The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (40 page)

“I am having private talk!” Pasquel shouted. Cronin said nothing. “I will talk to you any time you wish but this talk he is [
sic
] private.”

“What’s so secret about it?” Cronin asked. When Pasquel lodged another volley of complaints, Cronin tried a different tack. “How many teams you got in your league?” The Mexican was dead silent for a few seconds, whereupon Cronin finally gave up and left.

Pasquel and Ted continued their conversation, talking earnestly for another ten minutes. Back at the hotel, Williams told Birtwell that Pasquel had said, “I could name my own figure and my own terms. He said that since I was under a contract for this year he would not make me an offer for this season but he wants me next year. He invited me and my wife to come down to Mexico as his guests in the fall. He promised me short right-field fences and said they’ve got winds down there that always blow toward the outfield.”
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When news of the approaches to Williams, Feller, and Musial surfaced, Commissioner Chandler reacted harshly. He called the Mexican League an “outlaw” venture and threatened that anyone in organized baseball who jumped his contract and was not back with his club by opening day would be barred from returning for five years. The Pasquels countered that Chandler was running an illegal monopoly that effectively placed his players in peonage.

Baseball survived the legal skirmish that ensued, though not before the major leagues’ antitrust exemption and its foundational reserve clause were given an uncomfortable vetting. The Pasquels continued to court Ted through much of 1946, but neither he nor any other superstar ever assented to their pitch, and the Mexican League would fade as a threat.

The Pasquel overture and a slew of other postwar offers to get involved in various endorsement deals or get-rich-quick schemes had persuaded Williams that he needed a business manager. He had fired James Silin after Silin leaked to the press his advice in 1942 that the Kid drop his 3A claim and enlist promptly for service in World War II. Ted consulted a friend, John Corcoran, who ran a Ford dealership outside Boston. Corcoran said he had just the man for the job: his brother Fred, who was promotional manager of the Professional Golfers’ Association.

Ted met Fred Corcoran in Chicago and explained his problem. He had a lot of people pestering him with offers to do this and that. He didn’t want to be bothered, and he needed a reliable agent to sift through the offers. He would continue to negotiate his contract with the Red Sox himself. The two men talked for a while and hit it off. Finally, Ted asked Corcoran what his fee would be.

“I’ll take fifteen percent,” said Corcoran.

Williams thought he heard “fifty” and agreed, betraying his naïveté.

“Not fifty,” Corcoran said, correcting him. “Fifteen.”

Ted laughed. “Whatever you say. If you want to make it fifty, that’s all right with me.”
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Corcoran assured him that 15 percent was satisfactory, and they shook hands on the arrangement. By that evening, Corcoran had secured an endorsement deal for Ted with Wilson Sporting Goods, and he soon would form Ted Williams Enterprises to obtain stakes in car dealerships and other ventures.

Williams and the Red Sox broke fast. On opening day in Washington, April 16, in front of President Harry Truman, Ted hit a 430-foot missile into the center-field bleachers that
Washington Post
columnist Shirley Povich called the hardest-hit ball at Griffith Stadium in a decade. Truman and his military retinue rose from their box to follow the flight of the ball, the president applauding, then tipping his hat and even bowing to Williams in appreciation as the Kid, head down, trotted around third and approached home plate. The homer, which followed three batting-practice shots over the right-field fence, paced the Sox to a 6–3 win over the Senators.
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Boston won its first five, lost three out of four, then began building another winning streak in Philadelphia. The fan schizophrenia that often attended Ted both at home and away was on full display at a doubleheader in Shibe Park on April 28. Left-field wolves were in good voice, calling him DP for having hit into three double plays against the Yankees at home on the twenty-fourth and “Mr. Williams, sir,” mocking his officer rank during the war. But when the Red Sox had completed a sweep and were leaving the field after the second game, quite a different spectacle unfolded: some twenty-five hundred adoring, frenzied fans, mostly kids, ran onto the field and surrounded Williams as he reached the pitcher’s mound on his way to the dugout from left field. They began pawing at him, reaching for his hat and glove, ripping his shirt open. Ted tried to escape but couldn’t, engulfed in a scrum that gradually pushed its way back out to left field. Finally, a burly policeman saw what was happening, bulled his way through the crowd, and cut a path for Ted to flee. Emerging from the clubhouse later and hopping into the car of a friend, Williams was mobbed again.

