TED WILLIAMS DOES IT HIS WAY

Big Moe

     Sometimes Ted would go to a bar in Boston and order milk and wait for a sportswriter to come by, maybe looking for some dirt, and if he was in a real surly mood, being the surly guy he was, he’d show the writer the glass of milk and pour it on his head.

     “Write about that,” he’d say.

     This was one of the few ways he could get back at them. He was fair game, and didn’t play up to anybody, especially writers. Some guys, like Boudreau, went out of their way to accommodate writers and never had anything bad to say about anybody, knew how to hold court and schmooze, and in the long run it helped him and his team, but Williams was the opposite, wouldn’t bow down to anybody and let his hitting do his talking. He didn’t care about getting along with people. He was his own man, and refused to wear a tie and nobody could get him to wear one, not even the President, who he didn’t like anyway, being a dumb-ass republican like Feller.

     As players, we mostly liked him. He was a good guy, a stand-up guy. You couldn’t help but like him. He was like a big kid that wouldn’t grow up, looked like a big gangly kid, even after he hung ‘em up and started getting all those wrinkles from hunting and fishing. He was always gung-ho about the things he liked, and pooh-poohed what he didn’t like, and that was the way it was with him—obstinate, opinionated as hell. If he was going to do something for somebody, he didn’t want anybody, and especially the press, knowing about it. He got enough glory being the greatest hitter in the game. He liked to hobnob with the trainer, the clubhouse man, the grounds-keeping crew at Fenway. He could be himself around those guys, and he made sure to help them out when they had family or financial problems. On the other hand, if you were a big general in the Marines, or a politician, and wanted your picture taken with him, well, he didn’t come to you, you came to HIM, because he kissed nobody’s ass.

     When I played short against him I positioned myself behind second base, because as a left-handed pull hitter he refused to hit to left field, disdaining the “Williams shift” that was originated by Boudreau, who knew Ted was too stubborn to do anything but blast the ball right by you or through you. When I played second I was always in short right field, while York played deep behind first base along the line, and he still ripped rockets by you, hit the ball so hard you had trouble reacting. He hit the ball harder than anybody, and hit it with a topspin that caused the ball to explode off the ground and eat you up, and you’d better by God wear your cup when Ted was hitting! I’ve seen him hit line drives at Briggs Stadium that never got over 12 feet high, caromed off the right field wall and bounced back into the infield for a stand-up single! I remember Ted hitting balls that ricocheted off infielders’ chests and knees, nearly dehorning them, and afterwards he’d stand on first looking up at the scoreboard, knowing the official scorer was a sportswriter, and sure enough the scoreboard would put up an E-3, or E-4, or E-6, and the crowd booed, and he’d glare up at those guys in the press box—Knights of the Keyboard” he called them—and he’d spit in their direction, because he hated them, hated them because they never got it right and were always stirring up trouble and blamed him for everything, including losing to the Yankees year after year when everybody knew the Yankees at that time had the greatest team in baseball and maybe the best ever.

     When the scribes came around the clubhouse fishing for stories, if he wasn’t in the trainer’s room, he insulted them with profanity, called them gutless, stupid, you name it. He always did things the hard way, his way, on purpose, it seemed, losing MVP awards when he hit for a triple crown, and my God, can you believe that? And God knows how many points they took off his lifetime batting average screwing him on errors everybody in the ball park knew were hits. But he didn’t give a damn, because he knew who he was and how good he was. Ted was as difficult as he was brilliant, and who knows, maybe all geniuses at their trade are temperamental pains in the asses.

(Next Sunday installment: Coach makes me Responsible)