AMY MACDONALD: Good afternoon. I'm Amy Macdonald, the Forum Producer here at the Library. And on behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, and Tom Putnam, the Director of the Kennedy Library, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming, and acknowledge the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsor Bank of America, Raytheon, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation; and our media partners, the Boston Globe, Xfinity and WBUR.
As a good steward to our neighbor, the Red Sox, the Kennedy Library has hosted a few baseball discussions in our Forum series. We celebrated the centennial of Fenway Park, where JFK's grandfather Honey Fitz threw out the first pitch. We celebrated the Red Sox's first World Series win in 2004, where one of the panelists, longtime Globe reporter and editor Marty Nolan, memorably said that before that long-awaited World Series victory, he used to quip, “The Red Sox killed my father, and now they're coming after me.” [laughter] And today, after a third Red Sox World Series victory within the last decade, we celebrate the long career of Red Sox great Ted Williams, chronicled in an equally long book by former longtime Globe editor Ben Bradlee, Jr.
As chair of PEN New England, I am wearing two hats today, for Ben is the recipient of the 2013 PEN New England Cerulli Award for Excellence in Sports Writing, which we will be presenting at the end of today's conversation.
His book, The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, is not just a sports bio, but as Charles McGrath eloquently said in today's New York Times review: "It is a hard-to-put-down account of a fascinating American life. It's a story about athletic greatness, but also about the perils of fame and celebrity, the corrosiveness of money and the way the cycle of familial resentment and disappointment plays itself out generation after generation."
I cannot imagine a better holiday book than this one. It is on sale in our Museum store, and Ben will be signing copies at the conclusion of today's Forum.
Our moderator today is Bob Ryan, beloved Boston Globe sportswriter, who retired in 2012 after 44 years at the paper. He is still an occasional contributor to the Globe, and a regular panelist on ESPN's Sunday morning roundtable, The Sports Reporters. The author of several sports books, he is presently writing his memoir, but he doesn't want me to call it a memoir.
Please join me in welcoming Ben Bradlee, Jr. and Bob Ryan. [applause]
BOB RYAN: Well, good afternoon and thank you for coming. And before we get started, I just want to make sure that you're all aware that we all may be committing some sort of a treasonous act in that I believe it has been legislated that all Americans must watch professional football on autumn Sunday afternoons. So if there's a citation on your windshield, don't be shocked.
Now, welcome. This is really an honor for me to be here. I have read the book with great pleasure as someone who grew up in New Jersey, not as swept up in the Ted Williams fervor of a youth in Boston, but as someone who knew him only as an opponent and as the most legendary hitter of the time that I grew up.
Ben, a very simple thing, start off: Ted Williams, worthy of this kind of treatment? Why?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, he was a figure in my life. I grew up in Cambridge, and there were pictures of Ted Williams plastered all over my wall. I'm old enough that I saw him play. I would get to Fenway as often as I could, and I got his autograph once as one of the screaming brats waiting outside the players' parking lot; he came out and chose to sign that day. I still have that ball with the ink fading badly with the passage of 50 years.
And I was there for one of the lowest moments of his career in 1958 after a rare strikeout. He was a perfectionist, Ted; he always thought he would get a hit every time up and would get angry at himself if he didn’t. He went to fling the bat in disgust and intended to throw it on the ground, but lost control of it and it went sailing into the box seats and hit an old lady. Her face was all bloodied, and it was a terrible scene. And Ted felt badly and he rushed over to the old lady to check on her.
Your former colleague and mine, Bud Collins, then working for the Boston Herald as a cub reporter, went charging into the clubhouse; he smelled a story here, he smelled a lawsuit coming. [laughter] And he went up to Joe Cronin, then the General Manager, and said, "Joe, this lady looks bad. Are you concerned about a lawsuit?" "There'll be no lawsuits," said Cronin, very definitively. "How do you know?" said Collins. "Because this woman happens to be my housekeeper and she loves Ted Williams." [laughter]
I don't know, that's a rambling answer. Ted was a figure in my life and in his death, I was struck by how much interest there still was in his life and how many lives he had touched. I had read his autobiography in '69, ghostwritten by John Underwood, but there were huge gaps in that, as there often are in autobiographies; one doesn't tell the entire truth about one's self.
And I read the other books. And mostly they were done by sportswriters who concentrated on his on-the-field exploits. I don't come from a sports background in the business. I worked at the Globe with Bob for not as many years -- 25 as a reporter and editor. But I was on the news side, and what interested me about Williams was less his heroics on the field, which had been pretty well chronicled, but his personal life – his very, very rough childhood growing up in Depression era San Diego; his war service, two wars; his three wives, his children; his anger, which was …
BOB RYAN: Let's get right to that. Would it be hyperbole to describe his childhood growing up in San Diego as Dickensian?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: That's what I think McGrath called it.
BOB RYAN: Yes, I borrowed a phrase.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, it was not pleasant. His mother was a Salvation Army zealot, really, out until all hours of the night saving souls on the streets of San Diego. She was known as the Angel of Tijuana. She was in a mission that really stretched from Tijuana, the border, up to Los Angeles. And this was the most important thing in her life. And she'd be out, literally, until 11:00 and midnight and not home to watch over Teddy or his younger brother, Danny. They were some of the first latchkey kids; they'd be out, sitting on the front porch, waiting for Mom to come home. The dad was a ne'er-do-well, had trouble with the bottle and not a factor, not around. Luckily for Williams, there was a playground down the street that had floodlights, and baseball was his salvation.
BOB RYAN: But for Danny, he'd found no such hook, no such beacon of salvation.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: No, Danny was one step ahead of the sheriff his entire life, a petty criminal, and had a difficult relationship with Ted, was jealous of Ted and all the attention he got. And he died young of leukemia.
BOB RYAN: I'm trying to form a general picture. This was a man of limited formal education, but clearly an intellectually curious person.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Very curious mind, yeah, but yet very sensitive about this lack of formal education. He bought a set of encyclopedias late in life and read them, actually read them. And he liked to sandbag people on a question. So he would do his research and go up and liked to catch somebody not knowing the answer to his question, and then spew out all his research from the encyclopedias.
He had a really curious mind. He liked to ask questions of people. One telling anecdote about his sensitivity about the lack of his formal education was Harvard went to give him an honorary degree in 1991 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his great year, when he hit .406 in 1941. But he turned the honorary degree down. He told the fellow at Harvard that he would feel uncomfortable amidst the intelligentsia of Harvard Yard.
BOB RYAN: But clearly this intelligence manifested itself in his approach to hitting and his obsessiveness, but the analytical ability he had to dissect the process and technique of hitting, and studied the pitchers, studied every aspect of it. This obviously is where it manifested itself most obviously for him.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He approached hitting as a science and wrote a book, with Underwood again, called The Science of Hitting. And he had very strong views about hitting, and he believed in a low-to-high swing, not a level swing where you see most players. He wanted to get the ball up in the air quickly for more power. And that's what he preached.
He was a great student, as you suggest, of all the pitchers. And he would always ask his teammates, those who hit before him – say it was Pesky or DiMaggio, Dom DiMaggio – if they came back to the dugout having struck out, "What's the guy throwing? How did he get you out?" And often they wouldn't know and he'd say, "What do you mean you don't know? How can you not know?"
BOB RYAN: That aspect of him we can get into. That filtered through many aspects of his life, his impatience with people who didn't rise to his level on a particular topic, whether it was fishing, or whatever.
One of the surprising aspects that people had no idea about who followed his career in Boston all those years, from 1939 to 1960 -- not the slightest idea -- is that his mother was Mexican. So let's talk about that and how that affected Ted Williams.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, to me, that was one of the most interesting facts. This was a little fact that didn't emerge until a month before he died when Bill Nowlin, a local writer, did a piece for the Globe Magazine about this. Mae Williams, his mother, was Mexican, born there and had family going back there generations. But Williams concluded that the prejudice of the day would hurt his career. So he concealed this fact, certainly as he was coming up, but really didn't talk about it until the last years of his life. And one guy he talked about it with was Nomar Garciaparra, who had Mexican parents, and they became friendly. Ted stayed engaged in the game and liked the young guys coming up; Nomar was his friend. But that was one thing they talked about.
