Ted Williams

He's getting an American Masters doc next Monday to commemorate his centennial (8/30/18) and it deals in part with his Mexican-American mother and heritage:

While many of Williams’ professional accomplishments and personal clashes were widely known, Davis said few knew about Williams’ ethnic background until Ben Bradlee, Jr.’s well-researched 2013 book, ”The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams.”

Davis said Williams kept his Mexican-American heritage a secret at a time when no black players were allowed in the major leagues and the Red Sox were owned by Tom Yawkey, a controversial figure who was the last owner to integrate a major league baseball team.

Williams was born to Samuel Stuart Williams, a white photographer and pickle salesman, and May Venzor, a Mexican-American Salvation Army devotee who often volunteered in Tijuana, Mexico, leaving Williams and his brother to fend for themselves with their alcoholic father, Bradlee said. His Mexican family ended up in San Diego as tension simmered before the Mexican Revolution began in 1910.

It’s a past Williams concealed until near the end of his life, said Bradlee. ”He was ashamed.”

After his sensational 1939 rookie year, Williams returned to San Diego to find around 20 of his Mexican-Americans relatives waiting for him at the train station. Williams took one look at them and fled.

Bradlee, who was among those interviewed for the film and who found some of Williams’ cousins, said the family remained proud of his on-the-field achievements.

”But you can see they were a little bit hurt that he had shunned them,” Bradlee said.

In the film, daughter Claudia Williams said she would sometimes ask her father about his mother. But he refused to talk about her, or his past, she said.

https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/ted-williams-mexican-american-heritage-explored-in-pbs-film-071918

What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?

Regarded as perhaps the finest piece of sportswriting on record, the furious saga of Teddy Ballgame — from boy to man and near death — is an unmatchable remembrance for an American icon.

from 1986, and worth reading

I have to finish that later (maybe i read it in '86?) but damn that Ted was a shrinking violet.

I like "bush" as a derisive noun, sans "leaguer."

born 100 years ago today

i will not tip my cap today in his honor

How was the documentary? Gotta add that one to my viewing list.

Debuted 80 years ago today: 1-4 against Red Ruffing. DiMaggio, Gehrig, Foxx, Grove, Dickey, Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr, and Joe Gordon also playing. 30,278 people there--not a bad day at the park.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA193904200.shtml

I think it's very important, at a moment where Lana Del Rey is the new Taylor Swift is the new Kanye West is the new Eminem is the new Madonna is the new Axl Rose--we need to understand what she's feeling right now, we need to stop our lives and made sense of her--that the following, from Ball Four, is revisited.

Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He'd go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, "My name is Ted fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball."

He'd swing and hit a line drive.

"Jesus H Christ Himself couldn't get me out."

And he'd hit another.

Then he'd say, "Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his."

Wham!

"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that shit."

Blam!

The list of Psycho Rich moments is as lengthy as it is vulgar. Like the time he flung a container of Hi-Chew candies across the bench during the 2018 playoffs. Or the time he unleashed a string of invective against the Mets so profound that teammates fled from the dugout to the clubhouse so he couldn’t hear them laughing. Or all those bullpen sessions at spring training at Camelback Ranch, when his swearing colors the morning blue.

Or the time when Diamondbacks reliever Archie Bradley pitched inside when Hill was trying to bunt. Hill put the pitch in play, and then did something Roberts had never seen before: He hollered at Bradley as he sprinted down the line, “Throw the fucking ball over the plate!”

Or the time the combination of on-field microphones and a nearly empty Tropicana Field picked up Hill’s reaction to a bunt hit against the shift. “Fuck!” he screamed. “Fuck! Fuck! Goddamnit!” Fellow pitcher Ross Stripling noted that Hill did not react when the next batter grounded into an out because of the shift. “We still wear him out for that one,” Stripling said.

Or the time he chucked his batting helmet and clipped veteran first baseman David Freese. The accident snapped Hill out of his frenzy.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, David!” Hill said.

“No, I love it,” Freese assured him.

His teammates understood the totality of his devotion. This was a man, after all, who urinated on his hand in an attempt to repair a nettlesome blister. “Whatever it takes,” Hill said.

Off the mound, his instincts otherwise lean toward benevolence. During the 2017 postseason, he fashioned a sign that read “Make Some Noise” and held it aloft from the dugout. A few weeks later in the World Series, he was so repulsed by Houston first baseman Yuli Gurriel’s racially-charged gestures toward Yu Darvish that he twice stepped off the mound at Dodger Stadium so fans could jeer Gurriel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfljwYtSvPI

Leo Durocher, describing Willie Mays' first home run (off Warren Spahn): "I never saw a fucking ball get out of a fucking ball park so fucking fast in my fucking life."

(From The Echoing Green.)

(This has gone from the Ted Williams thread to the When Ballplayers Say 'Fuck' thread. Thanks, Lana Del Rey.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11FeswP3wo

Doesn't say "fuck" even once.

https://i.postimg.cc/vZPHvr3P/ted.jpg

I'm Ted Fucking Williams of the U.S. Fucking Marine Corps.

What a photo!

He's definitely got a "You talkin' to me? I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?" vibe going on there.

Thinking about the way Tony Soprano would always use Gary Cooper as his role model for the way men are supposed to act (as opposed to the weaknesses he detected today), Cooper really doesn't seem very Tony Soprano-like; it would have been a better fit for him to use Williams. (Not to suggest that Williams was a murdering sociopath.)

The only things he murdered were baseballs

And maybe some Korean soldiers

he looks so much like Owen Wilson to me

slouch and crooked cap are disrespectful to the game flag

Ok madison

Signage by Red Sox batting cages at JetBlue Park. pic.twitter.com/ioFlMEJLu5

— Alex Speier (@alexspeier) February 14, 2024