The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (43 page)

X-rays showed no break but revealed a bad bone bruise, which was painful and swelled quickly. “Shoosh,” Ted wrote in his book, “the elbow went up like a balloon. It turned blue. The World Series was to begin three days later, but I couldn’t take batting practice for two days.”

Les Cassie Sr.—Ted’s old San Diego neighbor who had driven him across the country to spring training in 1939 and was now in Boston, collecting on Williams’s promise to invite him to the first World Series he appeared in—was alarmed. He phoned Les junior and said: “His elbow is three times as big as it’s supposed to be. He’s all stuffed up with antibiotics. I don’t see how he can play.”
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The papers splashed news of Ted’s injury on the front page, next to dispatches from Germany and the Nuremberg trials, in which Nazi leaders had been found guilty of crimes against humanity.

By October 3, the Cardinals had dispatched the Dodgers in two straight, and the Red Sox knew they would be heading to Saint Louis. Dr. Ralph McCarthy, the team physician, announced that Williams would be in the lineup when the Series began on Sunday the sixth, but he would not have proper use of his elbow for at least a week. “It’s going to hurt him every time he swings,” McCarthy said.
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Williams spent the next three days in the trainer’s room getting whirlpool treatments.

Hundreds of fans turned out at Trinity Place station in the Back Bay section of Boston on the evening of the third to give their heroes a proper sendoff as Williams and his teammates boarded the eight-car “Red Sox Special” for the twenty-four-hour trip to Saint Louis.

Just before the train was scheduled to pull out, Dave Egan launched a maliciously timed bombshell designed to make maximum mischief on the eve of the Series: Ted, the Colonel claimed, was on the trading block. The Detroit Tigers had already offered to swap pitcher Hal Newhouser and outfielder Dick Wakefield for him, while the Yankees, not to be outdone, had offered Joe DiMaggio himself as well as third baseman Bill Johnson and catcher Aaron Robinson. Delighting in tweaking Ted, Egan played off Williams’s status as a
Globe
columnist. “I hate to scoop a brother journalist,” the Colonel began, “particularly one who is laboring bravely under the handicap of an injured writing arm, but this is to inform journalist Ted Williams that left-fielder Ted Williams is up for sale to the highest bidder.”
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Egan cited no basis for his story and did not otherwise explain how he knew it to be so. He merely asserted he “has the facts… and knows them to be the facts.” He said the Red Sox had been fed up with Ted’s behaving like a “spoiled brat” in August and September and interpreted his
comportment to mean he wanted out. Moreover, since Williams had not yet officially ruled out jumping to the Mexican League at the end of the season, the team worried it could receive nothing of value for its star player if he took that option. The Colonel predicted it would be the Yankees who would land Williams and that DiMaggio had signaled as much when he put on a Boston uniform the other day at Fenway Park.

Egan’s column was the talk of the train ride to Saint Louis as the players and members of the front office passed copies of the
Record
around. Ted, of course, devoured every word and smiled broadly as his teammates ribbed him about it, but he declined comment to the writers. Sox general manager Eddie Collins said he knew nothing about any trade for Ted, then, oddly, added that he didn’t want to be quoted as saying so. Tigers manager Steve O’Neill, who was on board the train as a guest of the Red Sox, said he had not heard that his team had made any offer for Williams.
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When the Red Sox took the field at Sportsman’s Park to practice the day before the Series was to start, Williams made his first comment on Egan’s column, saying he’d quit or jump to Mexico before going to New York. “I’d hate to be traded to the Yankees,” he said. “I don’t like New York. I just don’t want to play there.” He said nothing about Detroit, perhaps feeling he didn’t have to, since it was well known that Williams considered Briggs Stadium one of his favorite parks to hit in.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Red Sox hierarchy—Joe Cronin and Tom Yawkey—were less equivocal than Collins had been in denying Egan’s column. Cronin said, “The idea of trading Williams is silly—ridiculous. We have never discussed such a thing.”
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Added Yawkey: “I wouldn’t trade him for Yankee Stadium or Briggs Stadium. If he ever is sold, however, the press won’t name the club nor will the press name the price. I’m still running the ball club.”
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Taking his first batting practice since being plunked on the elbow, Williams felt better than he thought he would, and he certainly put on a show. He hit three homers on top of the right-field roof and crashed two balls against the right-field screen. “When I give it that little extra—either throwing or hitting—it hurts,” Ted told the writers.
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But the pain did not prevent him from giving it that little extra, he added.