But there were these dozens of relatives on Mae Williams's side, and these were Williams's cousins. Most of them lived up in Santa Barbara, and he rather disparagingly referred to them as The Mexicans.
BOB RYAN: But he did in fact spend time at this ranch; he did in fact spend time with them. It was an uncle who was particularly solicitous of his baseball career.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Saul Venzor, yeah. But one of my favorite stories that illustrates his discomfort in wanting not to acknowledge this part of him happened in 1939, after his rookie year here with the Red Sox when he set the American League on fire, he came back to San Diego, the conquering hero, and he arrived at the train station and there were about 100 of the Mexican relatives there gathered to greet him. He took one look at them, all gathered together, and hightailed it in the other direction. He didn't want to be seen.
BOB RYAN: No public display, but privately there were …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: There were visits.
BOB RYAN: There were visits and even financial support, if necessary, at times.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, he did that, and he supported his mother throughout his career, faithfully sending money home to her and to some of the other extended relatives. But sending a check is different than spending time with them.
BOB RYAN: The father, irrelevant in a sense, and his mother neglectful. So he did have to seek out some kind of surrogate parents, including a man across the street, Les Cassie.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He did. The role of a father is obviously very important and the father, Sam Williams, was not there, largely absent, until Ted signed a pro contract and the dad came sniffing around looking for a piece of the action. But he did look for surrogate fathers, and there were various neighbors who took him fishing and hunting. These guys became important figures in his life.
BOB RYAN: His high school years above and beyond the baseball, how would you describe what he was like at Herbert Hoover High School?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, he was single-minded about baseball. Girls? Not a factor at all. In fact, scared of girls. If somebody approached him, he'd run the other way. Had one date, and that was to his prom where a friend of his convinced him, "Come on, it's the prom, you've got to take somebody to the prom." So there was this young, fairly attractive girl named Alberta Camus -- a picture of her in the book. That was his only date.
Socially inept, really. He would carry a bat with him all the time [laughter] to school. When he passed a storefront, he liked to check his reflection out in the mirror and sing the bat. So the merchants inside would wonder who this vainglorious kid was out swinging a bat. Williams not only wanted to be good; he liked to look good. That was important to him.
He had this pregame routine where he'd strip down to his skivvies and swing the bat in front of the mirror with his shower clogs on, and he'd say, "I'm the best."
BOB RYAN: Photographic evidence of this exists in the Red Sox press box even today. There was a string of photos that you would see, and one of them is Williams in this familiar pose of the towel around the waist, shower clogs, bare-chested, swinging that bat in front of the locker.
This lasted his entire career, right?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah. And he would just speak the words "I'm the best F-ing hitter in the world." [laughter] One after the other: "I'm the best F-ing"– he may have invented the F word as an adjective. [laughter]
BOB RYAN: When he signed with the local team in San Diego and it becomes evident that his talent is undeniable, how did he fit in with the older players?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, the older players … He was eccentric, to say the least. He'd never been out of San Diego, and one of the reasons he signed with San Diego was his mother insisted that he be home. So they cut a deal with the fellow who had just bought the team and moved it to San Diego, and he assigned one of the older players to keep an eye on Ted on the road.
Ted didn't know things that we take for granted. He didn't know how to order off a menu, he'd never seen a menu. He'd just gone into a local drugstore fountain and there's a menu written on the wall. And he would cause a hullabaloo on the train rides going up, take the bread off other people's plates and just eat them. He wasn't ready for prime time, socially. [laughter]
BOB RYAN: The baseball part, there was just no downside. Right from the start, he had this amazing power for a skinny … Describe him, describe the 18-year-old Ted William physically.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, he was a beanpole. He was six-foot-three-and-three-quarters, weighed about 155 wringing wet.
BOB RYAN: Splendid Splinter.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Eddie Collins, who was then the general manager of the Red Sox, went out on a scouting mission to … The Red Sox had an agreement, I think, with the San Diego Padres at the time, and he saw Williams for the first time in Portland, Oregon. And I have his quote in the book, his recollections. He said the first time he saw Williams swing, he thought it was like an electric moment for him, just the combination of silky smooth swing, yet power. He told the owner of the team he wanted to take an option on Williams and the owner was stunned. He said, "No, the guy's not ready, he can't do this." But Collins insisted and a year or two later they called him up.
BOB RYAN: Was there ever any pressure on him to improve the other aspects of his game, the parts of which he was disdainful, mainly defense and base running?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: It's true, he was a one-dimensional player. And there were all these stories coming up about he'd be out in the outfield shadow hitting with his glove while the game was going on. [laughter] Or sometimes even turn his back and yak with the fans. So the shortstop or one of the infielders would see this, "Hey, Ted, come on! Get your head in the game." Yeah, he was indifferent to that. And he famously said, "They don't pay off on fielding." Which is true.
BOB RYAN: There's no surprise that one of the books attributed to Ted Williams is entitled My Turn at Bat, because that's all he ever seemed to care about was his next turn at bat.
Let's jump into his rookie season, the 1939 Boston Red Sox, with veterans such as Jimmie Foxx, primarily Foxx, but other veterans. He has a sensational rookie year. And the fans love them, he loves them back; there's no issue with the press. It's a blissful year from start to finish.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He played right field that first year. And he was a writer's dream. The writers loved him then. He was great raw copy. He spoke with no filter -- just colorful -- and the fans loved him. And as you say, he loved them back. Not only did he tip his hat in the first year, he took the little button on the top of the hat and went like that, like a real showman. But things changed in 1940.
BOB RYAN: Well, first of all, the big favor to him in the winter between 1939 and '40, he decided that the fence was a little too far away. He was a left-hand power hitter. Let's create these bullpens that did not exist. They were warming up on the sidelines -- which still happened by the way in Wrigley Field, among other places -- but created bullpens that would reduce the outfield distance. And there's even a photo among the famous Leslie Jones collection you can see at Fenway of him supervising, a staged photo of him with the saw in his hand …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: It's in the book.
BOB RYAN: Yes, thank you, I know I'd seen it recently. Supervising the construction of the bullpens that were nicknamed Williamsburg. [laughter] But they produced no tangible result.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: This was an example of how Tom Yawkey, then the owner, tended to Ted's every wish and need. He had this great rookie season. At the end of the year, he says everything's great, but the right field fence in Fenway is too far. It was 400 feet back then to hit a home run. And he'd gotten most of his home runs on the road. And he said, "I love Boston, but it's going to be hard for me to spend the rest of my career here if the fence is 400 feet away." So Yawkey slaps up the bull pens and moves it in. And the press decided that this was where all the Williams home runs were going to go and thus Williamsburg.
So the expectations were very high in 1940. And he got off to a slow start; the home runs weren't coming and he made a few defensive mistakes. The fans got on him, the writers got on him. Williams didn't take criticism well. He reasoned that he was a perfectionist, he was trying hard, and the results were there and so who were these little scalawags in the press corps to tell him how to hit. And he was so sensitive to criticism. When a couple of fans started booing him early in 1940, he said "That's it, I'm never going to tip my hat again." And he followed through with that, he never did tip his hat again as an active player, despite hitting a home run at his last time at bat in 1960 where he later said he was tempted as he was rounding second, but he never did.
But then, that was the year, 1940, when he started feuding with the writers.
