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OPINION Memories are unforgettable
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist, 7/6/2002
Ted died yesterday. At the age of 83.
We all knew this day was coming. The greatest hitter who ever lived, the most important New England athlete of the 20th century, underwent 9 1/2 hours of heart surgery in January 2001 and was day-to-day for the rest of his life.
I never saw Ted Williams hit, but I grew up in the Ted-centric New England of the 1950s. My father talked about him. All of our fathers talked about him. And the only autograph my dad ever brought home was a Ted Williams signature on an Eastern Airlines boarding pass.
Ted didn't think much of sportswriters. He's the only man I knew who could make writer sound like a four-letter word. I can still remember him sitting down to a table full of nervous scribes at Cooperstown. No one dared ask the first question and after an awkward silence, Ted bellowed, ''Scared to death, aren't you?''
The big voice. It's probably the thing I'll remember most about Ted. It was as if he had a megaphone strapped to his mouth. It made him an intimidating figure. When he'd ask you a question, you'd better have an answer. If you said you read his book, and he asked you, ''What's the most important thing about hitting?'' you'd better know that the correct Ted answer is, ''get a good pitch to hit.''
The big voice was first heard by my family in 1993 when 8-year-old Kate Shaughnessy was diagnosed with leukemia. Ted and I had no relationship. I was just another annoying ''writer'' asking dumb hitting questions around the cage in Winter Haven and at Cooperstown. But when Ted heard there was a sick child at Children's Hospital in Boston, he made Kate his mission.
The phone rang in Kate's room on 7-West at Children's. Still fairly strong in the early days of chemo, Kate answered, and started listening. Early in the conversation, she jerked the phone away from her ear, as if it had delivered an electrical shock. She covered the mouthpiece and said, ''Daddy, there's a loud man on the phone telling me I'm going to be OK.''
I took the phone. It was Ted Williams yelling, ''You tell that little girl she's going to be fine! I knew Dr. Sidney Farber and he always told me, `Ted, we're gonna find a way to cure these kids.' And he sure as hell did! Tell her I'll come up and visit!''
It was that way until the day Ted died. Every time I had a conversation, Ted would ask, ''How's that little girl?''
Ted became Uncle Ted. He sent Kate an autographed ball. He invited her to Florida. In a moment of sheer lunacy, he once even offered to help pay for her college education. All the old books and clips said he would do anything to help sick children. Turned out all the stuff was true.
''Ah, you give me too much damn credit,'' Ted would say to Mike Andrews, former Sox second baseman and executive director of the Jimmy Fund.
Ted and Kate met for the first time in December 1995. After the ceremony, Ted was honored at the Park Plaza when the Jimmy Fund established a $2 million ''.406 Club'' in honor of his historic 1941 season. Bob Costas, Larry Doby, Brooks Robinson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and a raft of others spoke. It was black tie, except for Ted, who wore one of those cowboy string ties.
The final speaker of the evening was 10-year-old Kate Shaughnessy - ready with a new head of hair and a poem for Ted. After reading her poem, she presented Ted with a plaque. He put it on the wall of his bedroom and told me he looked at it every day.
We were sitting in his kitchen in 1998 when I told Ted that Kate was doing pretty well playing softball. He said, ''Let's call her up!'' I dialed. Kate answered. I gave him the phone and he hollered, ''Hello, Kate. How are you? Your dad tells me you're a softball player. CAN YOU HIT?''
In 1999, Kate greeted Ted when he came to the Jimmy Fund Clinic to meet Einar Gustafson the original ''Jimmy'' we all thought had died as a youngster. It was the day before Ted's farewell Fenway appearance at the All-Star Game.
Kate visited Ted at his room at the Four Seasons Hotel. They posed for pictures. They chatted. Ted started to nod off. That happened a lot in his final years.
Then somebody said something about hitting.
His head snapped up. ''Bring me a piece of paper!'' he ordered.
He couldn't see much, but he drew a mound and a plate and highlighted the downward trajectory of a pitch. This, he explained, is why a batter needs a slight uppercut.
Kate carried the lessons to the plate and will be a softball captain at her high school next season. She even plays outfield.
Her summer job is across the street from Fenway Park. She was due in at 9 a.m. yesterday. I told her I'd drive, and to be ready at 8:40. When we walked out the back door, she was carrying her authentic Ted Williams jersey, which hadn't been seen since Christmas morning.
''What's up with that?'' I asked.
''I don't know,'' she shrugged. ''I've got tickets tonight and I thought I'd wear it to the game.''
Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived and the guardian angel of the Jimmy Fund, died at 8:49 a.m., while we were driving toward Fenway Park, probably just about the time we were passing Children's Hospital.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at dshaughnessy@globe.com.
This story ran on page F1 of the Boston Globe on 7/6/2002.
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o the end, he loved to talk about hitting. Even after strokes and surgeries wrecked his once-powerful body, Ted Williams would still rise in his wheelchair and get loud and lucid if you raised the subject of hitting a baseball.