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LEGENDS' TALES 'Trying to get a fastball by him was like trying to get a sunbeam past a rooster.'
By Kevin Paul Dupont, Globe Staff, 7/22/2002
WILLIE MAYS Fixing the stance ''Ted was good with all players, no matter what their color. He didn't look at color, and I think that made him unique, because he came in at a time when the game was mainly white. ''I talked hitting a lot with Ted, but you didn't trade opinions with him. But he knew hitting, and he'd ask what I thought about running and hitting, but basically hitting. ''I remember one time at an All-Star Game in St. Louis. I had met Ted in Arizona during spring training, so I knew him a little bit, and by the time the All-Star Game came I was in a bit of a mini-slump ... I don't know, I guess I was something like 0 for 15 or 0 for 20. ''Anyway, Ted's over in his dugout, and he calls me over. `Hey,' he says, `Little Boy, let's talk.' That's what he called me: Little Boy. I don't know where he got that, and no one else called me that. Just Ted. Nothing derogatory about it - just what he liked to call me. Me? I just called him Ted. ''Over I go to talk to him, and he tells me that I've changed my stance. `What are you talking about?' I said. He hadn't seen me hit, I don't think, for two or three years. But he said he'd been watching me. `You've changed your stance,' he said, `and this is how you should hit.' ''Well, you know what, I went back and got a film, studied it, and true enough, Ted was right. The way I had shifted my stance, I was blocking myself on certain pitches, jamming myself, and that was keeping me from being a free swinger up there. We talked for about 30 minutes that day, I thanked him, and after looking at the film, got back to my old stance. But he had spotted it. Later, I thanked him for that. ''Was he the greatest hitter? That's what I got out of it. They put the shift on him, because he was such a pull-hitter, and he still hit .300 every year.'' WILLIE McCOVEY Walking like Ted ''My first spring training with the Giants was 1959 in Arizona, and the Red Sox were training then in Scottsdale. Ted was with 'em, and I went over and introduced myself, and you know what, he knew who I was. That impressed me, because, heck, I wasn't even on the roster yet and he knew who I was. ''He was always ready, willing, and able to talk about hitting, and a lot of what he shared with me that first day stuck with me the rest of my career. And to think years later that he would induct me into his Hitters Hall of Fame as one of the 25 best hitters in the game, that was really something for me. Because Ted was one guy and I mean the one guy who all his peers were in awe of ... he's the one guy who could stop traffic and get everyone's attention. ''I got a lot of intentional walks in my career, and I hated that ... I think any hitter hates having the bat taken out of his hands. And the guy who walked me more than anyone was Sparky Anderson when he was managing the Reds. The guy would just never pitch to me. In fact, he used to walk by our dugout, catch my eye, and hold up his hand and put up four fingers that was his message, `You're walking.' Well, there was this one time in Cincinnati when he already had walked me three times, and I come up in the top of the ninth with guys on first and second. Sure enough, he walks me, and first base isn't even open! ''Well, that got to me a little bit. I looked over to find Sparky in the Cincy dugout and I yelled over to him, `Who the hell you think I am, Ted Williams?!' I told Ted that story when he inducted me into his Hitters Hall of Fame. He got a big kick out of that.'' TOMMY LASORDA A legend on the phone ''There was this one time in Kansas City, in 1956, and we had a lefty going for us, Alex Kellner. Ted ran the count to 3-2 on him and then took a breaking ball for strike three. I guess that never happened before. One of our coaches, George Susce, gets up and yells, `That's it, he's through ... Williams is through.' Well, in the seventh, Williams is up again, and the count goes to 3-2, and this time two guys are on base. ''Now, in the old Kansas City park, the way it was laid out, you had a fence, a hill behind the fence, then another fence, and then a house across the street. Well, in comes the 3-2 pitch and Ted drives the ball over the wall and hits the house. He hit the house! I turned to George and said, `Jesus Christ, George, for a guy who's finished, he just hit the ball 