Ted Williams

Early life

Theodore Samuel Williams was born on August 30, 1918, in San Diego, California, and named "Teddy Samuel" after former president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt and his own father, Samuel Stuart Williams. Williams said his middle name was in honor of a maternal uncle who had been killed in World War I, but that man was named Daniel Venzor. Williams disliked the name "Teddy" and later amended his birth certificate to read "Theodore" instead.

His father was a soldier, sheriff, and photographer from Ardsley, New York, who had served in the United States Army and was a veteran of the Philippine–American War. His mother, May Venzor, a Mexican-American from El Paso, Texas, was an evangelist and lifelong soldier in the Salvation Army. Williams resented his mother's long hours working in the Salvation Army, and Williams and his brother cringed when she took them to the Army's street-corner revivals.

Williams's paternal ancestors were a mix of Welsh, English, and Irish. The maternal Spanish-Mexican side of Williams's family was quite diverse, also having Basque, Russian, and American Indian roots. Of his Mexican ancestry, he said, "If I had my mother's name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, [considering] the prejudices people had in Southern California."

Williams lived in San Diego's North Park neighborhood (4121 Utah Street). He spent much of his time playing ball with his friends at a field that later became known as Ted Williams Field. At the age of eight, he was taught how to throw a baseball by his uncle, Saul Venzor. Saul was one of his mother's four brothers. A former semi-professional baseball player, he had pitched against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe Gordon in an exhibition game. When Williams was a boy, his heroes were Pepper Martin of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bill Terry of the New York Giants. Williams graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego, where he played baseball as a pitcher and was the star of the team. During this time, he also played American Legion Baseball, and later was named the 1960 American Legion Baseball Graduate of the Year.

Though Williams had offers from the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees while he was still in high school, his mother thought that he was too young to leave home. He signed with the local Pacific Coast League (PCL) club, the San Diego Padres.

Professional career

Minor leagues

Williams played back-up behind Vince DiMaggio and Ivey Shiver on the (then) Pacific Coast League's San Diego Padres. While in the Pacific Coast League in 1936, Williams met future teammates and friends Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr, who were on the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. When Shiver announced that he was quitting to become a high-school football coach in Savannah, Georgia, the job, by default, was open for Williams. Williams posted a .271 batting average and 11 runs batted in (RBI) on 107 at bats in 42 games for the Padres in 1936. Unknown to Williams, he had caught the eye of the Boston Red Sox's general manager, Eddie Collins, while Collins was scouting Doerr and the shortstop George Myatt in August 1936.

Collins later explained, "It wasn't hard to find Ted Williams. He stood out like a brown cow in a field of white cows." In the 1937 season, after graduating from Hoover High in the winter, Williams finally broke into the lineup on June 22, when he hit an inside-the-park home run to help the Padres win 3–2. The Padres ended up winning the PCL title, while Williams ended up hitting .291 with 23 home runs and 98 RBI in 138 games. Meanwhile, Collins kept in touch with Padres owner Bill "Hardrock" Lane, calling him two times throughout the season. In December 1937, during the winter meetings, the deal was made between Lane and Collins, sending Williams to the Boston Red Sox and giving Lane $35,000 and two major leaguers, Dom D'Allessandro and Al Niemiec, and two other minor leaguers.

In 1938, the 19-year-old Williams was 10 days late to spring training camp in Sarasota, Florida, because of a flood in California that blocked the railroads. Williams had to borrow $200 from a bank to make the trip from San Diego to Sarasota. Also during spring training, Williams was nicknamed "the Kid" by Red Sox equipment manager Johnny Orlando, who, after Williams arrived to Sarasota for the first time, said, "'The Kid' has arrived". Orlando still called Williams "the Kid" 20 years later, and the nickname stuck with Williams for the rest of his life. Williams remained in major league spring training for about a week. Williams was then sent to the Double-A-league Minneapolis Millers. While in the Millers training camp for the springtime, Williams met Rogers Hornsby, who had hit over .400 three times, including a .424 average in 1924. Hornsby, who was a coach for the Millers that spring, gave Williams useful advice, including how to "get a good pitch to hit". Talking with the game's greats would become a pattern for Williams, who also talked with Hugh Duffy, who hit .438 in 1894, Bill Terry who hit .401 in 1930, and Ty Cobb, with whom he would argue that a batter should hit up on the ball, opposed to Cobb's view that a batter should hit down on the ball.