The Red Sox were heavy favorites to win the Series, but many of the Cardinals were cocky, and some openly talked trash. Stan Musial would make Ted “look sick” in the Series, predicted pitcher Red Barrett.
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“Do we fear Williams? Of course we don’t,” added reliever Ted Wilks. “We
pitched against him in the South this spring and got him out and we’ll stop him again.”

Not all the Cardinals were so impudent. Joe Garagiola, the rookie catcher and Saint Louis native, was a great admirer of Ted’s and remembered well listening to him abuse the Browns on the radio as he was growing up. Now Garagiola found himself behind the plate in game 1 of the World Series when the Great Man himself stepped into the box. “All of a sudden there he was right in front of me,” Garagiola recalled. “I didn’t know whether to throw the ball to the pitcher or ask for an autograph. The first pitch was an inside fastball, and he followed it all the way into my mitt. ‘That ball was inside,’ he said to me. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said to him, and that was all I could say.”
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The first time Williams came up, Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer ordered his team into a modified Boudreau shift, despite having said before the Series that he would play it straight against Ted. Shortstop Marty Marion remained at his position, while third baseman Whitey Kurowski ran across the diamond to play second, second baseman Red Schoendienst shifted to the hole in short right, and first baseman Stan Musial hugged the line. The left fielder played center while the center and right fielders divided right. If Dyer’s goal was to get into Ted’s head, he apparently succeeded. “I never expected it,” Williams wrote in his column the next day. “Brother, did they pull a fast one on me.”

Ted, facing left-hander Howie Pollet, then grounded out sharply to the newly aligned Schoendienst. He walked in the third, lashed a single over Kurowski’s head into right-center in the sixth, and walked in the eighth. The game was tied after nine innings, 2–2. In the tenth, Ted fouled out to Musial before Rudy York ripped a home run to the left-field bleachers to give the Red Sox a 3–2 win in the first game.

The Cardinals came back strong the next day, winning 3–0 behind lefty Harry “the Cat” Brecheen. Ted went for the collar—grounding out to Musial, striking out swinging, lining out to Schoendienst in short right (a hit without the shift), and then popping up awkwardly to shortstop Marion when he tried to go to left. Williams “looked pitiful” on that last at bat, Schoendienst told the writers afterward, provocatively.

The scene shifted to Boston for the next three games. On the train ride home, Ted sat with Johnny Orlando and trainer Win Green and brooded about having gone 1–7 in Saint Louis, and also about the Egan story. “Do you think they’ll trade me?” he asked.
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“I’d like to know. I want to get straightened out.” He did seem pleased to pass around a
telegram he’d received from a new fan after the second game. “Don’t forget, I’m a National Leaguer, but I’m for you,” said the wire from Bing Crosby. (Ted and Crosby, it had been reported, were considering making a baseball movie together in the off-season.)

The Red Sox cruised to a 4–0 win in game 3 on the strength of brilliant pitching by Boo Ferriss and a three-run blast in the first inning by Rudy York, his second home run of the Series. One of the highlights of the game, for Fenway fans and the press, was a bunt by Ted in the third inning. With two out, nobody on, and the wind blowing in from right field, Williams decided the time was right for a bunt, which he successfully pushed down the line, past third base, and into left field for a single.

Boisterous
TED BUNTS
headlines in the papers rivaled the game itself for attention, and the writers seemed captivated by the moment.
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Williams failed to see the humor in the headlines and felt it was an attempt by the press to ridicule him—which, to some extent, it was.
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Besides the bunt, Ted was walked intentionally, struck out swinging with a man in scoring position, and lined out to Enos Slaughter down the right-field line to lead off the eighth inning. After the game, Joe Cronin, responding to Harold Kaese’s column in the
Globe
that morning, which suggested it was the manager who wanted to trade Ted, issued a definitive statement on behalf of the team: Williams would not be dealt. The fans, meanwhile, had clearly weighed in on the trade issue. When the Kid first came to bat—the first time the home crowd had a chance to render any opinion since the Egan story broke—he was greeted with waves of applause and cheers.