BOB RYAN: Let's get right to that, the whole relationship thing there, which really, as much as he didn't like criticism about his playing, he completely objected to any even reference to his private life.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right. which betrayed a real naiveté about the role of the press. He didn't understand the concept that he was viewed as a hero by many, that people were interested in the concept of a feature story about this life, about what it was like growing up. If a writer called up the mother to do the most innocuous piece about "at home with Ted," he would freak out and charge the writer – Harold Kaese was one of the early ones – "You have no right to call my home." He liked fame, but not the inconvenience of celebrity.
So there began this contentious relationship that continued throughout his career. This gets back to the anger part, but Williams struggled with anger all his life. It was a double-edged sword for him. He was able to channel this anger in a constructive direction on the baseball field because he always said that he hit better angry, so it was a motivator.
So even though most of his press, 99% really of his press was favorable, he hated the old Colonel, Dave Egan – some of you may remember that name – he was the star columnist of the day in the old Daily Record, who wrote under the pseudonym The Colonel. And he was Williams's chief antagonist. So a negative column would come out and Ted would just tar all the press with that brush. And the other players would look on with great amusement at these sparring sessions between Ted and the writers because they didn't dare treat the writers that way. They were scared of what the writers might …
BOB RYAN: But in the midst of it, so many of these aspects of this are fascinating to me, obviously. I came along at the tail end of an era, but some of those people were still around. You mentioned Harold Kaese; he was very much a columnist at the Globe when I joined the Globe as a summer intern in 1968. And I wish I had, but I never really spoke to him much about it.
But I want to ask you this: I always had been led to believe that one of the touchstones that set Williams off forever was a remark or a column that Kaese had written about: what do you think of a person who wouldn't even go home to visit his mother in the off-season. Explain that little episode.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: That was it. That was, I believe, in 1940, when he was having these problems. And it was a cheap shot by Kaese.
BOB RYAN: Oh, completely.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: And he regretted it; in fact, tried to have the line killed and calls into the paper – these are the days, obviously way pre-computer – called into the desk and had it changed, but in some sort of snafu in the composing room, the line remained in the story. So Kaese apologized to Ted, but the damage was done.
BOB RYAN: I missed Dave Egan. The big antagonist when I came along was John Gilhooly, who I would describe as a Dave Egan in approach. Egan, tell more about Egan. People have to understand, number one, the scope and importance of the newspapers at the time was rather disproportionate. That was it; it was 100% of the image. You could form public images totally from newspapers.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: There were nine newspapers in Boston at the time when Williams came up. Imagine that, nine. No radio -- maybe radio, but certainly no television. And Williams dominated the town; he owned the town. And he was on the front page; if he burped, he was on the front page. They were hungry. The editors made it clear to the reporters, "We want Ted copy, that's what we want."
BOB RYAN: Now are we talking specifically more about the '50s, that disproportionate emphasis on him? Because after 1950, the Red Sox had that great one from 1946 to '50 when they actually had the best overall record in baseball, but had only the one pennant to show for it. But from that point on, the '50s, Ted was so far and away the story because the team wasn't any good.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right. But he was the story in the '40s, too.
BOB RYAN: Of course. But the team was still competitively really, really good in the late '40s.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right.
BOB RYAN: But in the '50s, it was like all-Ted all the time.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right. But Egan was the dominant and interesting character. I spent some time … I have a chapter on the relationship between Williams and the writers, because I think it's an important window into his character. And Egan was the son of a milkman, grew up in Newport, Rhode Island. The father had 16 other children. He sailed through Harvard in three years and then went to Harvard Law School. You've got to understand how unusual it was for anyone with a college education to be a sportswriter back in the day. No offense.
BOB RYAN: No, it's true in those days. [laughter] No, totally true. I came in at the end of an era when maybe 50/50 of the writers and talent had gone to college as opposed to had not gone to college when I came along in '68. So I know exactly what you mean.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: And he was a gifted writer, Egan. But he was a contrarian, and he decided that if Williams owned the town, his job would be to take him down a notch or two every time he could. It was good business for both of them, actually.
BOB RYAN: Absolutely. It was legendary. But in the midst of all this, there were people he liked and he got along with. Ed Rumill, for example, of the Christian Science Monitor was one, but not the only one. But then, of course, Bud Leavitt was most of all, Bud Leavitt from the Bangor Daily News, who was his friend through their mutual love of the outdoors, fishing specifically. But there were even others.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Joe Cashman he did a little business with.
BOB RYAN: Joe Cashman was wonderful. Talk about an old-timer, he was great. I got to know Joe. Anyway, so it wasn't as if it was all … He made blanket general comments about writers as a body, but within that there were people that he would give the time of day to.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah, and particularly this fellow Ed Rumill who wrote for the Christian Science Monitor which no one really read. Certainly the Red Sox didn't read it. But they did put a stack of them in the clubhouse because apparently the Monitor was the only one that had the box scores for the minor league teams.
But Rumill became an interesting figure because he was close to Yawkey and Ted. And therefore, Rumill, during all of Ted's feuds with the writers, Rumill was the one guy that he would talk to at all times, and he shut off a lot of the other press. So Rumill would relay the quotes from Ted and give them to the other writers with Ted's reluctant blessing. Rumill was a different kind of sportswriter. He would get to the field a little early and have a drink with Tom and Jean Yawkey. And he would throw batting practice. A different kind of writer.
BOB RYAN: Definitely, yes, not the conventional writer. 1941, extraordinary year in baseball history because of the dual histories that were written – Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and Ted hitting the .406. What would you like to present about what was most interesting to you about the whole experience of 1941 for Ted?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, the streak really eclipsed Ted for most of that year. That was such an extraordinary feat by DiMaggio. But then after that ran out, I guess in, what, early August maybe?
BOB RYAN: July 17th was the end of the streak in Cleveland.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Okay, defer to the expert.
BOB RYAN: It just happens I know that. [laughter] A night game. [laughter]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: After that, the spotlight returned to Williams, and he went into the final day – people know this story – hitting .399.55, and in the books it would have been rounded up to .400. And in what was really the defining moment of his career, he decided not only to play the final day, which was a double header in Philadelphia, but he went six for eight on the final day. Six for eight and hit .406. So it was a courageous act.
BOB RYAN: He was quoted at one point as saying, "If I'm going to hit .400, I want more than my toenails on the line." That was the quote I always read about him doing that.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, he had to do it, don't you think? Because it would have been [simultaneous conversation] otherwise.
BOB RYAN: I think definitely he would have, oh, positively. It had only been 11 years since the previous .400; Bill Terry had .401 in 1931. And no one realized, obviously, that it was going to be last of the .400 hitters. No one thought that at all. The other big thing, of course, in 1941 for him was the All-Star Game.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yes, the All-Star Game in 1941 was in Detroit. And the American League was losing, I think it was five to three in the last inning with two runners on base. And up steps Williams and hits a three-run homer to win the game. And he always said that was one of the most exciting moments in baseball.
BOB RYAN: And he always loved hitting in Detroit; everything was green on green, and the dimensions were very reasonable, like 325 to right, didn't drop off much, the alleys were very modest. It was always a great left-hand hitter's ballpark and he loved it.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: And the All-Star Game was more meaningful then.
BOB RYAN: Oh, it was huge, the All-Star Game then, obviously was very important then,
very, very important. Of course the critics later would hold this against him, that he would cite that as his most precious moments …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Because he wasn't a team guy.
BOB RYAN: … since it had nothing to do with winning World Series or pennants. He couldn't win in that regard.
Now we get to December 7th and some ballplayers, most notably Hank Greenberg, signed up immediately, and a lot of players went in. But Ted did play the 1942 season as did most of the players of the day.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: This is World War II. And the commissioner asked for guidance from the President on whether baseball should close down, and the President said, no, this is good for the morale of the country, we'll keep baseball going. This was obviously a very patriotic time but as you said, with the exception of Feller and a few others, not many were rushing to enlist.