Boston Red Sox (1939–1942, 1946–1960)

Williams came to spring training three days late in 1939, thanks to Williams driving from California to Florida, as well as respiratory problems, the latter of which would plague Williams for the rest of his career. In the winter, the Red Sox traded right fielder Ben Chapman to the Cleveland Indians to make room for Williams on the roster, even though Chapman had hit .340 in the previous season. This led Boston Globe sports journalist Gerry Moore to quip, "Not since Joe DiMaggio broke in with the Yankees by "five for five" in St. Petersburg in 1936 has any baseball rookie received the nationwide publicity that has been accorded this spring to Theodore Francis [sic] Williams". Williams inherited Chapman's number 9 on his uniform as opposed to Williams's number 5 in the previous spring training. He made his major league debut against the New York Yankees on April 20, going 1-for-4 against Yankee pitcher Red Ruffing. This was the only game which featured both Williams and Lou Gehrig playing against one another.

In his first series at Fenway Park, Williams hit a double, a home run, and a triple, the first two against Cotton Pippen, who had given Williams his first strikeout as a professional while Williams had been in San Diego. By July, Williams was hitting just .280, but leading the league in RBI. Johnny Orlando, now Williams's friend, then gave Williams a quick pep talk, telling Williams that he should hit .335 with 35 home runs and he would drive in 150 runs. Williams said he would buy Orlando a Cadillac if this all came true. In 149 games, Williams batted .327 with 31 home runs and 145 RBI, leading the league in the latter category, the first rookie to lead the league in RBIs and finishing fourth in MVP voting. He also led the AL in walks, with 107, a rookie record. Even though there was not a Rookie of the Year award yet in 1939, Babe Ruth declared Williams to be the Rookie of the Year, which Williams later said was "good enough for me".

Williams's pay doubled in 1940, going from $5,000 to $10,000. A new bullpen was added in right field of Fenway Park, reducing the distance from home plate from 400 feet to 380 feet and earning the nickname "Williamsburg" for being "obviously designed for Williams". Williams was then switched from right field to left field because there would be less sun in his eyes and it would give Dom DiMaggio a chance to play center. Finally, Williams was flip-flopped in the order with the great slugger Jimmie Foxx, with the idea that Williams would get more pitches to hit. Pitchers, though, proved willing to pitch around the eagle-eyed Williams in favor of facing the 32-year-old Foxx, the reigning AL home run champion, followed by the still highly productive 33-year-old Joe Cronin, the player-manager. Williams also made his first of 16 All-Star Game appearances in 1940, going 0-for-2. Although Williams hit .344, his power and runs batted in were down from the previous season, with 23 home runs and 113 RBI in 144 games played. Williams also caused a controversy in mid-August when he called his salary "peanuts", along with saying he hated the city of Boston and reporters, leading reporters to lash back at him, saying that he should be traded. Williams said that the "only real fun" he had in 1940 was being able to pitch once on August 24, when he pitched the last two innings in a 12–1 loss to the Detroit Tigers, allowing one earned run on three hits, while striking out one batter, Rudy York.

Career overall

At the time of his retirement, Williams ranked third all-time in home runs (behind Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx), seventh in RBIs (after Ruth, Cap Anson, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Foxx, and Mel Ott), and seventh in batting average (behind Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Lefty O'Doul, Ed Delahanty and Tris Speaker). His career batting average of .3444 is the highest of any player who played his entire career in the live-ball era following 1920.

Most modern statistical analyses place Williams, along with Ruth and Barry Bonds, among the three most potent hitters to have played the game. Williams's baseball season of 1941 is often considered favorably with the greatest seasons of Ruth and Bonds in terms of various offensive statistical measures such as slugging, on-base and "offensive winning percentage."

Williams is one of only 29 players in baseball history to date to have appeared in Major League games in four decades.

Note: Bold indicates all-time MLB leader in category.

Player profile

Playing style

Williams was an obsessive student of hitting. He famously used a lighter bat than most sluggers, because it generated a faster swing. In 1970, he wrote a book on the subject, The Science of Hitting (revised 1986), which is still read by many baseball players. The book describes his theory of swinging only at pitches that came into ideal areas of his strike zone, a strategy Williams credited with his success as a hitter; as a result, Williams's bases-on-balls-to-plate-appearances ratio (.2065) is the highest of any player in the Hall of Fame.

Williams nearly always took the first pitch.

He helped pass his expertise of playing left field in front of the Green Monster to his successor on the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski.

Relationship with Boston media and fans

Williams was on uncomfortable terms with the Boston newspapers for nearly twenty years, as he felt they liked to discuss his personal life as much as his baseball performance. He maintained a career-long feud with Sport due to a 1948 feature article in which the reporter included a quote from Williams's mother. Insecure about his upbringing, and stubborn because of immense confidence in his own talent, Williams made up his mind that the "knights of the keyboard", as he derisively labeled the press, were against him. After having hit for the league's Triple Crown in 1947, Williams narrowly lost the MVP award in a vote where one Midwestern newspaper writer left Williams entirely off his ten-player ballot.

