The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (99 page)

Learning on the fly, John-Henry immersed himself in Grand Slam Marketing. The company rented an office in Woburn, Massachusetts, north of Boston, and John-Henry commuted to work with Interland, with whom he was living. Also in the office were Interland’s partner, Jerry Brenner; his lawyer, Albert Cullen III; Anita Lovely—a former Miss Massachusetts in the Miss USA pageant, with whom John-Henry would become romantically involved—and a handful of others.

An early business adviser for John-Henry was an accountant named Clifton Helman. “John-Henry was schizophrenic,” said Helman, who was Ted’s age and a longtime Williams fan. “One minute he could be the nicest young man and the next the ugliest SOB. Psychologically, he
was beaten by his father. I think Ted’s fame and greatness had a tremendous effect on John-Henry. I think he suffered tremendously from what he and others thought he should accomplish by comparison. I always told him he shouldn’t have to meet those expectations.”

Helman soon came to realize that Ted was under financial strain as a result of the Antonucci affair. He would listen in on conversations between Ted and his son when John-Henry put the phone on speaker. “One day, driving home from a meeting with stockholders in Woburn,” Helman recounted, “we got Ted on the phone in the car. John-Henry said, ‘Dad, we just had a good meeting.’ Ted said, ‘Son, never mind that. Did you collect any money?’ Money was Ted’s prime interest.”

Money was of considerable interest to John-Henry as well, and he now found himself in a business environment where he could indulge his expensive tastes. He drove a BMW 740i as well as a high-end Porsche. He and others at Grand Slam traveled first-class and stayed in fancy hotels, using expense accounts ultimately drawn on Ted’s funds. Said Helman, “His attitude was, ‘I’m Ted Williams’s son.’ He was entitled.” He acted as such in ways that were minor but all the more annoying because of their trivial nature.
^9
*

In 1993, according to Helman, Ted had a net worth of $2.6 million. This included investments in orange groves, a quarter interest in 2,020 acres of land along the Peace River in southwest Florida, a stake in hotels owned by Sam Tamposi and Al Cassidy, a share in a Boynton Beach, Florida, bank, and investment income. His annual income was $504,208, but his expenses were $522,655. When various other obligations were added—such as gifts, alimony, and support for his children—Williams was paying out $119,000 more per year than he was taking in.
¹⁰

But John-Henry continued to be aggressive—with Ted’s money. In December of 1992, he heard that former Boston Bruins great Bobby Orr and Larry Bird, the Boston Celtics star, were going on television to be interviewed together on a popular late-night sports show in Boston hosted by Bob Lobel. John-Henry asked Lobel how he’d like to have the biggest Boston sports icon of them all on his show with Orr and Bird: Ted Williams. Lobel jumped at the offer and agreed to John-Henry’s demand that he get exclusive rights to all still photographs coming out of the interview. John-Henry turned the resulting photos of the three legends into a commercial venture in which the “Boys of Boston” shots
were marketed by Grand Slam. Orr later complained that John-Henry was shortchanging him on royalties from the photos.

In February of 1993, John-Henry negotiated, with Interland, a new contract with Upper Deck that would pay Ted $2.75 million over three years. This deal superseded the old agreement and allowed the company, under the name Upper Deck Authenticated, to use Williams to expand its franchise into the larger autograph market, covering not just baseball cards but bats, balls, pictures, jerseys, posters, and assorted other paraphernalia. Under the terms of the contract, the seventy-four-year-old Williams had to sign up to twenty thousand autographs the first year and twenty-five thousand each of the following two years. He would get $875,000 in 1993, $875,000 in 1994, and $1 million in 1995.

A few months later, Grand Slam announced the formation of the Ted Williams Card Company, which would market a line of themed baseball cards under the Ted rubric. To set itself apart in the saturated card market, the company would offer a limited number of cards and dispense with the usual statistics on the back in favor of a story about the player or a remark about him from Ted—such as his impression of the short and stocky Yogi Berra the first time he saw him: “I looked at him and wondered who they were trying to fool.”
¹¹
Further expanding, the company issued a set of football cards in April of 1994 that featured O. J. Simpson—just two months before he was arrested and charged with murdering his wife, Nicole, and Ronald Goldman.

