![]() ![]() Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. He hit home runs farther than any player before him - and traveled a long way himself, as Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s grand biography reveals. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in WWII and Korea. 406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than 500 home runs has a higher career batting average. Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. comes the epic biography of Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams that baseball fans have been waiting for. at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier.From acclaimed journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. He says he tracked down a number of people who knew Williams who said his actual wishes were to have his body cremated and the ashes strewn over the Florida Keys, where he loved to fish, but that the cryonics was likely the result of family pressures.īen Bradlee Jr., author of The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, will be speaking on Tuesday, May 13 at 7 p.m. Many of Williams' former Red Sox teammates, including Johnny Pesky and Dom Dimaggio, didn't want younger generations who didn't know Williams the ballplayer to focus on the ghastly cryonics episode as a way to remember Williams, but Bradlee says it was impossible to write a full biography of Williams without including the grotesque detail. Ted's son John Henry, after Williams' death, had his father's head removed from his body and had both cryogenically frozen in the hopes that future technology would make it possible to revive Williams. ![]() ![]() The death of Ted Williams was difficult for Bradlee to write about, because it was an indignant end to such a larger than life figure. “He did this pointed digression from thanking everyone who was responsible for his career, to calling the lords of Cooperstown to right a fundamental wrong which was that they had excluded the old Negro League players from consideration for the Hall of Fame merely because they were black.” Bradlee said this was a bold move, and the commissioner, who had enormous respect for Williams, adopted the recommendation. His mother was Mexican and he concealed the fact that he was Mexican-American all of his life, worried that prejudice of the day would hurt his baseball career,” Bradlee explained. “It’s ironic because Ted was Mexican-American. “I think it’s the redemptive part of the Ted Williams story.”Īt Williams’ induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, he surprised many by focusing on minority athletes. Bradlee said it was an example of his kindness and his decency. “He couldn’t appreciate that he was a public figure, a hero to many, and that the public had a legitimate interest in wanting to know something about his life off the field.” If a reporter pursued a story like that and called his mother for a quote, Williams would go crazy and confront the reporter, saying he had no right to write about his private life.įolks today, especially Red Sox fans, are well acquainted with the Jimmy Fund for cancer research, which Ted Williams made possible. “He wanted fame, but not the inconvenience of celebrity,” Bradlee said. That anger was also at times focused on the sports writers. But in his personal relationships, his anger would bubble up at inappropriate times and places, and caused him great difficulty,” Bradlee said. It helped him on the field, because he always said that he hit better mad, and would go off on a tear and hit. Williams grew up in San Diego during the Great Depression and his mother worked for the Salvation Army saving souls and that was what was important to her in life, to the exclusion of all else, including Ted and his brother. The source of the anger was rooted in his troubled relationship with his mother,” Bradlee said. “It’s because of the anger that he struggled with all of his life. Much of the book focused on Ted Williams’ private life, which was unsettled. The story of Ted Williams on and off the field is told in a huge tome befitting its subject called, The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, written by Ben Bradlee, Jr., former editor and reporter for the Boston Globe. He was Ted Williams, and his mythical status as a ballplayer was actually equaled by a life beyond the game that was marked by rancor, charity, bombast and regret. ![]() He was the greatest hitter who ever lived. He homered in his final at-bat after a career that spanned more than two decades, but refused to tip his cap to the fans who were there to watch the feat. He hit 521 home runs in his career, and who knows how many more would have been added to that total if he hadn’t lost five of his prime playing years to military service in World War II and the Korean War. ![]()
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