It was Sinatraesque ball-field bobby-soxer treatment. “I honestly thought they were going to tear me in shreds,” Ted said afterward, his body bruised from the pummeling he took. “They were tearing away at my uniform when the cop saved me. I had visions of doing a nudist race into the clubhouse. Somehow I managed to save my glove. But boy, I had to fight for it.”
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Ted stayed in a groove, blasting his second home run of the season four days later in Boston to give the Red Sox a ten-inning win against the Tigers, 5–4. While nearly everyone at Fenway stood and cheered the homer, one up-and-coming politician in attendance sat on his hands, brooding. John F. Kennedy, then a gaunt, twenty-eight-year-old World War II veteran running for Congress in Boston, had just lost a bet that Williams would
not
hit a home run.
^*

Ted and his team continued on a tear. Over the first nine games in May, Williams hit four home runs and his average on the season stood at .427. The
Globe
began running a daily box called “Williams vs. Williams,” comparing his batting pace in 1941, the .406 year, with the current
season’s. The Red Sox, meanwhile, were flying high in first place and took a fourteen-game winning streak to New York for a big three-game series against the Yankees.

The Sox won the first game, 5–4, before a Ladies Day crowd of 64,183, but dropped the second, 2–0, ending their streak at fifteen. Ted did not distinguish himself in the loss, and again put his petulance on display for all to see. After taking a called third strike that he felt was outside, Williams pouted in left field, kicking several divots, and then lost a routine fly ball in the sun after forgetting to bring out his sunglasses. The Yankees fans unloaded on him, as did Dave Egan, who had ventured down to New York for the series.

After chiding Williams for taking the third strike and for his “amateurish outfielding,” the Colonel proclaimed that despite the current standings, “the Yankees are the team to beat and I furthermore tell you that the Red Sox are not the team to beat them.” That was because Ted’s “fads, foibles and fancy fandangoes” created too many divisive distractions. The Red Sox, Egan asserted, were “divided into two detachments. The one consists of eight fellows mostly named Joe, whose hearts are bursting with the desire to win a pennant. The other consists of Ted Williams, who will rack up a nice, fat batting average for Ted Williams, and drive in a large total of runs for Ted Williams and, meanwhile, undermine the spirit of a team which deserves better.”
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Ted must have seethed at that bit of Egan bile, especially since there was no indication it was true. A month later, the Red Sox, having ripped off another long winning streak, stood at 41–9, leading the Yankees by ten games. Ted hit over .500 for the first nine games in June, and on June 9, he capped the surge with a titanic blow off the Tigers’ Fred Hutchinson that landed thirty-seven rows up in the right-field bleachers at Fenway.
^*

On July 9, the All-Star Game came to Fenway Park for the first time. That seemed appropriate in 1946, since the Red Sox had placed eight men on the American League squad, including four starters, and were still comfortably in first place. Bob Feller was to start for the Americans;
for the Nationals, it was Claude Passeau, the Cubs right-hander whom Ted had taken deep to glory in the 1941 game.

There was unusually high interest in the first postwar All-Star Game, now that the real stars were back. (The powers that be had decided to skip the game altogether in 1945.) Williams always looked forward to the showcase, especially this year, his first since 1942. He put on a grand exhibition in batting practice, bantering happily with friend and foe alike.

He spotted Truett “Rip” Sewell, the puckish Pirates pitcher, who had rejuvenated his career in recent years by throwing a blooper ball, or “eephus” pitch. Sewell threw the pitch overhand in a twenty-foot arc, the way a softball pitcher might throw one underhand in a game of slow-pitch. Fans delighted in watching batters flail away at the bloopers, mostly ineffectively, as they had to supply all their own power. Reveling in the enchanted reaction to his eephus pitch from the crowds, who behaved as if they were watching a circus act, Sewell had come to see himself as a showman as much as a pitcher.

“Hey, Rip!” Ted yelled at Sewell. “You wouldn’t throw that damn crazy pitch in a game like this, would you?”

“Sure, I’m gonna throw it to you,” Rip replied.

“Man, don’t throw that ball in a game like this.”