Ted got a deferment, which meant that he was deferred because he was the sole supporter of his mother; father had left by that time. This was legitimate, but at the same time patriotic fervor was running high and Williams would get a lot of anonymous mail, famously one sheet of paper in the color of yellow for cowardice. And he started feeling the heat. And the Red Sox I think privately wished that he would have gone in, too, from a public relations standpoint. But he said, "No, dammit, this is legit." And he wanted to earn his money. So he played the entire '42 season and won the Triple Crown, but reached an agreement with the Navy mid-summer that he would go in in the fall if they would let him complete the year. So he went in.
He wasn't doing just KP duty. He was a Marine fighter pilot, and an excellent flyer. He didn't see combat in World War II. They held him back as an instructor. But later, he was called back for Korea, unfairly he thought. And it was unfair really because he'd done three years. And at that time, he saw action and was shot down and lived to tell the story.
BOB RYAN: The instructing aspect of it, back to the intelligence thing, he clearly was a superior … He grasped the mechanics of this flying thing to a high, high level.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yes, celestial navigation, aerodynamics. It's not easy for a high school graduate.
BOB RYAN: This wasn't in any way, shape or form trying to protect him as a ballplayer. This was utilizing him – correct me if I'm wrong – utilizing his skills to the best degree to help the cause was by having him be an instructor because he was such a proficient student of the flying.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah, I think so. There was some suggestion that an overzealous commander down in Pensacola kept him down there longer than he should have because he wanted Williams on his service baseball team. [laughter] But that gets a little murky.
BOB RYAN: But he did not want to play baseball, did not want that association.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He was very disparaging of the Major League players …
BOB RYAN: DiMaggio, for example.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah, who basically got out of any hard duty by playing ball, and there were a lot of those guys.
BOB RYAN: Might as well stick with the service topic, because it's so much a part of the Ted Williams lore and legend and why he's admired as a great American hero is that he fought in two wars. He gave up all these numbers that would have enhanced … although not that he needed more praise as a hitter. But the real crux of the matter was the Korean War callback.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah.
BOB RYAN: He did not go back as a happy person.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Oh, he was furious. He contained it in himself publicly at that time and for the record was saying all the right things, "If they want me, I'll go." But he was furious and actually hired a lawyer to try and get out of it. But that ran out. It was terribly unfair on the face of it because he had done his time, but he went and he did see action.
There was this incredible incident in Korea. He flew 39 missions, and one day he got shot down. I was able to interview one guy who was on this mission with him, and who helped guide him back into the base. The plane lost its radio contact, lost the hydraulic fluid and was on fire. And by all rights, he should have ejected out into the ocean. But he was so tall – they had to literally shoehorn him into the cockpit to get him in the thing – he was scared that if he ejected, he would cap his knees and never play again. So he said, "If I'm going to go down, I'm going to bring it in." And so this fellow guided him in and the landing gear wouldn't come down. So he had to land it on its belly in flames. He's so lucky that he got out of that thing.
But the two wars … One of the great parlor games that people play with Williams is what would his total numbers have been if he hadn't missed nearly five years of his prime. And he probably would have hit at least 700 home runs. Bob, do you think?
BOB RYAN: I think yeah, I'd say if he had 521, just give him an average of 30, there's another 150. He surely would have had 675.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Maybe more.
BOB RYAN: He was in his prime. He was 24 years old in 1943.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I think for his legacy, though, the two wars trump whatever his numbers would have been.
BOB RYAN: And he totally recognized the value of being able to …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: In time.
BOB RYAN: In time. I mean, eventually, that this is part of why Ted Williams is separated from any other athlete of stature. He had this cachet of two wars. So that, in the long run, was a great thing.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Especially when you compare him with the modern athlete. It is inconceivable that a superstar of today would serve in not one war, but two. I mean, A-Rod in Afghanistan and Iraq? [laughter] Please.
BOB RYAN: The '40s Red Sox, how did his teammates come to grips with the outsized nature of Ted Williams?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: They loved him. They loved him, mostly. Johnny Pesky said, "We used to call him God." [laughter] He was good to his teammates. He wasn't a leader in the classic sense, not a rah-rah guy. He led by example, if anything. But anyone who wanted to know anything about hitting, he was always there. That's what he knew. But he wasn't going to give any instructions on fielding.
BOB RYAN: Even for other teams, which at times even managers resented the fact that Ted was so free with his … he was so generous in the spirit of teaching hitting that he did not restrict it to his own teammates.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: But they loved him. They were amused by him, particularly the byplay with the writers. Don Buddin, the old Red Sox shortstop, told me a funny story. After one session of Ted cussing out the writers, he said, "Ted, how can you talk to the writers that way?"
Ted says, "Son, if you hit .350, you can do a lot of things." [laughter]
BOB RYAN: In all your research with players, or with opponents, or anybody in baseball, this business about Ted being unwilling to switch at a pitch a millimeter outside the strike zone, therefore all these walks – which are wonderful in his on-base percentage, .482, the greatest of all time, by the way – but maybe how many more runs would he have driven in if he had only swung at certain pitches to deviate from his principles of hitting? Did any Red Sox players ever say that publicly or privately? Or was that just a writers' figment?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: This is an interesting issue. This goes to Williams's scientific approach to hitting and the whole idea of … His credo was "get a good pitch to hit." That was what he lived by as a hitter. So if a ball was one inch off the strike zone, he wouldn't hit it. Because he thought it was a slippery slope from there – if he did, the pitcher would throw two inches off, three inches off, and before you know it, he'd be swinging at bad balls.
But this became an interesting argument, because he was criticized for this approach on the grounds that he was the best hitter on the team. And if he came up in a key situation with the bases loaded, or first and second, whatever, the argument was you'd be hurting your team by taking a walk. DiMaggio believed that, too. Joe was critical of Ted privately for taking that approach.
So it was an interesting debate. But in the long run, I think Williams's approach has probably been vindicated, particularly in this era when the whole concept of on-base percentage is everything.
BOB RYAN: DiMaggio, the two great figures of the '40s baseball, and the third one Sam Musial of course in the National League. But the American League was DiMaggio and Williams, because they were New York and Boston. Gee, that never has resonated, had it, New York versus Boston. I can't imagine that being an issue in anything that we do in sports! But it happened to be an issue back in the '40s. DiMaggio/Williams, rival empires almost, in a sense.
Talk about that.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I've got a chapter on that relationship called "Ted and Joe." It interested me. They had a lifelong rivalry after the playing days. And for Joe, the rivalry was fierce; for Ted, it was friendly. They were opposites in almost every respect.
BOB RYAN: Fashion, for one.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Joe was this immaculate dresser; Ted was a rumpled, unmade bed, would never wear a tie. But Joe was quiet and shy; Ted was voluble and gregarious. Joe smoked incessantly, even in the dugout; Ted never smoked a day in his life. Joe was a nightclub guy; Ted loved the outdoors. But they aged differently. Ted mellowed and came more out of his shell and seemed to really love life after he retired. DiMaggio was a reclusive figure, obsessed with the memorabilia market and became, I think, less popular as he aged.
BOB RYAN: Definitely. The mutual respect professionally was pretty clear though.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Oh, yeah, yeah, although Joe privately would disparage Ted, and Ted did not, to his credit.