500 feet!' ''Another time, I remember being at this banquet up in Toronto, and it was honoring this young hockey player Wayne Gretzky. Well, it's my turn to speak, and I look out in the audience, and there's Ted Williams and Ferguson Jenkins. I didn't know Ted was even in the place no one's making a fuss, or anything. Anyway, I introduce him, and he waves to everyone, and motions to me to give him a call. ''So, when it's all over, up to his room I go, about 11 p.m. He says, `What you drinking?' Vodka. He calls down for a bottle of vodka, and into the morning we talk baseball, hitting, hitting, hitting, and more hitting. What else, right? It's about 3 a.m. when he turns to me and says, `You're pals with Frank Sinatra, right? Boy is he somethin' ... I've never met the guy, but can he sing ... I love his songs.' I never knew that, and I say to Ted, `Why don't you tell him yourself?' ''At that point, it's about midnight back in California. Anyway, I get on the phone and say, `Hey, Francis, I've got someone here who wants to talk to you.' Ted jumps on and starts talking, and all I hear is stuff like, `Man, you are the greatest.' Eventually, they finish, I get the phone back and Sinatra says to me, `I don't believe I was talking to Ted Williams!' I thought that was just great, two of the greatest legends of their time, of their businesses, talking to each other.'' THEODORE ROOSEVELT RADCLIFFE A sincere gesture ''I thought Ted was tremendous, a great friend of mine, and he treated me so nice. He was my man, my man. ''He said to me once, `Are you broke, Ted?' You know, we didn't make much money in the old Negro leagues. And Ted, he took a picture of me and paid me $900 for it. I thought that was nice of him. A good man. ''I played against him, just before he came out to the big leagues in '39. He was with San Diego then, I think, and I was managing a colored All-Star team. The games were in San Diego and Los Angeles, and we beat him three times, and they beat us twice. ''Oh, he was one of the best hitters I ever saw. There were some good ones, like Ted, and [Stan] Musial and [Mickey] Mantle and [Joe] DiMaggio. We had some good ones, too, in the colored league -- guys like Buck Leonard and them. But yeah, I'd say Ted was the best.'' DON MATTINGLY An imposing presence ''The first time I met him was in spring training in [the late '80s]. Peter Gammons got us together for a story he was writing for Sports Illustrated. It was in the Florida hotel room, and we ordered some shrimp and beer and talked hitting for hours. ''If you've never met Ted, well, it's kinda like meeting Bobby Knight. The same kinda guy: big, bold, and he runs the show. ''I guess what I remember most is when he asked me if I could smell the burn. At first, I didn't know what he was talking about, but when he explained it the smell of the ball hitting the bat then I realized, `Yeeeahhhh, I have!' I knew the smell, but I never even knew what it was, until he told me. ''Funny thing was, like I say, we talked back and forth for a couple of hours, and then all of sudden he turned to Peter and said, `That's it, that's enough.' And it was done. We were finished. He ran the show. ''He inducted me into his Hitters Hall of Fame last year and that was special, to be thought of that way by him. Just this big, bold man who just went out and grabbed life. And when he looked at you, it's hard to explain, but it was as if a hawk was looking right at you. Not that he made you uncomfortable, but he ''If you've never met Ted, well, it's kinda like meeting Bobby Knight. The same kinda guy: big, bold, and he runs the show. ''I guess what I remember most is when he asked me if I could smell the burn. At first, I didn't know what he was talking about, but when he explained it the smell of the ball hitting the bat then I realized, `Yeeeahhhh, I have!' I knew the smell, but I never even knew what it was, until he told me. ''Funny thing was, like I say, we talked back and forth for a couple of hours, and then all of sudden he turned to Peter and said, `That's it, that's enough.' And it was done. We were finished. He ran the show. ''He inducted me into his Hitters Hall of Fame last year and that was special, to be thought of that way by him. Just this big, bold man who just went out and grabbed life. And when he looked at you, it's hard to explain, but it was as if a hawk was looking right at you. Not that he made you uncomfortable, but he just had that presence about him. He was big.''
