The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams (75 page)

“In the end, I’m not sure he liked women too much,” Lee concluded. “Maybe because he was always using the word ‘bitch.’ ‘Unappreciative bitch’ is what he named me. I couldn’t figure out why he had all this rage in him. I wondered if he had a hatred for his mother. He must have. It caused him such embarrassment. That’s all I can see.”

Finally, after two and a half years, Lee decided she’d had enough. One morning in January of 1964, while Ted was out fishing, she jumped in the car and drove home to Chicago. Ted called her. He said he would do anything she wanted him to do if she came back, even go to church. She found that an odd statement, since she wasn’t particularly religious and hadn’t been asking him to go to church. The first Christmas they were together she’d wanted to take him to a Presbyterian service, but he wouldn’t go. Maybe he’d been thinking of that. Lee said no, she wasn’t coming back. “He kept telling me, ‘I’ll change.’ I said to him, ‘Ted, I can’t do anything right.’ That’s the way it was.”
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In the winter of 1961, the Red Sox announced that in addition to his hitting-coach duties at spring training, Williams would become “special executive assistant for player personnel.” This would involve making the rounds of the Sox farm system to help develop players, sign prospects, and scout National League teams to help identify players Boston might trade for.

In March, Ted arrived in Scottsdale and immediately upstaged the return of Jackie Jensen, who was coming back to the Red Sox after a year’s sabbatical because of his fear of flying. Proving he’d lost none of his snark for the writers, Williams encountered Harold Rosenthal of the
New York Herald Tribune
and berated him for a piece he’d written three years earlier, which had compared Ted unfavorably to Mickey Mantle. Then, just warming up, Williams approached Larry Claflin of
the
Record-American,
who was sitting in the Red Sox dugout, and teed off on him. Ted claimed that Claflin had called his ex-wife, Doris, in December to inquire what Williams had given Bobby-Jo for Christmas. His right fist clenched and his face white with rage, Williams told the terrified Claflin, “I’ll punch you right in the nose.” Claflin vigorously denied Ted’s charge and called it a monstrous lie. He said he had never called Doris to ask about Williams and his daughter, offered to take a lie detector test, and bet Ted $1,000 that he would pass it. Red Sox traveling secretary Tom Dowd guided Williams away before he could commit further mayhem as the rest of the writers watched the scene, transfixed.

Ted, after cooling down, then held a press conference, the first Red Sox batting coach ever to do so. “I know I’m going to be happier for the next 20 years than I have been for the past 20,” Williams said. “For one thing, I won’t have to read a lot of garbage about me in the sports pages.” One writer mildly challenged him: “Well, wouldn’t you say that the past 20 years furnished you with more compensation than annoyance?”

Ted had to agree: “I really did have a wonderful time. Baseball has been very good to me. But I think I had to take a lot of abuse I didn’t deserve. Of course, I also did things I shouldn’t have done. I regret that.”
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Williams made his debut as a scout that May, returning to San Diego and his alma mater, Herbert Hoover High School, to watch a young pitcher named Dave Morehead. Morehead would sign with the Red Sox and go on to throw a no-hitter against the Indians in 1965. Ted said he was impressed with the changes at Hoover since he’d been a student there, and the players on the baseball team seemed thrilled when he stopped by to schmooze with them.
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That summer of 1961, Williams focused most of his baseball attention on the camp he had launched three years earlier in Massachusetts. The camp consisted of 180 largely wooded acres on the shores of Loon Pond. A Boy Scout camp that owned the property in the mid-’50s had decided to sell. The town didn’t want the site developed, so Albert H. Cassidy, who was part owner of a Lakeville drive-in restaurant, had the idea to start a boys’ camp. Cassidy didn’t have enough money to fund the venture on his own, so he approached a local bank for a loan. The bank told him the only way his project would fly would be if he could get a celebrity involved whose cachet might attract customers.

A friend introduced him to the boxer Rocky Marciano, who had retired in 1956 as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world
and lived in nearby Brockton, Massachusetts. Cassidy figured if he could get the backing of the Brockton Bomber, that would give him his requisite star appeal. After much cajoling from Cassidy, the champ agreed to lend his name to the venture. Thrilled, Cassidy went back to the bankers, but they were dismissive. A boxing camp? What mother would send her son off to get beaten to a pulp? They suggested Cassidy try to land Ted Williams.