Williams was touched by the reception and told Bill Grimes of the
American
after the game: “I want to stay in Boston. This is my town. The fans were wonderful to me today.” He also went out of his way to try to knock down the criticism—fueled by the Colonel—that he was out for himself. “I have been accused of being an individual player,” he said. “This is NOT true. I am strictly a team player. If it looks to the fans as though I’m trying to show any individuality, it’s only because I’ve had a poor day. Believe me when I tell you, I want the Red Sox to win and I
am willing to sacrifice anything for a victory.”
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Somewhat typical for Williams was his decision to give away the six tickets he was allotted for each of the three World Series games at Fenway Park: he had his wife go to Kenmore Square before the games and give the tickets to the first six GIs she saw.
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He felt no need to tell the press about the token of appreciation for the fans.

The Cardinals again rebounded in game 4, crushing Tex Hughson and five other Red Sox pitchers for twenty hits in a 12–3 laugher. Ted went 1–3, with a walk.

In the pivotal fifth game, the Sox broke on top in the first inning when Williams, batting with runners on first and second, singled to right to knock in a run. The Sox took a 3–1 lead into the bottom of the seventh, then blew it open when Mike Higgins doubled to drive in a run and the usually reliable Marty Marion at shortstop threw wildly to second with the bases loaded, allowing two more runs to score. Boston won, 6–3, with Joe Dobson going all the way and holding the Cardinals to just four hits.

After his first-inning single and RBI, Ted failed to get a hit in his next four times up. He grounded to Marion at short, struck out swinging with a runner on second, was called out on strikes two innings later with another runner at second, and fouled out to the catcher in the eighth—again while a runner was at second. Despite this display of futility after the solid start, Williams felt the fans’ love all day long. They cheered wildly at anything he did—even his Ks. “It has been said that Ted’s shell-like ears have been offended by comments from the electorate in the past,” Red Smith wrote. “If so, he heard celestial pipes today.… He went away in the knowledge that his immortality was secure.”
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Whatever psychic benefit the home crowd adoration may have given Williams was mitigated by the torrent of abuse Saint Louis fans showered on him at Sportsman’s Park during game 6. It started in batting practice with shrieks of “When are you gonna get a home run, Williams?” Ted ground his teeth in anger and mumbled, “I hear you, you…” according to the
American,
which omitted the curse word, as required of a family newspaper.

Williams walked in the first and popped up to Musial in the fourth. When he struck out in the sixth, “the howls of derision that came from the left field stands were never equaled in Boston,” the
American
reported.
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The Cardinals did their damage with three runs in the third inning off Mickey Harris and added another in the eighth. And when Ted came to bat in the ninth with nobody on, his team trailing 4–1, the
Cardinals patrons twisted the knife, screaming for a pinch hitter. Williams responded with a single between Schoendienst and Marion, who this time was lined up on the first-base side of second.

The 4–1 score held up as Saint Louis again got a sterling pitching performance from Harry Brecheen to force a seventh and deciding game. The Red Sox looked to have had the Cat on the ropes in the first two innings, but both times he’d escaped trouble, notably by getting Rudy York to hit into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded in the first. The Red Sox’s only run came in the seventh, on a sacrifice fly by Bobby Doerr.

In his column, Williams had high praise for Brecheen. “What makes him so effective is that you don’t know which spot he’s going to pitch to,” Ted said. “He’s high when you think he’d be low, and he’s inside when you’re looking for him to be outside.… After the first two innings, the Cat played with us like he would a mouse.”
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Predictably, the Boston papers began looking for scapegoats. “As matters stand, Ted Williams is an enormous bust,” wrote the
Globe
’s Kaese, noting that Williams had just five hits and one RBI through six games.
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None of the other Red Sox were hitting particularly well, either: of the regulars, only Doerr was batting over .300.