ELDEN AUKER Getting last laugh ''Ted's rookie year, there was a game in St. Louis I'll never forget. Bobo Newsom was pitching for them, and Newsom could be a real showboat, you know, the kinda guy who liked to show you up. For instance, if you struck out, he'd be out there laughing at you like I say, just to show you up. ''Well, the first time Ted faces Newsom, he strikes out, and as he's coming back to the bench, about halfway, our guys tell him, `Hey, Ted, Newsom's laughing at you.' Williams looks at the guys on our bench and says, `What, he's laughing at me?' ''Ted's next time up, Newsom's still out there, and Ted hits a homer. As he's circling the bases, he looks over Newsom's way and says, `Now laugh that off, you so-and-so ...' ''The next time up, Ted's third at-bat, he hits another homer off Newsom. And this time, as he's circling the bases, he yells over to Newsom, `I just wanted to show you the first one wasn't an accident.' ''Ted's rookie year, there was a game in St. Louis I'll never forget. Bobo Newsom was pitching for them, and Newsom could be a real showboat, you know, the kinda guy who liked to show you up. For instance, if you struck out, he'd be out there laughing at you like I say, just to show you up. ''Well, the first time Ted faces Newsom, he strikes out, and as he's coming back to the bench, about halfway, our guys tell him, `Hey, Ted, Newsom's laughing at you.' Williams looks at the guys on our bench and says, `What, he's laughing at me?' ''Ted's next time up, Newsom's still out there, and Ted hits a homer. As he's circling the bases, he looks over Newsom's way and says, `Now laugh that off, you so-and-so ...' ''The next time up, Ted's third at-bat, he hits another homer off Newsom. And this time, as he's circling the bases, he yells over to Newsom, `I just wanted to show you the first one wasn't an accident.' ''The next three years, when I was with St. Louis, I just liked to see him come to the plate smiling. I learned from that day with Newsom, you didn't want to get Ted mad.'' Williams and his close pal/roommate Jimmie Foxx, were frequent visitors to Auker's apartment in Brookline. Teddy Ballgame and Double X were big fans of the fried chicken cooked by Auker's wife, Mildred, whom Williams affectionately referred to as The Queen. ''Oh, they loved that chicken,'' recalled Auker. ''He and Foxx, they could eat two chickens apiece.'' The Sunday before Williams died, Auker made his customary call, and he could tell Williams was failing badly. ''His nurse was with him,'' recalled Auker. ''And his voice was weak. I asked him how John Henry was getting along with trying to play baseball, and all he said was, `I guess OK.' He didn't seem to want to talk much about that. Then he asked me, `How's the Queen?' I said she was fine, and then he said, `You give her my love.' And that was it. I said a few more things, but there was just silence. After a while, the nurse came back on the line and said, `I'm sorry, Mr. Auker, Mr. Williams went to sleep.'' GEORGE KELL It was always hitting ``He was my idol, of course. For the short time I was in Boston, he really took me under his wing, and that was a few years after I won the batting title [in 1949] on the last day of the season and I didn't know it at the time, but it prevented him from winning the Triple Crown that year. ''To tell you the truth, that whole thing bothered me. The next spring training, in fact, I told Ted that. I felt awful about it. ''But Ted, he was so gracious about it. He said, `Look, you won it, fair and square; there's nothing to feel sorry about you went 2 for 3 and I went hitless, that's it. What's to feel sorry about?' That was Ted, gracious and always generous.'' For all his years in the game, spanning 53 years on the field and in the broadcast booth, Kell always marveled over how opposing players would make a point of watching Williams take batting practice. ''It wasn't that way even for [Joe] DiMaggio. DiMaggio was sort of a businessman, reserved, going about his business out there. But Ted, he wanted to put on a show. I'll just always remember him there in Detroit, smashing balls to right field, which wasn't a great distance. He'd be putting balls on the roof ... over the roof ... everyone would be watching, the place silent, especially the young guys, they'd be in awe ... and he'd just keep swinging, and die laughing.'' Years later, as a broadcaster, Kell and partner Al Kaline, the great Tigers outfielder, were in the old Fenway Park press room before a game when Williams came to visit. ''I guess he was working for the Red Sox then, in some capacity, I'm not sure what,'' he said. ''Anyway, the door swings wide and there's Ted, and all of a sudden the place is real quiet. You could tell everyone's thinking, `What's Ted Williams doing in the press room?' And he booms out, `Where's Kell and Kaline?!' I held up my hand, and over he comes. I'm not sure exactly what we talked about that day, but I know it had to be about hitting. It always was hitting with Ted.'' WARREN SPAHN A student of pitchers ''He watched pitchers. I