During his career, some sportswriters also criticized aspects of Williams's baseball performance, including what they viewed as his lackadaisical fielding and lack of clutch hitting. Williams pushed back, saying: "They're always saying that I don't hit in the clutches. Well, there are a lot [of games] when I do." He also asserted that it made no sense crashing into an outfield wall to try to make a difficult catch because of the risk of injury or being out of position to make the play after missing the ball.

Williams treated most of the press accordingly, as he described in his 1969 memoir My Turn at Bat. Williams also had an uneasy relationship with the Boston fans, though he could be very cordial one-to-one. He felt at times a good deal of gratitude for their passion and their knowledge of the game. On the other hand, Williams was temperamental, high-strung, and at times tactless. In his biography, Ronald Reis relates how Williams committed two fielding miscues in a doubleheader in 1950 and was roundly booed by Boston fans. He bowed three times to various sections of Fenway Park and made an obscene gesture. When he came to bat he spat in the direction of fans near the dugout. The incident caused an avalanche of negative media reaction, and inspired sportswriter Austen Lake's famous comment that, when Williams's name was announced, the sound was like "autumn wind moaning through an apple orchard."

Another incident occurred in 1958 in a game against the Washington Senators. Williams struck out, and, as he stepped from the batter's box, swung his bat violently in anger. The bat slipped from his hands, was launched into the stands and struck a 60-year-old woman who turned out to be the housekeeper of the Red Sox general manager Joe Cronin. While the incident was an accident and Williams apologized to the woman personally, to all appearances it seemed at the time that Williams had hurled the bat in a fit of temper.

Military service

World War II

Williams served as a Naval Aviator during World War II and the Korean War. Unlike many other major league players, he did not spend all of his war-time playing on service teams. Williams had been classified 3-A by Selective Service prior to the war, a dependency deferment because he was his mother's sole means of financial support. When his classification was changed to 1-A following the American entry into World War II, Williams appealed to his local draft board. The draft board ruled that his draft status should not have been changed. He made a public statement that once he had built up his mother's trust fund, he intended to enlist. Even so, criticism in the media, including withdrawal of an endorsement contract by Quaker Oats, resulted in his enlistment in the U.S. Naval Reserve on May 22, 1942.

Williams did not opt for an easy assignment playing baseball for the Navy, but rather joined the V-5 program to become a Naval aviator. Williams was first sent to the Navy's Preliminary Ground School at Amherst College for six months of academic instruction in various subjects including math and navigation, where he achieved a 3.85 grade point average.

Williams was talented as a pilot, and so enjoyed it that he had to be ordered by the Navy to leave training to personally accept his American League 1942 Major League Baseball Triple Crown. Williams's Red Sox teammate, Johnny Pesky, who went into the same aviation training program, said this about Williams: "He mastered intricate problems in fifteen minutes which took the average cadet an hour, and half of the other cadets there were college grads." Pesky again described Williams's acumen in the advanced training, for which Pesky personally did not qualify: "I heard Ted literally tore the sleeve target to shreds with his angle dives. He'd shoot from wingovers, zooms, and barrel rolls, and after a few passes the sleeve was ribbons. At any rate, I know he broke the all-time record for hits." Ted went to Jacksonville for a course in aerial gunnery, the combat pilot's payoff test, and broke all the records in reflexes, coordination, and visual-reaction time. "From what I heard. Ted could make a plane and its six 'pianos' (machine guns) play like a symphony orchestra", Pesky says. "From what they said, his reflexes, coordination, and visual reaction made him a built-in part of the machine."

Williams completed pre-flight training in Athens, Georgia, his primary training at NAS Bunker Hill, Indiana, and his advanced flight training at NAS Pensacola. He received his gold Naval Aviator wings and his commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps on May 2, 1944.

Korean War

On May 1, 1952, 14 months after his promotion to captain in the Marine Corps Reserve, Williams was recalled to active duty for service in the Korean War. He had not flown any aircraft for eight years but he turned down all offers to sit out the war in comfort as a member of a service baseball team. Nevertheless, Williams was resentful of being called up, which he admitted years later, particularly regarding the Navy's policy of calling up Inactive Reservists rather than members of the Active Reserve.

Williams reported for duty on May 2, 1952. After eight weeks of refresher flight training and qualification in the F9F Panther jet fighter with VMF-223 at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, Williams was assigned to VMF-311, Marine Aircraft Group 33 (MAG-33), based at the K-3 airfield in Pohang, South Korea.