Realizing that Upper Deck might consider the Ted venture into baseball cards a threat, John-Henry and Interland had gotten the company to sign off on it as part of the three-year deal Ted signed in February. Yet Upper Deck had no idea that John-Henry and his team had been making plans for their own card company for months or that the rollout would happen so quickly. Exacerbating the issue for Upper Deck was the fact that one of its former executives, Tony Loiacono, had been tapped to be a lead player for the Ted card company, based in California.

Ted had told John-Henry that he was happy to help out with the card company—with one big exception. “Ted said, ‘Do whatever you want, John-Henry, and if I can help you with my likeness or my autograph, or with anything you want, I’ll be glad to help you,’ ” said Robert McWalter, Williams’s lawyer. “ ‘But don’t you dare get me financially involved. I don’t want anything to do with that card company.’ ”

However, shortly after this admonition from his father, John-Henry secretly approached Bob Breitbard, Ted’s old friend from San Diego, and
asked for a $500,000 loan on behalf of the card company. Breitbard, who had inherited a family dry cleaning business, was a wealthy man. He built the San Diego Sports Arena and the Hall of Champions sports museum in Balboa Park, owned the National Basketball Association’s San Diego Rockets before the team moved to Houston, and owned a minor-league hockey club. “John-Henry told me he and his father were going to buy out two partners in their card company, and he told me the money would be paid back in four months,” said Breitbard. “I did it because of Ted Williams. I didn’t consult with him.”
¹²

There was virtually nothing Breitbard would not do for Williams, so he gave John-Henry a $500,000 check. In turn, John-Henry signed a promissory note on May 23, 1993, pledging to repay the money less than four months later. It was this unsecured, interest-free loan that launched the new card company. Further ensnaring his father, John-Henry, totally unbeknownst to Williams, made Ted the company’s primary stockholder.

Like Brian Interland, McWalter was one of the people whom Williams had asked to keep an eye on John-Henry as he started his business career. McWalter had long worked for the Boston law firm of Sherburne, Powers & Needham. Since the early ’70s, Williams had been represented in his personal financial affairs by one of the firm’s senior partners, William Andres, but by the mid-’80s, Andres handed off the Ted account to McWalter. McWalter established trusts for Ted’s children, drafted his will, and worked on various estate planning issues. He came to have relationships with Bobby-Jo, John-Henry, and Claudia, as well as with Dolores Williams and Louise Kaufman. He kept detailed notes on his dealings with Ted and the rest of the Williams clan.

An official at the card company told McWalter he thought the firm was being seriously mismanaged, and when the lawyer began examining its books he found the numbers didn’t add up. McWalter set up a meeting with John-Henry at his Brookline apartment and began questioning him closely. After a while, John-Henry told him about the Breitbard loan.

“Dad is the largest shareholder,” the son said.

“How did he become the largest shareholder?” asked McWalter.

“I borrowed some money from Bob Breitbard. I told him this money was going to make money real fast, and he’d have his money back fast. He’d be doing it for Dad, and Dad would make a substantial profit.”

McWalter reminded John-Henry that Ted had specifically told him he did not want to invest his personal funds in this venture.

“When he sees how much money he’ll make, it’ll be okay,” John-Henry said.

After September, and then October, came and went without the loan being repaid, Breitbard began to get nervous and called McWalter.

“I received a series of calls from Bob saying he had obligations to make. That cash would come in handy, and he couldn’t get John-Henry to return a call. I tried to make some excuses for John-Henry,” said McWalter. “I asked Bob if he’d had any conversation with Ted about the loan. He said no.”

McWalter confronted John-Henry, telling him that he had to liquidate the company. “Your father gets stock worth nothing, and you owe Bob Breitbard $500,000. Look what that’s going to do to your father.” John-Henry claimed the money would be repaid, and demanded that McWalter not tell Ted anything about the situation. McWalter stated that he had a lawyer-client obligation to explain what was going on to Ted.