mean, he studied 'em. He'd sit in that dugout with his hat pulled down over his face, looking out of the little holes in the top of his cap, blocking out everything else so he could focus just on the pitcher. That was his way of getting an idea if the guy threw a fastball, a curve, whatever he was a great hitter with a keen eye. ''I was sorry to see him pass away. He was one of the great people.'' BROOKS ROBINSON Now that's a hero ''My first All-Star Game was in 1960, Ted's last year, and I got to know him a little bit then. It was one of the years that they had two All-Star Games, the first one in Kansas City and the second in Yankee Stadium, and Ted was holding court the way he could on the flight from Kansas City to New York after the first game. ''Now I'm told that I got in the All-Star Game as a pinch runner for Ted. Truth is, I don't think I did, but I tell people I did, just for the hell of it. ''Anyway, Ted's there holding court with a bunch of guys, including Lew Fonseca [ex-big leaguer of the '20s and '30s] a pretty good hitter in his own right, who, if I recall correctly, was on the trip working for Coca-Cola. But there's Ted, holding court, telling guys like Nellie Fox how to be a better hitter, because Nellie liked to crowd the plate. He was telling Nellie to get back in the box, stuff like that. ''But then he starts talking about stuff that, I'm telling ya, I didn't understand at all. He's talking about how a slider breaks something like 63.6 inches, all this technical stuff. And I'm there, my eyes bugging out, thinking, `Oh, boy, I'll never get a hit again. I don't know what this guy is talking about.' All I ever thought about was getting up there and getting a ball to hit. But when it came to hitting, obviously Ted was way ahead of the curve. ''I know a lot of people look at ballplayers as heroes. I don't think that way. I certainly wasn't a hero. If we have some celebrity, then that's from playing baseball. But when you look at a guy like Ted Williams, leaving the game to serve in World War II and then in Korea, now that's a hero. He kinda reminds you of John Wayne, a legend who will never be replaced.'' BOB FELLER A confident hitter ''Ted and I visited all the time, especially before ballgames in Fenway Park, where it was easy to meet between the clubhouse on the runway there under the grandstand. Over the years, we became great friends. ''He was a low-ball hitter when he came up. He could battle the high pitch, too, and he became a better high-ball hitter over the years. I'd call him a zone hitter; he'd be up there guessing where the pitcher was going to put the ball. But that didn't work so well against me, because I didn't know where the ball was going once it left my hand. He was a great fastball hitter, that's for certain. Trying to get a fastball by him was like trying to get a sunbeam by a rooster. ''He was confident in his ability, of course, and he was the greatest hitter I ever faced. Overall, I'd say he had an average arm, and he was an average outfielder. As a base runner, he was OK, not a base stealer at all, but a good base runner. And he could talk you to death if you wanted to talk about hitting. That was his thing: hitting. He was like Casey Stengel that way ... talk, talk, talk you to death. He had all the answers, and he practiced 'em.'' ''I know people make that John Wayne comparison all the time. No way. I knew John Wayne; he was a friend of mine. He grew up 15 miles from me in Iowa, and I got to know him through the Hilton Hotel business. Personally, I liked John a lot, but he wasn't a hero. John Wayne never served one day in the military, not one. John Wayne was a great actor, and there's nothing wrong with that, but there's a big difference between being an actor and a hero. That comparison? Forget it! A hero to me, anyway, is someone who goes off to war and doesn't come back and there are thousands and thousands of 'em. No hero ever returned from the war as a survivor. Some came back, but not as survivors. ''Ted was a great pilot, a leader and a true military person, and the greatest hitter I ever faced. Not the greatest player. The greatest player of all was Babe Ruth. He could pitch. He was a good outfielder better than Ted and he was a good base runner. He also had a lot of charisma, too, like Ted. For the guys I faced, the best were Ted, No. 1, and then Rogers Hornsby. Then I guess it would be Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie, but I never faced them. Heck, if Ted hadn't lost those 4 1/2 years in the service, he'd hold every record there is, I'm certain of that. ''Over the years, facing Ted, I'd say we had a Mexican standoff. When I had my good stuff, I'd say we were even-steven. But he lasted longer as a hitter than I did as a pitcher. In my later years, he got the best of me, and he got the best of a lot of pitchers.''
This story ran on page D12 of the Boston Globe on 7/22/2002.
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Ted Williams weighed in on his favorite subject with many of the game's greats. (AP File Photo)