from Pasquel, sat down grimly.