BOB RYAN: Going back to the personal for a minute, because so much of your book entails Ted's rather tempestuous relationship with the opposite sex. And namely, once he discovered sex, boy, did he like it. [laughter] You can take that ball and run with it, whatever you like.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I mentioned Ted was shy with girls earlier in high school, and he lost his virginity his second year, 21 or 22. He still was sort of scared of it, but all the players, the groupies would be in the hotel lobby and the other players were upstairs, "Come on, Ted, we've got to do this, let's go." So finally he said, "Okay, send one up." And so, Ted does the deed and goes three for four the next day. [laughter] Says, "This is pretty good, we'll try it again." [laughter] The next day, goes two for four. Still, that's pretty good. Next day, 0 for four; day after that, 0 for four. And he said, "That's it, no more, no more sex." He didn't associate sex with enjoyment, he associated it with performance on the field. [laughter]
BOB RYAN: In general terms, his relationship with women in general obviously all stems from his mother. We can all play the amateur psychologist on that, where it started. But his concept of women, his relationships with women was certainly …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He was no Gloria Steinem. He had a very traditional view of women -- that they were to sleep with. He didn't see the concept of women having a career. Claudia, the daughter, said she had ambitions to be an Olympic bicyclist. Ted said, "Just be a teacher, you get good benefits." He didn't really accept the idea that a woman could excel at anything.
So he had a difficult time. It wasn't just with women, it was just managing his anger. His anger that he was able to channel constructively on the ball field would bubble up in inappropriate times in his private life and cause them great difficulty getting along, not just with women, but with his children. And sometimes close friends. Because the price of being in Williams's orbit personally was that you had to endure these squalls.
There'd be just outbursts of temper. And then they would go away and he would try to act like nothing had happened and expect those he loved to be there. And people like Bobby Doerr and Pesky who felt the lash of Ted's temper were there for him. I asked Doerr once if he ever said, “Ted, don't talk to me that way'?" "No, you couldn't say that to Ted," he said. And if you were there for him, he would be your friend for life, because he knew that he was terribly difficult.
BOB RYAN: Is it safe to say that in anyone's relationship with Ted, he had to be the one in control?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Oh, yes.
BOB RYAN: Had to be the one in control.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yes, yes.
BOB RYAN: It's interesting, one of the people that he had an association with in later life was Bob Knight. They were fishing buddies. In fact, Bob Knight told me about an expedition that they made through Russia to fish for trout, I believe. And same thing with Knight: you can be a friend of his as long he controls … His faucet is turned on and off depending on …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right. But the flip side of Ted's anger was also a fundamental kindness and decency, as evidenced chiefly by his work with the Jimmy Fund.
BOB RYAN: Had there never been a Jimmy Fund, he still would have had on his résumé that he was astonishingly solicitous of and caring about sick children. That just mattered to him. All which of course was to be kept private.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right. And the writers would find out about it. Williams would go to the nurses and doctors at the Jimmy Fund, or some of the other local hospitals, and say, "If any kid wants to see me and you think that I can be of help, I'll come." And he did, and he would come at all hours of the night sometimes. The writers would find out about it and they would go up to him and ask him about it, and he'd say, "Yeah, it's true, but if you write that, that's your ass; I'll never talk to you again." Because what he was doing was genuine, and he worried that if it was in the papers, it would look like he was trying to feather his own nest and improve his Peck's Bad Boy image.
BOB RYAN: We've made allusions so far to his three children, Bobby-Jo by his first wife Doris Soule and now John Henry Williams and Claudia Williams by his third wife Dolores Wettach. We could be here for the next six or seven hours exploring all of this, so I'm trying to encapsulate it.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Do you want to cut to the chase?
BOB RYAN: Well, cut to the chase in terms of … You can shape it any way you like, but I'm tying up the fact that John Henry and the $64,000 issue, which is the cryonics, which is what's going to surprise most people, the depth that it's covered in your book.
How did we get to this point where John Henry is deciding this course of action, and so forth?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Ted had a difficult relationship with his three kids. The older daughter by the first marriage, Bobby-Jo, she had a very difficult life, was an alcoholic and had a lot of other problems. And Ted essentially ran out of patience with her and became estranged from her. And then John Henry and Claudia were the children of the third marriage, and he also didn't have much to do with them growing up. He was a generation older. They could have been his grandchildren.
BOB RYAN: They were raised in Vermont without a lot of what most of us here would refer to as basic necessities of life, like television.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: The mother didn't like television at all, and they lived a quite rural life in Vermont. But Ted reconnected. A lot of the last part of the book is about Ted reconnecting with his son. It's about a father and a son discovering each other late in life.
John Henry Williams, I tried to give as rounded a portrait of him as I could, because he's so easy to … It's like shooting fish in a barrel with John Henry. You remember, you were covering it.
He's painted as the exploitive bad seed.
BOB RYAN: You even quoted me to that effect, thank you. I appreciate that.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: And he did exploit his father, but my conclusion was that he also loved his father, that he was there in the trenches at the end, doing the real nitty-gritty work of taking care of an elderly guy.
But Ted had been the victim of a memorabilia swindle. He'd lost about a million dollars, and John Henry graduated from college and looking for something to do saw an opportunity based on that swindle. He said, "Well, Dad, you can trust me, I'm your son. Let me run your memorabilia business."
Ted was initially a little suspicious, but he also felt a lot of guilt, I think, at the fact that he hadn't been there for his son. And so it was payback. John Henry took the ball and ran with it and went through a lot of money and certainly did exploit his father financially. And then, he discovered cryonics. I don't know if you want to get to that.
BOB RYAN: I want to get to that. What's been the initial reaction that you have gotten since the book has been reviewed and since the publication of the Globe excerpt, among other things, which the first excerpt was about the cryonics. And a rather graphic description of what the process is, which is how the book opens and gets your attention right away, let me tell you. Really, very, very well done, as only a great reporter can do. And let me just stress that this book is an epic, a tribute to the concept of great reporting, and I stand in awe of it.
But the cryonics, yes.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Cryonics, I wouldn't elevate cryonics to a science. I think it's more of a cult, really. It's subscribed to by several hundred people who believe that as medical science progresses, it will be possible one day to cure the person who died of whatever it was they died from and then the next step, somehow bring you back to life. They haven't quite worked out whether you come back as an 83-year-old man or a young stud who can hit .406.
Anyway, Claudia described it to me as going to the lottery: "Who's to say what's so great about being cremated in a blast oven. Why not take this chance, and who knows" kind of approach. John Henry got interested in this in 1997. The back story on cryonics and what the family did comes from Claudia, because John Henry died in 2004, less than two years after his father did.
And he had agreed to talk to me, but then got sick with leukemia and couldn't. The family story is Claudia speaking for the first time.
What she says happened is that John Henry gradually approached Ted about this and raised it with him, and he was initially very dismissive and "get out of here with that crazy stuff and don't talk to me." But then, in November 2000, when Ted was having a pacemaker installed, John Henry and Claudia thought that this was the time to raise it with Ted more seriously because he was an 82-year-old man having surgery, and you don't know if he'll come back.
She says what happened is that they asked him if he would agree to cryonics for them. By this time, John Henry especially had convinced Claudia as well that this was something they wanted to do, and therefore they wanted to do this as a family, to be together forever. And she says Ted agreed. My reporting suggests that if he did, he probably was not of sound mind. And he then told at least a dozen people that I interviewed after that time that, no, he wanted to be cremated.
I decided that it was important to get into this because it was really the last memory that people have of Williams, this crazy cryonics decision. And I was curious about whether this was something that he really wanted. But it's a tough subject for a lot of people, particularly older people, and the old-timers, his teammates that I interviewed along the way said, "Jesus, you can't write about that stuff, oh, god, please."
I was telling Bob before we started, a few days ago I was doing an event, took a question from an old woman, elderly, maybe 70, I don't know. [laughter] Hey, I'm no chicken either. But this woman, it was very poignant, she said, in the middle of her question, she burst into tears, "How could they have done this to Ted? How could they have done this?"
BOB RYAN: I think people feel extraordinary proprietary. Let's face it, this cuts to the core issue of why this book has resonance and why you chose to do it. Because clearly, Ted Williams represented something to so many people, that the idea of his head severed, sitting on a tuna fish can – correct me if I'm wrong – is so repugnant and off-putting and disturbing about somebody that they care out. Never knew him, but they sure care about him.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Right.