“I’m gonna throw it to you, Ted. So look out.”
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Passeau walked Ted in the first inning, undoubtedly not wanting to get burned again, but Charlie Keller of the Yankees followed with a home run to give the Americans an early 2–0 lead. Leading off the fourth against Kirby Higbe of the Dodgers, Williams hit a laser that took about three seconds to reach the center-field bleachers, some 420 feet away. As he rounded second, Ted caught a glimpse of slick-fielding Marty Marion, the Cardinals shortstop, winked at him, and said: “Don’t you wish you could hit like that, kid?” Marion, who was nine months older than Williams, just smiled.
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The game devolved into a laugher for the American League. As for Williams, he put on a hitting clinic: he followed his fourth-inning homer with two sharp singles, one of which drove in a run. By the bottom of the eighth, the AL was up 8–0, and National League manager Charlie Grimm decided it was showtime—he called for Rip Sewell.

Sewell was greeted rudely with three singles and a sacrifice fly, then Williams came to the plate with two men on. Sewell smiled at Ted, recalling their pregame dialogue. Ted shook his head, as if to say no, don’t do it. But Sewell nodded yes, he would.

Rip went into his full windup, as if he were going to throw his fastball, such as it was, but came with the blooper. Ted, bug-eyed, swung from his heels but fouled it off. He stepped out of the box, got back in, and stared out at Sewell, who again nodded at him. Once more came the blooper, but this time Ted let it drift outside for a ball. Then with Williams sitting on another blooper, Sewell snuck a fastball down the middle for a strike. The count was one and two.

Now Sewell thought he had the advantage because Ted wouldn’t know what to expect. He wound up and let the blooper fly. It rose high, then dropped right down the chute for what would have been a strike. Williams was ready. As the ball floated down, Ted, acting on a pregame tip from Yankees catcher Bill Dickey, skipped forward with two short hops, propelling himself slightly out of the batter’s box to get almost a running start. He uncoiled a fierce uppercut swing—from his waist up through his shoulders—and drove the ball high and deep to right field in a splendid arc. It landed in the American League bull pen.

In the six years that Sewell had been throwing the blooper, no one had come close to hitting a home run off him. As the 34,906 fans rose to cheer Ted’s blow, they also erupted “into a paroxysm of laughter,” the
New York Times
’s John Drebinger reported, underscoring the carnival atmosphere that attended Sewell and his blooper pitch.
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Ted also laughed in sheer delight as he rounded the bases, but again found time to ask Marty Marion at shortstop if he didn’t wish he could hit like that. Sewell, ringmaster of his own burlesque, savored the moment, too, laughing along with the crowd, following Williams around the bases and talking to him.

“ ‘Yeah,’ I told him, ‘the only reason you hit it is because I told you it was coming,’ ” Sewell later said. “I got a standing ovation when I walked off the mound after that inning. We’d turned a dead turkey of a ball game into a real crowd pleaser.”
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Listening on the radio out in San Diego had been May Williams. It was quite festive on Utah Street as neighbors and newspapermen crowded around May to congratulate her and to get her reaction to Teddy’s heroics. How did she feel about her son going 4–4 and becoming the first player to drive in five runs in an All-Star Game? “All my prayers were answered,” said May, predictably. It was all “perfectly marvelous.… He’s a wonderful boy.”
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Ted’s dazzling performance triggered a new round of gushing over his hitting prowess. Both Charlie Grimm and Steve O’Neill, the rival All-Star
managers, called Ted the greatest hitter ever, as did a host of awestruck players, former players, and writers, who filed glowing dispatches from Boston.

Then five days later, at Fenway, Williams put on another spectacular exhibition in a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians, a day that would mark a significant turning point in his career. In the first inning, facing right-hander Steve Gromek, Williams lashed a line drive at second baseman Johnny Conway, which was hit so hard that Conway staggered out into right field after leaping to catch it. In the third inning, with the Red Sox trailing 5–0, Ted came up with the bases loaded and belted a curve from Gromek into the back of the Cleveland bull pen in right-center for a grand slam. Then, leading off the fifth against Don Black, Williams clubbed another homer, this one into the runway separating the right-field grandstand from the bleachers. After a mere single in the seventh, Ted returned in the eighth to face Jonas “Jittery Joe” Berry, with two men on and the Red Sox now down 10–8. Jittery Joe jammed Williams, who nonetheless was able to turn on the ball and muscle it off his fists into the lower right-field grandstand for a three-run homer that won the game for his team, 11–10. The 31,581 fans roared in celebration of Ted’s three-homer, eight-RBI, one-man-team display, while from his third-base coaching perch, manager Joe Cronin greeted his star by leaping around in a “hysterical” manner, according to Burt Whitman’s account in the
Herald.
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