Cassidy was back to square one. He didn’t know anyone who knew the great Williams. But he knew someone who knew Eddie Pellagrini, the former Red Sox infielder in 1946 and 1947. Pellagrini had stayed in touch with Williams and agreed to put in a good word with the Kid about the camp idea. Meanwhile, Cassidy did more homework, taking pictures of the campsite and preparing a scrapbook. He arranged to go to Fenway Park and meet Williams in the summer of 1957, when Ted was well on the way to his glittering .388.

According to the story Cassidy passed down to his son, Albert B. Cassidy—who would later become the executor of Ted’s estate—the visit to Fenway came about because he decided he needed more than Pellagrini’s introduction in order to make an effective presentation. Getting to the park early, he slipped an usher ten bucks to let him hang out in the lower box seats until Williams appeared for batting practice, when he would try and intercept him as he emerged from the dugout on the way to the cage and talk about his proposition.

“Hey, Ted!” Cassidy called out as Williams approached. “Hi; my name is Cassidy. Can I have a few minutes of your time?”

“Let me finish hitting, and I’ll come and see you,” said Ted.

After taking his rips, Williams returned and joined Cassidy in the lower boxes. Cassidy pulled out his scrapbook filled with pictures of the campsite and began talking—fast. He said he had an idea to start a baseball camp for boys in Lakeville on this beautiful site next to a lake. He displayed the photos. The problem was, he didn’t have any money or any credit. He needed someone like Ted Williams to come in as the catalyst for the project. Ted listened to the pitch and was intrigued, but he was in the middle of the season and couldn’t focus on it now. He suggested they talk in the fall.

Cassidy felt deflated. He’d gotten his meeting and a polite hearing, but he felt the chances of Ted contacting him again were nil. Yet not long after the season ended, the phone rang, and it was Williams. When could he come down to Lakeville and tour the property?

After walking around the proposed site and hearing added details
from Cassidy about his plans, Ted was even more impressed. It was baseball and kids. What was there not to like? He said he would do it. He thought Fred Corcoran would not like the idea, but Williams called him right then and there and said this was something he’d like to do.

Beside himself with joy, Cassidy returned to the bank and announced that he had Ted Williams as a backer. The low-level loan officer he had been dealing with didn’t believe him. The man consulted his boss, who consulted
his
boss, who went to the president of the bank. Before long, Cassidy was meeting with a group of executives in the president’s office. The men said they needed proof that Williams was, in fact, signed on to the venture. Cassidy, enjoying the moment immensely, reached for the phone and dialed a number. Ted’s unmistakable loud voice came on the line. Yes, it was him, he said, and he was in.

The bankers were incredulous. For years, they had been trying to get Williams to back a promotional venture of their own, without any success. So how was Al Cassidy, part owner of a local drive-in, able to get him? Still, the bankers said they felt that even with Ted, the venture was too risky, so they again turned Cassidy down.

Cassidy relayed the bad news back to Ted. Annoyed, Williams said he knew the head of the savings bank in nearby Middleborough and would call him. He did, and the man promptly approved the loan. The camp cost $60,000. Ted put up a down payment and took a 25 percent interest. Cassidy and his two brothers each got 25 percent without having to put any money down.

“Ted did this deal even though he didn’t know my dad at all,” said the younger Cassidy.
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“That’s the kind of guy that Ted was. He was not one to check people out. But he said, ‘Al, there’s only one thing I’m going to ask of you.’ He took his hands and put them on the top of the table and said, ‘Al, where are my hands at?’ Dad says, ‘On top of the table.’ ‘That’s right, and that’s always where I want to see your hands. I never want to see them under the table.’ That was Ted also. He always insisted on the truth. No matter how bad it hurt or how embarrassing it might be to Ted, he would always tell you the truth. Whether it was a personal deal or a business deal, if you robbed a bank, he’d give you a second chance. If you lied to him, he was done with you.”

The camp, for boys between the ages of eight and nineteen, cost $125 for two weeks, $250 for four weeks, and $490 for eight weeks. By the mid-’60s, there were about two hundred boys in camp, including some from Canada, Mexico, and Japan. Later, girls were included and the
activities expanded beyond baseball to include swimming, boating, volleyball, basketball, soccer, and the like.

