....Ted Williams passed away, but if you ever saw him swing a bat, he’s still alive because that was something you never could forget. It was like the first time you saw a lion.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a line out of a Will Ferrell movie?

Is it just me, or does this sound like a line out of a Will Ferrell movie?

That wouldn't be out of character for Mr. Borges.

Gotta admit, post 1# made me chuckle.

I have thought that Williams was the 1940-1960 era Barry Bonds. Both were obsessed with hitting, tremendously talented and unwavering in their reservations towards the public and the press.

America's appreciation of Williams occurred after his later years and upon retirement. I am sure the fact that Ted was a veteran helped his image. I am also positive that the revisionist viewpoint will not occur for Mr. Bonds.

That's the problem with becoming a myth. Even professionals don’t worry about having to get it right. Not only is the mid-brow intelligentsia trite, they don't feel they have to be too careful about even making the platitudes applicable.

Williams was greatly appreciated while he played, both by his peers and by the media and fans. They are many ways of historically determining that. Newspaper accounts, testimony of peers and management and those who knew him, “objective” testing like All-Star voting. Bill James once said in terms of MVP voting, Williams was more respected than, oh, say, Willie Mays.

He just couldn't take the fact that it would never be uniformly unqualified. Or, perhaps that's somewhat unfair to his memory. Maybe he just couldn't see why the negative criticism couldn't be measured and just. Why it had to be so mean and trivial. Hey, when somebody from your team’s hometown says he didn’t vote for you when you won the Triple Crown that year because you didn’t steal a base—that’s degrading some standards. I remember when Steve Carlton after his great great season had that disappointing season, with regard to wins, anyway, and when asked what was different began to explain to reporters why in ways technical. They, though, kept wanting to talk about it in terms of grit and character. You could see the cold mask fall over his face, him writing them off as things to take seriously. He realized they were nothing more than scavenging fools, and if they couldn’t find any road kill, they’d do their best to make some. Communication on that level with that sort was demeaning and futile, and he smartly quit talking to do them. Williams realized that, but didn't accept it like Carlton. He, instead, fulminated against the tinpot cretinus dictators. He raged, really, against, his inability to convince them of their shortcomings. Of course, with a temperament like that you are just leaving yourself open to some who just feed on such vulnerability.

Williams, pace Bill James, was not Ty Cobb by any stretch, not even Barry Bonds. And he was really not seen in that light when played generally or predominantly. He was liked and admired and respected by most peers and commentators. He was even loved, by many who knew him. He had real charisma and beau coup magnetism. In the good sense. Ty Cobb certainly, but probably Bonds, too, will never have a book like Teammates written about him and three guys who liked and bonded and related with him for sixty years. Because no one felt about them that way. Not only that, but Williams presented himself to fans, with some necessary austere strictures, of course, but he was quite generous in doing that. He rarely played the prima donna, unlike Joe DiMaggio, nor was he personally surly and hurtful like Mantle. Maybe that’s why so many were so ready to excuse him, or forgive him when he made the slightest gesture toward rapprochement.

He was always willing to have an intelligent talk with peers or with interested, informed critics about hitting. Yawkey, or a manager, once reproved him for giving tips to batters on other teams on how to be better hitters, and asked him to quit doing it. Williams considered the request, but ultimately decided that he owed it to the game to be forthcoming like that. I believe many contemporaries as well as later players are on record as appreciating that decision. He could also be big in big ways. See, for example, Mudcat Grant.

Perhaps, too, it was only through his jobs (he was like that with everything he took seriously—flying, fishing, photography) that he could be convivial, could interact socially. Whatever, the fact was that it was how he related and interacted. As a great artist, he was by no means unique in this. We could all name many exemplars in other fields, not just other sports, who were pretty much like him in this regard.

I write this because I think some subtle distinctions are worth preserving. He just didn't suffer fools gladly. And that applied in almost everything he did. One of those three teammates, I forgot which one (maybe Dom DiMaggio), couldn't help but chide him (respectfully but firmly) once after a display of childish temperament because he felt some fans were unfairly razzing him. It went something like this: "You know, Ted, there can be 35,000 people in the stands, and all of them can be cheering you wildly, but if only two are booing, you'll only hear the boos." That was very true. But, please note the proportion stated. It was the unfairness of criticism by those who he deemed ignorant, malicious, and incompetent that pissed him off. That's an all too common an Achilles’ heel for many of us, and thus all too understandable. It also leaves you all too open to the people who thrill in doing that. Nothing eggs some people on than knowing they are getting your goat. The mature develop armor so that it doesn't penetrate or become adept at letting it just wash over them to no effect. They learn how to distance themselves from that sort of twaddle. They consider the source and can ignore it. Williams could never do that, though. He was always the Kid in that regard. You might even say it was his tragic flaw.

Cripes Morty, how do you churn out true prose like that so quickly?

I think the truth about Williams is that almost everything somebody says about him is true -- to some extent. He was an insensitive jerk sometimes, and he was also magnanimous sometimes. Mostly he was complicated, not easily summed up or categorized.

My two favorite Williams stories were told by my late friend Bill Kirwin, the founding editor of Nine. When a student at Boston College in the mid-1950s, Kirwin got to know Sammy White, the Red Sox catcher, and one day White invited Kirwin into the Red Sox locker room to meet the team. Most of the players gave the gawky college kid Kirwin a perfunctory handshake and otherwise ignored him. But Kirwin says Williams, of all people, TED WILLIAMS looked him in the eye and genuinely talked with him, listened to him, asked him about what he was studying at school, took the time and effort to treat him, a nobody from nowhere who had absolutely nothing to offer Williams, with sincere respect. Kirwin never forgot it.

A while later, Kirwin went to a Boston hospital to visit a classmate of his who was seriously ill. He walks into the hospital room, and who is there visiting his friend, but Ted Williams, once again being as nice and friendly and gentle as could be.

But then, apparently the news media heard that Williams was in this hospital, and a TV film crew comes bustling into the room, lights glaring, reporter shoving his microphone in Williams' face.

Williams goes ballistic, in a profanity-filled tirade, screams at the reporter and his crew, threatens to beat the crap out of them if they don't disappear this instant. The TV crew scurries away.

After they're gone, Williams, still trembling with rage, does his best to explain to Kirwin and his friend: "I don't do this because I want to. I do it because I HAVE to."

Which Kirwin took to mean that Williams wasn't seeking to create publicity for himself as the do-gooding superstar, rather, as the half-Mexican poor kid from the broken home, he was compelled to reach out and support people in trouble or in need.

Cold Prosimian:

Well, thanks for the compliment (as I perceived it to be), but it really wasn't that quick. It took me about an hour to draft that, and I see some pretty sloppy phraseology. If I could, I'd probably edited for clarity and redundancy. If it is quick, you might keep in mind that anything I write on Williams has a wellspring of some 45+ years thinking about him. I've live through the evolution the popular culture has gone through with regard to Williams's iconic status.

Steve Treder:

Well put. Liked the stories. They're indicative. Both the good and the bad need to be taken into account without necesarily reconciling them in one pin on the wall Prufrockian formulation. When I read Richard Wilbur's poem Tywater as a sophomore in college many years ago I immediately thought of Ted Williams. It concludes:

The violent, neat and practiced skill
Was all he loved and all he learned;
When he was hit, his body turned
To clumsy dirt before it fell.

And what to say of him, God knows.
Such violence. And such repose.

45 minutes is quick. It was fantastic.