John-Henry’s face turned ashen. “If you do,” he said, “I’m going to jump out this window.”
¹³

Tension between young Williams and McWalter had been building for some time. An early flash point came in June of 1989 at Ted’s cabin on the Miramichi River. McWalter would visit Ted there for days at a time and would sometimes drive John-Henry and Claudia up with him. John-Henry had been staying with Ted’s cousin Manuel Herrera in California, and Herrera had thrown him out after he racked up a $1,500 phone bill and generally behaved badly. Herrera had written Ted a stinging letter saying John-Henry was adrift and needed his father’s attention. Williams had shown McWalter the letter and asked his advice. “The sense I got was Manny was trying to do John-Henry a favor by telling Ted so that Ted could help him,” McWalter recalled. “Ted called John-Henry into the house in Canada and some sort of a battle took place. John-Henry was in tears when he came out.”

McWalter also fielded complaints from Dolores about her son during this period. “When John-Henry was in college, I got phone calls from his mother that he was selling memorabilia. He wanted me to distribute money to him from his trust, and I couldn’t get a good reason from him why he needed it. He was already getting an allowance. At one point he wanted to open up some kind of a store in Bangor. Bud Leavitt told me we should start a club of all the people burned by John-Henry.”

As he got more deeply involved with Ted’s memorabilia operations, John-Henry began to question—and resent—the far-reaching power
that McWalter, who was the managing trustee of the various Williams trusts and held Ted’s power of attorney, had over Ted’s affairs.
^*

Despite this tension with the son, McWalter maintained a close relationship with Williams himself. Ted had his legal affairs in order, so much of their time was spent bouncing ideas around. Bob spent extended time in Citrus Hills and worked out of Ted’s condo there.

While McWalter usually slept at the condo as well, sometimes Williams would insist he stay at the big house with him and Louise, and the lawyer observed the Kid’s domestic routine with interest. McWalter saw Williams have many a tantrum, then bounce back immediately and be exceedingly nice—often when walking with his beloved Dalmatian, Slugger. Some of this felt familiar to McWalter: “I’ve had a series of burnouts throughout my career. There was a psychologist specializing in what they call executive stress. I was seeing this doctor, and a lot of Ted stuff was going on. I was relating how difficult it was to be with Ted in his household—anger one minute and love the next. The psychologist said, ‘That’s what we call a swinging-door, bipolar personality.’ ”

One task Ted entrusted to McWalter was dealing with his third wife. Dolores would call Bob regularly and claim that Ted was stiffing her on this payment or that, or that the alimony was insufficient. “Ted wouldn’t talk to Dolores,” recalled McWalter. “He’d do it through me or John-Henry. He’d tell me, ‘Help her out, but don’t let her think it happened easily. The dumb shit, she needs someone to take care of her. She’s been good to those kids.’ ” That help included minor sweeteners like donating one of Ted’s cars to Dolores after he’d bought a new one and dealing with her health insurance, but Williams made sure to keep his distance.

Dolores, John-Henry, and Claudia each held Louise Kaufman at least partially responsible for breaking up the marriage. Ted, not surprisingly, didn’t care what his children or his ex-wife thought of Louise. He had finally cast his lot with her and seemed to be quite happy about it. He knew Louise accepted him for who he was. She tempered his excesses and helped smooth out his rough edges.

But with the passage of time Claudia felt her relationship with Louise had only gotten worse. “I’m not going to lie,” she explained. “Louise did not like me and I did not like her. We did our best to be civil to one
another, but the older she got the nastier she was to me, and the older I got, the less I put up with her.”

John-Henry, for his part, felt Louise’s enmity toward him on his Florida visits to see Ted, and he did little to conceal his own hostility to her. After all, only four years earlier he had openly discussed the idea of killing Louise with his cousin Salvador Herrera and Sal’s wife, Edna, the former Los Angeles police officer, when he was living with them in California.

In the summer of 1993, Louise was bothered by a bowel obstruction, a problem she’d had surgery for years earlier. But she told her best friend, Evalyn Sterry, that she felt up to going to the Miramichi in Canada with Ted. She knew the trip was the highlight of his year, and she wanted to be with him.

Around the first of August the bowel obstruction flared up again, and doctors in Moncton, New Brunswick, determined it could not wait until Louise returned to Florida. She needed surgery immediately. Her daughter Barbara Kovacs flew up for the operation from her home in Columbia, South Carolina. Louise, who had just turned eighty-one, reacted badly to the surgery and slipped into a coma.