BOB RYAN: There's no question, I understand. Let me shift gears for a second. This, to me, was so fascinating about what you have accomplished here. Some of you may not know this book was ten years in the making. It includes 600 interviews, separate interviews. It's an extraordinary project. I just got through writing a twelfth book and I can tell you, writing a book to me is like a giant term paper that hangs over your head every day. What is it like to have that term paper hanging over your head for ten years? Seriously. It's beyond my comprehension.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He held my interest, Williams did. That helped along the way. And there were many days in which the muses weren't always clicking, and the prose wasn't flowing. And you're sitting there and you wonder, can I ever get through this. But I had an outline that I believed in, stuck to it, kept plugging away. Had a very supportive publisher in Little, Brown, after I blew by deadline after deadline and they didn't sue to recover my modest advance. I just kept plugging away. I think the big break for me on this was getting Claudia and Bobby-Jo to talk, because that opened a lot of doors. When other people close to the family learned that they had decided to talk, you know how it goes.
BOB RYAN: When you started, your basic conception would be, dare I say, a conventional 350, maybe 400, maybe max ballpark book, was that your original assumption about what you were about to undertake? Or did you have no specific assumption about how much you would wind up writing?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I guess I didn't foresee a 775-page book. I worried about … These days, I'm sure Little, Brown was concerned a little bit about length. You worry about that in this era where people's attention span is supposedly limited. Yeah, I felt that. I went where the reporting led me.
BOB RYAN: Did you ever. No, really, I say that with all admiration.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I'm sure I'll be criticized by some for the length, but I gave it what I thought it was worth.
BOB RYAN: You're going to have to have a stiff upper lip about some of the references. You've already been referred to by one otherwise adoring reviewer as having written a cinderblock of a book.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I can take it.
BOB RYAN: I know you can. But the process, as I said, is what's going to fascinate writers. But as you said, and you make it clear, one door led to another to another, time and again. Someone would say, "You've got to talk to this guy." You'd talk to that one, you've got to talk to that one.
And by god, you did!
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Claudia Williams in particular, her decision … She controlled the estate and she was living in Ted's house. And she came to trust me to the point where she would allow me to stay, to be inside Williams's house for eight, ten hours at a time, unattended. So I had permission to rummage through Ted's files, and I found all kinds of stuff. That was a biographer's dream. I mean, letters from Richard Nixon, John Updike, and stumbling on a private address book containing names of people you hadn't heard of before, but who turned out to be great friends of Ted's. Call them up, "How'd you get my name?" "Oh, excuse me, I have Ted's private address book right here." [laughter]
BOB RYAN: We haven't mentioned a very important part of Ted's life, an extremely important part, and it's part of the whole Ted Williams fascination. There may be less argument about him, or more argument, I should say, more argument about him being the greatest hitter of all time than there is among people who know these things, that he was the greatest fisherman of all time.
Certainly, a fisherman of extraordinary ability. The fishing part of the book is rather extensive.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Well, I'm not a fisherman, and it was a part of his life that didn't interest me as much as other parts. But it had to be dealt with because he this extraordinarily accomplished fisherman and he's in two fishing halls of fames, in addition to Cooperstown.
BOB RYAN: First ballot, I'm sure. [laughter]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I saw the fishing really as an example of striving for excellence in anything you do. That's what he felt. He was a perfectionist, and he was impatient with people who just sort of dabbled in something.
BOB RYAN: Which included wives.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Which included wives.
BOB RYAN: But you have to understand, he was an extraordinary, first of all, tie-flyer; he may have been the most accomplished tie-flyer and caster. He used to give these exhibitions in the off-season here.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Did you see him at the sportsmen show ever?
BOB RYAN: That's where I think I got my little autograph I showed you, I think. My father must have seen him at a sportsmen show. Yeah, but he's a legendary fisherman. In the world of fishing, he's bigger, honest to god, than he is in the world of hitting.
A couple quotes that are attached to him: Did you ever unearth specific evidence that he did say, "I want people to point at me when I walk down the street and say, 'There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.'"? Did you ever come across that in all this?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I'm not sure I have the exact quote uttered to the mother, or whoever, but I don't think the story's apocryphal.
BOB RYAN: If he's standing in front of the mirror using the F word to describe …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah.
BOB RYAN: I'm sure it is. But the other one, there's another quote that I loved, which is he said, in the late '50s, "All the American League has me and the Yankees, and when I go, the League's going to be pretty damn dull." [laughter]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He said that, that's in the clips.
BOB RYAN: I love that one. The fascination that people have locally, it's got a tunnel. Of all the sports heroes we've got, we've been so blessed in Boston with extraordinary sports heroes in all four sports. But Ted seems to be the one who appealed to the masses the most.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah, I think Ted dominated Boston more than Orr, more than Bird, more than Russell, don't you?
BOB RYAN: No question. Part of it's baseball itself.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: And even in retirement, that interested me. Usually a superstar athlete retires and he fades away. Williams became even more popular in retirement than he was while he was playing. He was always amazed by that, that when he came back to Boston … He became a beloved figure, Williams, and part of it had to do with a shift in public perception.
BOB RYAN: Better writers. [laughter]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He outlasted the writers.
BOB RYAN: The bastards, quote/unquote.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: The bastards, yeah.
BOB RYAN: He did use that phrase.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: There was a shift in public opinion. I don't buy the fact that he got a bad press, because he got a good press. And I don't buy Williams's theory that the writers were so powerful that they were able to manipulate public opinion against him. But there came to be a sense in the late '50s that the writers had somehow overstepped their bounds, that they were tormenting him. People sympathized with his fragile psyche.
BOB RYAN: Plus, he was out there. He was seen around. And he had friends among the common people, whether they were policemen or service station attendants.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He preferred that crowd.
BOB RYAN: But he got around town. He took rides and walks. You could run into Ted Williams. It's amazing. When it was all done, is there anything you thought, oops, I wish I got that in?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: No. [laughter] Well, maybe a couple of stories. Shaughnessy said, "Hey, you missed that story." Yeah, I should have done that one. But I've got a lot of stories in there.
BOB RYAN: The last year, the last at-bat day, how important is that to tie up the baseball legend, hitting the home run in that last at-bat?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I think it's key. I mean, it's unbelievable how difficult that is, to hit a home run at your last at-bat. It was a small crowd there that day, only 10,000. And this is the famous John Updike game memorialized in his famous essay in the New Yorker. He had hit one ball on the nose and it went right to the …
BOB RYAN: It was a lousy, cloudy, overcast, damp …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yeah, windy, too.
BOB RYAN: … day. September 28, 1960, a Wednesday afternoon. It was a bad day for baseball.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: On his last time at bat and everyone in the crowd obviously pulling for him to do that, to come through in the pressure of that moment and actually hit one out, it was really something. But he would not tip his cap.
Mike Higgins, then the general manager, was very attuned to the drama of the moment. This is the bottom of the eighth inning. And instead of having Williams call it a day, which you'd expect, he sent him out to the field for the top of the ninth. And it was a ploy, and the ploy was as soon as Williams got out to left field, Higgins sent in Carroll Hardy, known as Ted's caddy, to run out to the field and sub him out. He wanted to have Ted get one last chance, as he trotted back in, to reconsider on tipping the hat. [laughter]
And so he runs back in and as he runs past shortstop, he says to Pumpsie Green, "Isn't this a crock?" [laughter]
BOB RYAN: He was an extraordinary man. And it is a work of great reportorial skill, scholarship. The writing, it's the easiest 755 pages I've read lately, and that's a tribute to the skill of the writer. This is a monumental effort, and I tip my metaphorical hat to Ben Bradlee, Jr., and let's hear it for him. [applause]
We've got two microphones set up for people. It's your turn at bat! How's that for a phrase.
