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AN APPRECIATION Gone In baseball and beyond, Williams was a true American hero By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff, 07/06/02
More turmoil ahead Another controversy awaited Williams before the start of the 1948 season. His first child, daughter Barbara Joyce, was born while Williams was away fishing in the Everglades, and the public reaction was harsh. Williams was defiant. "To hell with public opinion,’’ he said. "It’s my baby and my life. My personal life is nobody’s business but my own.’’ Williams would lead the league again in hitting in 1948, batting .369, but the chance for an all-Boston World Series -- the Braves won the National League pennant -- died when the Red Sox lost a one-game playoff to the Cleveland Indians, 8-3, as manager Joe McCarthy made a controversial decision to start nondescript pitcher Denny Galehouse. The next season, 1949, would represent another near-miss, as the Red Sox lost the pennant to the Yankees on the final weekend of the season. Williams, however, was rewarded with his second MVP award after batting .343, leading the league with 43 home runs, and tying for the league lead with 159 RBIs. Williams, who had been paid $85,000 in 1949, received a contract for 1950 that was believed to be the largest in the game -- for more than $90,000 with bonus incentives. But it would be the last time in Williams’s career that the Red Sox would come close to winning a pennant, and in 1950, both his image and his health suffered major blows. During a doubleheader against Detroit on May 11 in Fenway Park, Williams dropped a fly ball hit by Aaron Robinson of the Tigers in the first game, and in the second game, a bases-loaded ground ball by Vic Wertz skipped between his legs for a bases-clearing error. With thunderous boos descending upon him, Williams bowed three times to various sections, then made an obscene gesture. Then, before his next turn at-bat, he spit in the direction of the fans sitting near the Red Sox dugout. The fallout was considerable. Yawkey dictated an apology for Williams to deliver, and the newspapers were unsparing. "Williams removed himself from the ranks of decent sportsmen,’’ Austen Lake wrote in the Herald. "Yesterday, he was a little man, and in his ungovernable rage, a dirty little man.’’ Then, in the All-Star Game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park July 11, Williams, who had vowed that he would never sacrifice his career by running into an outfield wall, crashed into the scoreboard in the first inning while pursuing a fly ball hit by Ralph Kiner of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Williams held onto the ball and remained in the game until the eighth inning. Afterward, he received the bad news: He’d fractured his left elbow. "I was never the same hitter again,’’ he said. Williams returned in September, two months after undergoing surgery, and hit a home run and three singles in his first start. But the Red Sox had thrived in his absence, and were right in the middle of the pennant race, and some players grumbled that Williams’s return came at an inopportune time for the rest of the team. The Sox finished third. In 1951, Williams hit .318 with 30 home runs and 126 RBIs, but by then the US was at war with Korea and in 1952, after just six games, Williams was called back into military service, despite the fact that he was 33 and a father. Before his departure, he was honored with a day at Fenway Park, April 30, and hit a game-winning home run. "I was bitter about it,’’ Williams said of his return to active duty, "but I made up my mind I wasn’t going to bellyache.’’
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