|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Updike fans bid Williams facts adieu?
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist, 7/25/2002
When authors David Edmonds and John Eidinow recently asked the surviving participants to reconstruct the scene, memories were even foggier. The Russians have a proverb: He lies like an eyewitness. Which brings us to Sept. 28, 1960, the day of Ted Williams's last appearance at Fenway Park. From Wittgenstein to Williams? It's worth a try. The most famous account of that event is John Updike's New Yorker essay ''Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,'' a marvelous piece of writing that has resurfaced many times since Williams's death. I had never read it until 1991, when I bumped into a young man in Berlin who was so shocked at my ignorance that he pulled Updike's essay from his desk drawer and ran down the street to make me a copy. Of course, Updike wasn't the only writer to witness Williams's farewell. After reading my account (July 9) of how Williams warmed up before each game with Pumpsie Green, the Red Sox' first black player, brought on in 1959, reader Richard Leary pointed out what he believes is a small but embarrassing error in Updike's essay. Who is Leary, you ask? A Hub man condemned to live in Los Angeles, who not only saw Williams play, but actually sat behind first base in Shea Stadium when The Ball passed through Bill Buckner's legs. In short, he is one of Us. Leary sent me an excerpt from Ed Linn's account of Sept. 28, 1960, published in Sport magazine. Linn's story differs from Updike's in one small detail: Linn: ''... the Red Sox were warming up along the side line. Ted began to play catch with Pumpsie Green. As he did - sure enough - the cameramen lined up just inside the foul line for some more shots...'' Updike: ''Diagonally across the field, by the Red Sox dugout, a cluster of men in overcoats were festering like maggots. I could see a splinter of white uniform, and Williams' head. ... He moved away from the patter of flashbulbs, and began playing catch with a young Negro outfielder named Willie Tasby.'' So who was Williams playing catch with, his teammate from 1959, Green, or the more recently acquired Tasby? Leary says he's ''confident that Updike was wrong,'' mainly because Linn was a professional sportswriter who knew Williams well enough to later write his biography, ''Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams'' in 1993. In the book, Linn expands on his coverage of Sept. 28, adding a quote from second baseman Green: ''[Williams] asked me to warm up with him the first day I came here, and I have been warming up with him ever since.'' Linn is no longer living. I checked the photographs - ''the cameramen lined up,'' ''the patter of flashbulbs'' - from the five Boston dailies for Sept. 28 and 29, and found none of Williams warming up. (Although I did find this snarling, don't-let-the-door-hit-you-as-you-leave quote from Boston American columnist Buck Finnegan: ''Williams' career has been a series of failures except for his averages.'') ''Gods do not answer letters'' is a famous line from Updike's essay, by way of explaining Williams's refusal to acknowledge his fans that day. But Updike does answer letters, and here is his response to Leary's claim: ''Just got back from some days away to find your devastating letter, pulling the rug out from under Hub Fans. As I search my mind for the truth of it forty-two years later, there is a glimmer of a New Yorker checker coming up with Tasby, though Green was the most conspicuous black on the team. But not, by September, 1960, the only one. ''So unless photographic evidence from that day (the photographers Ed Linn invokes) provides proof to the contrary, I'll let the text stick with Tasby, as it has all these years. Nobody has queried this before.'' Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 7/25/2002.
| |||||||
|
|
he book ''Wittgenstein's Poker'' fleshes out a 1946 incident at Cambridge University when the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein threatened his Viennese rival Karl Popper with a burning-hot fireplace poker. Or did he? There were about 30 people at the meeting of the Moral Science Club, and even at the time eyewitnesses disagreed on what happened. Some thought Wittgenstein was merely tending to the fire, others - perhaps sympathetic to the visiting Popper - agreed with his account of the Wittgenstein-ian menace.