QUESTION: I've often wondered, what was the reality of a trade between the Yankees and the Red Sox for Williams and DiMaggio? I've always heard the rumors, but I've never seen anything concrete that there actually was a real consideration for that.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yep. This was a martini-soaked dinner between Tom Yawkey and Dan
Topping, the owner of the Yankees. And they agreed to the trade in principle. Yawkey said, "Well, let's sleep on it and we'll talk in the morning." And Yawkey went back. By this time, Joe was fading and Williams was still playing great. When Yawkey checked with his front office, they said, "No way, we can't do it." And so, Yawkey looked for something to get out of the deal, so he went back the next day and said, "All right, we'll do it if you throw in Yogi Berra." And he knew that would be the deal breaker.
QUESTION: How did Williams get the name Teddy Baseball?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Teddy Ballgame.
QUESTION: Teddy Ballgame.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: It was the son of a local photographer whose name escapes me who got friendly with Ted. The guy took a picture of Williams and the boy together, and the boy reacted, on seeing the picture, "Hey, that's Teddy Ballgame." And the photographer took this back to Ted and he liked the name.
He liked The Kid the best though; that was his favorite nickname. That was the name that Johnny
Orlando, the old clubhouse guy, gave to Williams when he first reported for spring training in 1938. Ted would often refer to himself in the third person, and when he did The Kid and Teddy Ballgame were his favorites.
QUESTION: Carroll Hardy was his caddy at baseball; I was his caddy at the Hotel Somerset.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Oh, wow!
QUESTION: I waited on Teddy for two years. [applause] And the first time I went up to his room, he had a big oak door with a knocker on it. So I went like this, and Teddy's sitting with his shorts on, which I never saw him with a pair of pants on, always in shorts and his tee shirt, with his fishing reel, watching a black-and-white Air Force movie. And he said, "For Christ sake, kid, can't you knock on the goddamn door?" So next time I went up, I banged on the door and he said, "Are you trying to break the F-ing thing down?" [laughter]
And Teddy was no longer the Splendid Splinter. Teddy was built like a Greek god. I mean, his thighs, his forearms, he was so handsome. Beautiful speaking voice. Today he would have been on TV making a million dollars a year.
Ted was a guy you never talked back to. Ted ruled the roost. And he was vociferous, loud, had a terrible vocabulary; every other word was an F-word, as you said before.
I waited on his second wife, who was a gorgeous gal.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Lee Howard.
QUESTION: Lee Howard. She was about 35, 34 when I first met her. She was tall, blonde, very attractive, a very bright girl. And I understand when she divorced him, she said, "Teddy and I had one thing in common. I loved Teddy and Teddy loved Teddy." [laughter]
I don't want to tell tales out of school, but …
BOB RYAN: Oh, go ahead! [laughter]
QUESTION: As you came into the Somerset, at the reception center when you signed in, there was a big couch. And every night, there were six women sitting on that couch. And Teddy would come in after the ballgame and say, "You and you, up to the room." Rudy York was the batting coach and Mike Higgins was the manager, and Dave Ferriss was the pitching coach.
I had to clean up the tables at night after I'd served the food. About 11 o'clock, go up to the room and Williams has got a gal in there. And Rudy bangs on the door, and Ted comes out with his shorts on and says, "You crazy F-ing Indian, get the hell out of here."
Dave Ferriss didn't drink; Dave was an asthmatic, he was up against the wall like this, "What am I doing with these two crazy drunks?" Mike Higgins was laughing so hard I thought he'd have a heart attack. So York goes barreling into the oak door and split the door, and they had to get security people up to get rid of them.
That's Teddy Williams.
BOB RYAN: Thank you very much. [applause]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I don't know how I didn't discover you for the book.
QUESTION: I'm too young to have caddied for Ted Williams. So just two quick questions: One, the red seat, what was his feeling on the red seat in the outfield, and is it still the longest home run? And the second thing is is there a player today that you think he would have admired, like a Suzuki or a Youkilis, or someone?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: The red seat is dismissed by the latter-day Red Sox, like Mo Vaughn and Ortiz as Red Sox propaganda; they don't believe that anyone could hit it that far, even in this era. The red seat came about in, I think, the mid-'80s when the Red Sox decided to scientifically measure this home run that Williams hit in, I believe it was '46.
There was a guy called Joseph Boucher who was sitting out there with a straw boater hat, lost it in the sun, conked him on the head. But they remember where the seat was so they measured it in the mid-'80s and it was 500-and-something feet. And so they decided to paint the seat red in the sea of green.
In retirement, Ted really stayed engaged. It wasn't like DiMaggio or some of the old players from that era who were dismissive of the modern game. He stayed engaged. He did have favorites. The Red Sox installed a large TV for him with satellite down there so he would watch the games and he would call up Dan Duquette, who was then the general manager, and comment on players that he liked, and players on the opposing teams who he thought we should trade for.
He particularly liked Nomar.
BOB RYAN: By the way, Mr. Boucher's comments, he was there with his grandson. Came down from Maine, and the ball hit him on the top of the straw boater, created a perfect perforation, and he said, "My goodness, how far does someone have to sit in this ballpark to be out of harm's way?" [laughter]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Only Bob Ryan would know that.
QUESTION: You talked about the denial of his Mexican heritage. I remember reading a blurb earlier in the week that he was somehow involved as an advocate or proponent for the integration of Major League baseball. Can you touch on that for a second, please?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: It was the Hall of Fame, actually. In 1966, when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, part of his acceptance speech was a rather bold political statement, especially coming from ballplayers who were apolitical generally. But Williams called for the lords of Cooperstown to drop their color line and admit the old Negro League players.
So it was directed towards the Hall of Fame. Because baseball had integrated in '47, but I think that having viewed the Mexican experience and having been Mexican American no doubt informed his views on that. He had played with the black ballplayers coming up in the sandlots.
He'd played against Jackie Robinson in Southern California. Robinson was from Pasadena. When Robinson broke the color line in '47, Williams wrote him a letter congratulating him. And when Larry Doby became the first black player in the American League, Ted went out of his way to befriend him and welcome him. But his statement to the Hall of Fame won him just huge support and good will from the black players.
QUESTION: I think a little bit of ESP was at work because that anticipated the question I was going to ask, but I was going to direct it more towards what I consider to be the original sin of the Red Sox, which is really the racial issue. Was there ever any indication that Ted had talked to Yawkey, Cronin or Higgins about really what became a looming cloud over the club as the decade of the '50s progressed? He was still a coach with the team into the 1960s, when they really were still probably the least progressive team in the Major Leagues. I don't know whether that was ever a topic. I always wish I had asked him.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Ted told the executor of his estate, a fellow called Al Cassidy, that he regretted not having done more to prod Yawkey on race. And it was a sensitive issue. Some people, like Marty Nolan, our old colleague, is one that said that ballplayers are ballplayers. You shouldn't expect them to delve into the political arena. Williams talking to Yawkey about race would be like a Ford assembly man going up to Henry Ford and telling him how to build his V8 engine, just not on. But I'm not sure I agree with that. Ted was terribly influential with Yawkey. They moved the fences in for him. They let him sit out a third of the 1955 season so he could get a better divorce deal. [laughter] I think he could have done more. And he told this guy that he regretted IT, so there you go.
QUESTION: I had the privilege to see the first and last game that Ted Williams ever played in Boston. And when Ted came, as you people know, he came with some pretty good other players from San Diego. I got his autograph twice: The first time I was a kid in awe of him; the second time I criticized him. I never knew there were such words in the English language. [laughter] But anyway, my wife and I went to see the last game. [Inaudible] was the pitcher, that was throwing, that were pitching against Williams, and I always thought [inaudible] went up.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: It was Jack Fisher.
QUESTION: I mean Fisher, but I always thought [inaudible] went up.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I asked him that directly. He denied it.
QUESTION: Well, he wouldn't say he would, would he?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I don't know, 50 years later he might.