At night, they would play a game called blooperball on a Little League field, using a deflated softball that couldn’t be hit too far—unless you were Ted Williams. Just fooling around, Ted could hit the ball over the trees behind the fence. “One night we were playing an away game in town and lots of locals were watching because Ted played,” remembered Charles Zarrell, a camper in the late ’60s. “In a very memorable at bat, the pitcher lobbed the ball to him and he blasted a homer over the left-center-field fence. Ted was livid that he didn’t pull the ball and cursed himself as he trotted around the bases, saying if he couldn’t goddamn pull a friggin’ blooperball, he shouldn’t play this goddamn game.”
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Not surprisingly, Ted insisted on military-style rules for the camp. Reveille would be at 7:00 a.m. Everyone would line up in a horseshoe at the flagpole. The national anthem would be played and the flag raised. During the day, the boys would move from one instructional station to the other for hitting, pitching, baserunning, and infield and outfield drills. Ted would make it a point to go to each station to talk to the kids and offer tips—especially at the hitting station, of course. The kids were in awe and hung on his every word.

Don Brown, a former counselor at the camp, recalls that one kid who wasn’t awestruck was Joe Coleman, a local high school pitching phenom who would go on to the major leagues. Coleman was also the son of the Philadelphia Athletics pitcher of the same name who had been Ted’s roommate in 1942 at Amherst College, Williams’s first stop during World War II. “Joe Coleman was pitching and striking everyone out,” said Brown. “Ted came over in his street clothes and Coleman was taunting him: ‘You couldn’t hit me, old man!’ Ted never said a word. He just went up to the plate and hit the next four pitches out, into the oak trees four hundred feet away, then put the bat down and walked out. Never said a word. He was about five years out of the game. In street clothes.”
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Ted hadn’t been able to spend much time at the camp while he was still playing, but now his engagement showed signs of classic Williams intensity. Driving around in a golf cart, the Lord of Lakeville would carry out rigid inspections every Saturday. He would start at his favorite locale, the dining hall, which overlooked the lake. He insisted on a clean kitchen and asked that there be plenty of Lawry’s seasoned salt on hand. Then he’d head for the living quarters, where beds had to be crisply made and everything in order. A stickler for short hair, Ted, in loco
parentis, would check behind the campers’ ears and order up haircuts for those he deemed shaggy.

When not in the golf cart, Williams sometimes drove the camp bus, always wanting to be the center of attention. He’d say he was the greatest driver in the world, and if he wasn’t driving, he would give backseat critiques constantly—bantering and barking orders. He even instructed a receptionist on how to leave a message on an answering machine: not too fast.

Ted would usually dress in chinos and a white polo short with white sneakers. Some days he added a light blue jacket with “Ted” stitched on the arm. “I love this place,” he told a
Globe
reporter who was doing a story on the camp. “I like being here with the kids. You see them grow up from year to year and hope that you might help them become better men.”

He’d start the day at 6:30 with nine holes of golf. (Williams claimed he shot around eighty-five and carried a fourteen handicap.) Then he would stop at a local greasy spoon for a mammoth breakfast of three or four eggs and six pieces of toast, washed down by a coffee milk shake. He bemoaned the influence of golf on baseball. “When I was a kid, there weren’t 300,000 golfers in the whole country. Now there’s 8 million,” he said. “When I was young, guys in their 30’s would still be playing sandlot ball. You never see that anymore. They’re out playing golf, and it’s rubbing off on the kids.”
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Williams was comfortable in Lakeville. After a while, he decided to buy a house surrounded by some land so that he and Lee would have a nice place to stay. “He did a heck of a lot for the community there in Lakeville,” remembered Al Palmieri, the camp director at the time. “He seemed to enjoy doing things for young people, and he loved young people. We always had local priests, dentists, doctors, and people come out to talk to Ted, wanting him to play golf with them, but he would say he was busy at the camp. But if you wanted him for a benefit for the Jimmy Fund or something, he’d be there.” Palmieri said that despite Ted’s 25 percent stake, he never took a dime from the camp, plowing everything he was entitled to back into everyday operations.
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