|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Hard to deal with, easy to admire
By Bud Collins, Globe Correspondent, 7/8/2002
The sad news of Ted Williams's death gave pause to American reporters in the Wimbledon press room, and there were some others who knew of his standing among sporting gods. ''Quite a batsman, wasn't he?'' said an Australian friend. ''Our Donald Bradman,'' I replied, citing the Aussie considered the greatest of the world's hitters with a cricket bat. Bradman, who died not long ago, was, like Williams, an aloof perfectionist whose career also was interrupted by World War II. He was knighted by Elizabeth II in recognition of his prodigious ability to deliver runs. Ted's knighthood - God, how uncomfortable he, the detester of neckties, would have been as Sir Theodore - was in the hearts of countless Americans. They reveled in watching him irresistibly swinging a baseball bat, and reading about his run-producing exploits. Reading about him was all we could do as kids growing up in a small Ohio town near Cleveland. He was our knight in baggy flannels as we anxiously followed his successful quest for the 1941 batting championship at an Everestian .406. Every morning, first thing, we'd look at the paper to see how he'd done the previous day. The Indians were our team, but Williams - Ted the Kid - was our guy, and he lifted us during that spectacular summer. A year later, he was gone to war. You had to go out to the ballpark to see your heroes in those pre-TV days. Skipping school on a fine spring day in 1946 a couple of pals and I took a bus, then a trolley to cozy League Park in Cleveland for a long-awaited glimpse of the hero in the No. 9 suit. It was an afternoon of split loyalties, hard to cheer for the Indians and Ted, too. He didn't let us down, belting a homer over the nearby right-field screen to win the game. Later in the season, summertime, there was no need to make up an excuse for missing school, which, of course the steely truant officer, Mrs. Claflin, didn't believe. The journey to League Park was guilt-free. Rolling smoothly on their way to the pennant, the Red Sox were were able to clinch it that September afternoon on perhaps the weirdest of Ted's home runs. It was the year that Lou Boudreau, the Cleveland manager who later steered the Sox, devised the so-called ''Williams Shift.'' Moving his defense to the right side of the diamond, he dared pull-hitting Williams to deal with the overload, to hit through or over it. Williams was stubborn in trying to beat the shift, but that day he had some fun with Boudreau. He stroked to the opposite field, the ball rolling merrily down the third base line and into the deep left-field corner unopposed. Just as merrily, I suspect, Ted, no speed demon, rounded the bases for an inside-the-park homer. I couldn't imagine as a schoolboy that someday I'd be dealing with Williams in what was usually an adversarial situation, as a reporter for the first incarnation of the Boston Herald. The first word he used to address me is unprintable. It was my first Red Sox assignment, 1956, and I bounded into the Fenway clubhouse after the game, eager to get quotes, certainly one from Williams if I could, although he wasn't talking to the press at that time. Except for Arthur Sampson, a gentlemanly old-timer who never wrote unfavorably. I got a quote all right. ''What's that [expletive] doing in here?'' The booming voice was unmistakable. I heard it before I saw him, and cringed. Jack Fadden, the kindly Red Sox trainer, pulled me into his sanctum with, ''Don't take it personally. Ted talks like that to everybody. You're new, and he didn't recognize you.'' ''At least he talked to you,'' my mother, amused, counseled me. Of course, I hadn't repeated the word. Ted's relations with the Boston press were always strained and spiky. There were a lot of papers in town then, eight if you can believe it, and some tough columnists. Guys with pulpits - Dave Egan of the Record, Huck Finnegan and Austen Lake of the American, Bill Cunningham of the Herald - and pull-no-punches baseball writers Clif Keane of the Globe and Larry Claflin of the American had taken him over the coals as well as praised the willowy Williams as the Splendid Splinter. One night at Fenway, annoyed, by whatever reviews, he expectorated in the direction of the press box. John Gillooly of the Record dubbed him the Splendid Spitter. Jimmy Piersall, the center fielder who had spent some time in a mental hospital and was the subject of a movie, ''Fear Strikes Out,'' laughed about it. He pointed toward Williams across the clubhouse, saying, ''You know, they put me away for acting like that guy.'' My sports editor, Ed Costello, wisely advised me concerning difficulties with Williams, ''The readers aren't interested in your problems with ballplayers, just what happened in the game.'' Another time, Williams accosted me with, ''I know you ripped me, kid, even if we were on the road. I don't have to read the papers to know. When you get ripped, somebody always makes sure you see it.'' It was a good lesson. Batting practice was a personal concert for this virtuoso with a bat. Everybody on both teams paid attention to that wondrous swing as balls zoomed into the right-field seats. Some Red Sox pitchers didn't care for his discussing hitting and giving tips to young opponents, but Williams was Williams, a PhD generous with knowledge. One of my assignments was to roam the center-field bleachers, interviewing fans. The Sox were lousy and the opinions were negative, especially of general manager Joe Cronin. ''How can you print that [expletive] stuff?'' Williams railed at me. ''What the hell do those [expletive] know about baseball?'' He was salty and candid, sometimes humorous, when he talked to us at all, and liked to describe pitches he hit for homers by using anatomy: ''I hit a [expletive]-high fastball.'' His favorite pitch. A troublesome and frightening day in 1958 was not exactly his fault. After striking out, he angrily flung his bat. He hadn't intended it to fly so far, but it struck a woman named Gladys Heffernan in the front row, skulled her. Ted was horrified. He ran over to apologize. She was out cold. I hurried down from the Fenway press box to the first-aid room, where Cronin was standing. How bad was it, I wanted to know. ''Mrs. Heffernan is all right. Shook up, that's all,'' said Cronin. ''She forgives Ted absolutely.'' But might she sue Williams and the ball club, I asked. ''There'll be no suit,'' Cronin said positively. How could he be so sure? ''Mrs. Heffernan is my family's housekeeper, and loves Ted.'' He'd hit the right person that day. Williams did so many things right with the bat that his immortality is assured. I felt lucky to know him, from afar in hero worship, and up closer in a prickly business relationship. A visit to his boyhood home, a small, modest, frame house in San Diego, was something like prowling a shrine. The residents were gracious in showing off the cramped bedroom where he practiced his swing for hours before a mirror. Major League Baseball (or the Red Sox) ought to purchase it and create a Williams museum. When Williams returned to Boston in an enemy uniform, managing the Washington Senators, I'd become a Globe reporter and paid a call in his dugout. He greeted me with, ''Are you still writing that [expletive]?'' But there was a twinkle in his eye by that time, and I appreciated the quote.
This story ran on page C7 of the Boston Globe on 7/8/2002.
| |||||||
|
|
ONDON - Although knighthood is no longer in full flower in England, it is still conferred by the Queen, and the thought struck me Friday that we Yanks have lost our illustrious Sir Theodore of the Louisville Slugger.