BOB RYAN: But that wouldn't have helped him, because hitting a …
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: He's still going to hit it out.
BOB RYAN: He needed something at least with 80-some …
QUESTION: I always thought no matter what the pitcher threw to him, he would have hit it out.
QUESTION: I have a question. My dad has told me all my life -- and I just want to verify if it's true -- I guess towards the end of his career, Mr. Williams wasn't hitting up to his standards and supposedly he went to Mr. Yawkey and asked for a pay cut.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Yes, it's true. In '59, most of that year he had a pinched nerve in his neck. It was causing him great pain; he really couldn't face the pitcher properly. That was the one season he dipped under .300, which was astonishing for Williams. And Yawkey called him into the Ritz, where Yawkey lived, after the season ended and said, "Ted, I think that's it, I think you ought to hang it up." And Ted said, "No, I want to come back one more year." And he won out because he wanted to go out, obviously, on a good note, and he did.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: I've often heard stories about Stan the Man and Teddy Ballgame visiting the White House and the place being like a playground, with all the big shot dignitaries, President, Senators and everyone else trying to get to see Ted and Stan. Can you elaborate on that at all?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: I think it was Ted and DiMaggio who visited the White House in 1991.
Bush, Sr., wanted to honor them both on the 50th anniversary of their signature achievements – Williams, the .406; and Joe, the streak. It was quite a day. Yeah, all of official Washington was there competing for tickets. And Bush was in his element. Williams was a hero to Bush, who'd gone to Yale and had come into Fenway to see Ted. They overlapped in the service together, Bush and Ted.
I interviewed Bush for the book, and he had some great stories. Ted played an important role when Bush was running for President in '88 as Vice President. He lost the first primary to Bob Dole in Iowa, so he was faced with a situation of having to win the New Hampshire primary. So
John Sununu, the Governor of New Hampshire, had a brainstorm, "Let's get Ted involved." Because Ted is practically as big in New Hampshire as he was in Massachusetts.
So Ted came in and campaigned, and all the press was all over Ted, and they were drawing big crowds and big applause everywhere he went. Sununu turns to Bush at one point and says, "Don't think any of that applause is for you." [laughter] And Ted was loving it and signing autographs. At one point, he makes Bush turn around and use his back as support as he signs an autograph. [laughter]
QUESTION: You mentioned somebody had doubts about the length of Ted's home run on July
14, 1946? I was there and I'll vouch for it. He hit three home runs the first game, and then Boudreau pulled the Williams shift in the second game. And the thing that nobody remembers is Lou Boudreau hit five doubles off the left field wall in the first game. And he would have hit a sixth, but it was a home run; it was too high. It was a classic day.
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Thank you. [applause]
QUESTION: So if Ted should make his comeback, what's the first question you want to ask him? [laughter/applause]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: If he made a comeback, it would be the greatest comeback ever now. [laughter]
BOB RYAN: He would be comeback player of the year, for sure.
QUESTION: Can I just ask one question? I've always heard the story that he was asked, “Would you rather be the world's best hitter or the world's best fisherman; what would you rather be recognized at?” He said fisherman. Was that true?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Not to my knowledge.
QUESTION: What do you think he'd rather be?
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Hitter.
BOB RYAN: Let's remember that one reason, and the major reason we are here in addition to hearing from Ben, is to bestow upon him a very richly deserved award, the Cerulli Award for
Distinguished Sports Writing. And I'd like to bring Amy Macdonald, who is the Chair of PEN New England, back to the podium. Thank you. [applause]
AMY MACDONALD: Let's give a round of applause to Bob Ryan. [applause] That was a great interview. Thank you, Bob, thank you, Ben. You brought out the best in Ben.
This auditorium is filled today with passionate fans, both of sports and great writing, and we wouldn't be here today without the Cerullis' vision and generosity. Kurt and Mary Cerulli are extraordinary friends to PEN New England, and because Ernest Hemingway's papers are housed here at the Kennedy Library, I want also to recognize their longtime and generous support for the
PEN/Hemingway Award, given every year in the spring here at the Library. It's known as the Rookie of the Year Award, the best first fiction by a writer.
Kurt is an avid reader, a scholar of the Greatest Game, and owner of one of the finest collections of baseball treasures east or west of Cooperstown; in short, the ideal benefactor for the Sports Writing Award. Living in the best sports city in America, Kurt envisioned an award to celebrate the writing he loves and admires, and as the world's largest and oldest organization of writers, PEN New England is honored to be part of Kurt's vision and grateful for the opportunity to remove the needless distinction between great sports writing and great writing.
Please welcome Kurt and Mary Cerulli, who will present the 2013 Cerulli Award for Literary Excellence in Sports Writing to Ben Bradlee, Jr. Kurt and Mary. [applause]
KURT CERULLI: Thanks, everyone, thanks for coming. It's a wonderful day for all of us. And it's our great pleasure to present this year's Cerulli Award for Literary Excellence in Sports Writing to Ben Bradlee, Jr. [applause]
BEN BRADLEE, JR.: Thank you. I'll just say something. I don't know if my mic's still on or not. Kurt, thank you very much, and thank you for underwriting this award and supporting PEN, which is a haven for writers and does all it can to support good writing in the era of YouTube and limited attention span. So PEN is really important.
Thank you so much. [applause]
KURT CERULLI: We're going to ask you to indulge us for just a couple more moments, because we had a lovely and very entertaining afternoon, much of it attributable to Ted Williams and much of it attributable to Ben Bradelee, Jr., but we wouldn't have had the afternoon we had without our friend Bob Ryan. And I wanted to remind folks how important the role of the sports writer is and the role of the interviewer is.
I was at the baseball writers dinner a couple of years ago, and one of my friends at the table happened to catch Bob's eye as he walked by. They both had grown up in New Jersey, and within a couple of moments they were swapping stories about some high school quarterback in 1966 from Westfield, New Jersey. It was amazing to me that someone who'd covered so many Super Bowls and Final Fours and world championships in all these sports still had this incredible passion for amateur sports.
So Mary and I wanted to come up with something for him that encompassed both elements. So we'll tell a short story, which starts on April 14, 1939, and it covers both elements of this. It's an exhibition game, but it's between the Holy Cross Crusaders and the Boston Red Sox, who were on their way to start the 1939 season.
There's a young pitcher on the mound for Holy Cross named Michael Klarnick, and he has gotten himself into trouble in the first inning. He's got the bases loaded with people with names like Joe Cronin and Jimmie Foxx, Bobby Doerr. And now he has to face the rookie, who has yet to have a major league at-bat, but comes with a big reputation from San Diego.
And Mr. Williams proceeds to turn around a high fastball and hits it so far over the head of the centerfielder, Henry Ouellette, that it leaves Fitton Field and lands on the football field adjacent to it. [laughter] Thus opening up Ted Williams to some of the observations and some of the future potential we'll see from him over the next several years. Also, just to round out the picture, he drops a fly ball later in the game to show us an impression of what he might be doing all around.
But we thought we'd give Bob this picture, because it is a picture of this first home run by Ted Williams, which happens to be a grand slam. It takes place at Holy Cross. It's an amateur game, but it's featuring some of the greatest professionals. All four of those that scored in that grand slam went into the Hall of Fame, by the way. [applause]
And just because I know he'd need to know, the catcher from Holy Cross is a guy named Dave Barry, probably no relation to the noted humorist who came around several decades later, and the umpire is George Pipgras, who pitched for both the Yankees and the Red Sox prior to becoming an umpire.
BOB RYAN: Thank you so much. [applause] Thank you very much. This is way beyond anything I expected. This is Ben's day, after all. But I just want to thank the Cerullis and PEN; PEN basically for existing, because anything that promotes the written word is okay with me. I'm honored to be in Ben's company, and all your company, today. It's a good thing to know that football hasn't taken over the world; I'm glad to know that. Thank you. [applause]
THE END