On February 16, 1953, Williams, flying as the wingman for John Glenn (who would become the first American to orbit the earth), was part of a 35-plane raid against a tank and infantry training school just south of Pyongyang, North Korea. As the aircraft from VMF-115 and VMF-311 dove on the target, Williams's plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, a piece of flak knocked out his hydraulics and electrical systems, causing Williams to have to "limp" his plane back to K-13 air base where he made a belly landing. For his actions of this day, he was awarded the Air Medal.

Williams flew 39 combat missions in Korea, earning the Air Medal with two Gold Stars representing second and third awards, before being withdrawn from flight status in June 1953 after a hospitalization for pneumonia. This resulted in the discovery of an inner ear infection that disqualified him from flight status. John Glenn described Williams as one of the best pilots he knew. In the last half of his missions, Williams was flying as Glenn's wingman.

Williams likely would have exceeded 600 career home runs if he had not served in the military, and might even have approached Babe Ruth's then record of 714. He might have set the record for career RBIs as well, exceeding Hank Aaron's total. While the absences in the Marine Corps took almost five years out of his baseball career, he never publicly complained about the time devoted to service in the Marine Corps. His biographer, Leigh Montville, argued that Williams was not happy about being pressed into service in South Korea, but he did what he thought was his patriotic duty.

Post-retirement

After retirement from play, Williams helped Boston's new left fielder, Carl Yastrzemski, in hitting, and was a regular visitor to the Red Sox' spring training camps from 1961 to 1966, where he worked as a special batting instructor. He served as executive assistant to Tom Yawkey (1961–65), then was named a team vice president (1965–68) upon his election to the Hall of Fame. He resumed his spring training instruction role with the club in 1978.

Beginning in 1961, he would spend summers at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, Massachusetts, which he had established in 1958 with his friend Al Cassidy and two other business partners. For eight summers and parts of others after that, he would give hitting clinics and talk baseball at the camp. It was not uncommon to find Williams fishing in the pond at the camp. The area now is owned by the town, and a few of the buildings still stand. In the main lodge, one can still see memorabilia from Williams's playing days.

Williams served as manager of the Washington Senators from 1969 to 1971, then continued with the team when they became the Texas Rangers after the 1971 season. Williams's best season as a manager was in 1969 when he led the expansion Senators to an 86–76 record in the team's only winning season in Washington. He was chosen "Manager of the Year" after that season. Like many great players, Williams became impatient with ordinary athletes' abilities and attitudes, particularly those of pitchers, whom he admitted he never respected. Fellow manager Alvin Dark thought that Williams "was a smart, fearless manager" who helped his hitters perform better. Williams's issue with Washington/Texas, according to Dark, was when the ownership traded away his third baseman and shortstop, making it difficult for the club to be as competitive.

On the subject of pitchers, in Ted's autobiography written with John Underwood, Ted opines regarding Bob Lemon (a sinker-ball specialist) pitching for the Cleveland Indians around 1951: "I have to rate Lemon as one of the very best pitchers I ever faced. His ball was always moving, hard, sinking, fast-breaking. You could never really uhmmmph with Lemon."

Williams was much more successful in fishing. An avid and expert fly fisherman and deep-sea fisherman, he spent many summers after baseball fishing the Miramichi River, in Miramichi, New Brunswick. Williams was named to the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame in 2000. Williams was also known as an accomplished hunter; he was fond of pigeon-shooting for sport in Fenway Park during his career, on one occasion drawing the ire of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Personal life

On May 4, 1944, Williams married Doris Soule, the daughter of his hunting guide. Their daughter, Barbara Joyce ("Bobby-Jo"), was born on January 28, 1948, while Williams was fishing in Florida. They divorced in 1954. Williams married the socialite model Lee Howard on September 10, 1961, and they were divorced in 1967.

Williams married Dolores Wettach, a former Miss Vermont and Vogue model, in 1968. Their son John-Henry was born on August 27, 1968, followed by daughter Claudia, on October 8, 1971. They were divorced in 1972.

Williams lived with Louise Kaufman for twenty years until her death in 1993. In his book, Cramer called her the love of Williams's life. After his death, her sons filed suit to recover her furniture from Williams's condominium as well as a half-interest in the condominium that they claimed that he gave her.

Williams had a strong respect for General Douglas MacArthur, referring to him as his "idol". For Williams's 40th birthday, MacArthur sent him an oil painting of himself with the inscription "To Ted Williams—not only America's greatest baseball player, but a great American who served his country. Your friend, Douglas MacArthur. General U.S. Army."

