|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
A son seeks his father
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist, 7/14/2002
Whether the body of the Splendid Splinter ultimately is cremated or placed on ice to await resurrection is a matter for his children and, maybe, the courts to resolve. For the rest of us, the controversy is a sobering chance to consider one man's legacy and to contemplate the nature of our own. Teddy Ballgame was a legendary hitter but a less than ideal dad. In death, sadly, he is reaping what he sowed. If all we left behind were our stats, it would be a simple matter to sum up a life. The hits. The strikes. The errors. But even the last major league player to bat over .400 in a season was more than that. That's why the tributes in the days since Williams's death have made as much of his heroics off the diamond as on. Williams was at the start of a brilliant professional baseball career when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. His enlistment in the US Navy was an act of selfless patriotism that one can hardly imagine from the crop of overpaid prima donnas who now populate our nation's ballyards. His exploits as a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea were no less the stuff of legend than the runs he scored in 2,292 games across 19 seasons. His efforts on behalf of cancer-stricken children elevated a local charity to a national model of community fund-raising that has made the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber synonymous with the Boston Red Sox. But Ted Williams was not just a war hero or a champion of sick kids or the best hitter in the history of baseball. He was also a man, with all the limitations that humanity implies and obituaries rarely reflect. The magic that marked his life at the plate eluded him at home. Through three failed marriages, The Kid never replicated the winning combination of passion and drive that had made him so flawless on the field. Neglectful when his only son was a child, Williams welcomed John Henry back into his life when the boy had become an aimless, even troubled, young man. What parent who has ever tried to compensate a child for the past has not sometimes found himself compounding his mistakes? By all accounts, the older and the younger Williamses were close in the last illness-plagued years. The elder Williams entrusted his business affairs to his son and the younger Williams made a cottage industry, and a comfortable living, peddling autographed baseball bats and photographs of his dad. Some caretakers accuse him of exploiting his father for financial gain, a parasite; others describe him as a dedicated son, a paragon. The truth is usually more complicated than our compulsion to classify the players in every human drama as villain or victim. It cannot be easy to live in the shadow of a famous father. Finding one's own place in the world is every child's challenge. Helping him to do so is every parent's responsibility. In discharging that duty to his son, the Splendid Splinter hit no home runs. (To say nothing of his relationship with his daughters, reduced in this family saga to bit players because, as we are told repeatedly by those who knew him best, Ted Williams was a ''man's man.'') Without his dad, does John Henry Williams wonder if he even exists? Without dad, there is no fresh fodder for the sports memorabilia market. Without dad, there is no incentive for the Red Sox to indulge his misguided tryout with the club's farm team. It is not pathetic, but poignant, to read that the son wants his body to be preserved alongside his father's after death in the hope that science might one day bring them back together. How different in spirit is that from the more commonplace dream of being reunited with a loved one in heaven? The grief every child feels at the loss of a parent must be exacerbated for a hapless adult who never resolved an adolescent's identity crisis. Just maybe, The Kid bears as much responsibility as the kid for the circus that has followed the death of Ted Williams.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 7/14/2002.
| |||||||
|
|
f it teaches us nothing else, the fight for Ted Williams's remains is a reminder that death and denial are as inextricably linked as love and guilt.