by John Updike
[←10]
It was Cunningham who, when Williams first appeared in a Red Sox uniform at the 1938 spring training camp, wrote with melodious prescience: “The Sox seem to think Williams is just cocky enough and gabby enough to make a great and colorful outfielder, possibly the Babe Herman type. Me? I don’t like the way he stands at the plate. He bends his front knee inward and moves his foot just before he takes a swing. That’s exactly what I do before I drive a golf ball, and knowing what happens to the golf balls I drive, I don’t believe this kid will ever hit half a Singer Midget’s weight in a bathing suit.”
[←11]
Written in 1960, a year before Roger Maris’s fluky, phenomenal sixty-one.
[←12]
In his second season (1940) he was switched to left field, to protect his eyes from the right-field sun.
[←13]
It’s worse than I thought: his head has been severed and is preserved. His body? Who knows? The engineer of the remains’ disposal, Williams’ only son, the unfortunate John Henry, himself died in 2004, of leukemia, at the age of thirty-five.
[←14]
In 1957 the third-place Red Sox drew 1,187,087, and the sportswriter Harold Kaese wrote, “The Red Sox drew 187,087 and Ted Williams drew the other million.”
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
Ted Williams, 1918—2002
A Note About The Author
Praise For Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
Copyright
John Updike on Ted Willliams, 1986 and 2002
Ted Williams as of 1986
Ted Williams