Politically, Williams was a Republican, and was described by one biographer as, "to the right of Attila the Hun" except when it came to civil rights. Another writer similarly noted that, while in the 1960s he had a liberal attitude on civil rights, he was far right on other cultural issues of the time, calling him "ultraconservative in the tradition of Barry Goldwater and John Wayne”.

Williams campaigned for Richard Nixon in the 1960 United States Presidential Election, and, after Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy, refused several invitations from President Kennedy to gather together in Cape Cod. He supported Nixon again in 1968, and, as manager of the Senators, kept a picture of him on his desk, meeting with the President several times while managing the team. In 1972, he called Nixon, "the greatest president of my lifetime". In the following years, Williams endorsed several other candidates in Republican Party presidential primaries, including George H. W. Bush in 1988 (for whom he also campaigned in New Hampshire), Bob Dole in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2000.

Death

In his last years, Williams suffered from cardiomyopathy. He had a pacemaker implanted in November 2000, and he underwent open-heart surgery in January 2001. After suffering a series of strokes and congestive heart failure, he died of cardiac arrest at the age of 83 on July 5, 2002, at Citrus Memorial Hospital, Inverness, Florida, near his home in Citrus Hills, Florida.

Though his will stated his desire to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in the Florida Keys, Williams's son John-Henry and younger daughter Claudia chose to have his remains frozen cryonically.

Ted's elder daughter, Bobby-Jo Ferrell, brought a suit to have her father's wishes recognized. John-Henry's lawyer then produced an informal "family pact" signed by Ted, Claudia, and John-Henry, in which they agreed "to be put into biostasis after we die" to "be able to be together in the future, even if it is only a chance." Bobby-Jo and her attorney, Spike Fitzpatrick (former attorney of Ted Williams), contended that the family pact, which was scribbled on an ink-stained napkin, was forged by John-Henry and/or Claudia. Fitzpatrick and Ferrell believed that the signature was not obtained legally. Laboratory analysis proved that the signature was genuine. John-Henry said that his father was a believer in science and was willing to try cryonics if it held the possibility of reuniting the family.

Though the family pact upset some friends, family and fans, a public plea for financial support of the lawsuit by Ferrell produced little result. Citing financial difficulties, Ferrell dropped her lawsuit on the condition that a $645,000 trust fund left by Williams would immediately pay the sum out equally to the three children.

In Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, author Leigh Montville claims that the family cryonics pact was a practice Ted Williams autograph on a plain piece of paper, around which the agreement had later been handwritten. The pact document was signed "Ted Williams", the same as his autographs, whereas he would always sign his legal documents "Theodore Williams", according to Montville. However, his daughter Claudia who was part of the pact with John-Henry, testified to the authenticity of the document in an affidavit.

Williams's body was subsequently decapitated for the neuropreservation option from Alcor. Following John-Henry's unexpected illness and death from acute myeloid leukemia on March 6, 2004, his body was also transported to Alcor, in fulfillment of the family agreement.

Awards and recognition

Williams was named The Sporting News MLB Player of the Year in 1941, 1942, 1947, 1949, and 1957, and was honored as the Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 1957.

In 1954, Williams was inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall of Fame, which honors San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface. In 2002, he was elected to the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame.

In 1999, Williams was ranked as number 8 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, where he was the highest-ranking left fielder. That same year, he was one of 30 players elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2020, The Athletic ranked Williams at number 6 on its "Baseball 100" list, complied by sportswriter Joe Posnanski. In 2022, as part of their SN Rushmore project, The Sporting News named Williams on their "Boston Mount Rushmore of Sports", along Boston Celtics basketball player Bill Russell, Boston Bruins hockey player Bobby Orr, and New England Patriots football player Tom Brady.

Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 25, 1966. In his induction speech, Williams included a statement calling for the recognition of the great Negro leagues players: "I've been a very lucky guy to have worn a baseball uniform, and I hope some day the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given a chance." Williams was referring to two of the most famous names in the Negro Leagues, who were not given the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Gibson died early in 1947 and thus never played in the majors; and Paige's brief major league stint came long past his prime as a player. This statement from the Hall of Fame podium was "a first crack in the door that ultimately would open and include Paige and Gibson and other Negro league stars in the shrine." Paige was the first inducted in 1971. Gibson and others followed, starting in 1972 and continued on and off into the 21st century.

On November 18, 1991, President George H. W. Bush presented Williams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Following his retirement Harvard University offered Williams an honorary degree on multiple occasions. However, he refused every time, feeling as if he never belonged in a place with such educated people. An avid fisherman Williams was inducted into the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Catskill Fly Fishing Hall of Fame in 2021.

Military and civilian decorations and awards

Williams received the following decorations and awards: