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.46 “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.* 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.47
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.”48 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.49 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.”50
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.51 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.”52
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.53 None of the other Red Sox were hitting particularly well, either: of the regulars, only Doerr was batting over .300.
Williams unburdened himself to Grantland Rice, the syndicated columnist, after game 6, conceding that he had been trying to outguess the Cardinals pitchers too much. “They’ve been smarter than I am,” Ted said. “They’ve outguessed me.” Rice, who was emerging as the Kid’s Series confidant, called this “a pretty honest statement” and went on to consider Williams’s psyche. He called the conventional wisdom that Ted is conceited “entirely incorrect. The main trouble is that Ted suffers from an inferiority complex. He also admits that he does things he knows he shouldn’t do, and doesn’t do things he knows he should.” Williams told Rice that Red Sox fans had been swell to him during the three World Series games in Boston, “where I was a flop. I wanted to lift my cap to their applause. For some reason, I couldn’t do it. And I knew I was wrong. I’d rather win, or help to win this Series, for Tom Yawkey alone, than anything I ever did. I’ll probably lose it.”54
This was a startling admission, which seemed to underscore Williams’s insecurity. That night he was sitting alone with his thoughts in his room at the Chase Hotel when a writer stopped by and knocked on his door, which was slightly ajar. There was no response. The room was dark. The writer peered inside and could see Ted sitting at the window, silhouetted against the lights from the city below. Unsettled by the scene, he left without disturbing Williams, and the next day he told Rice what he’d seen. “I’ll see he doesn’t sit alone in the dark tonight,” Rice replied.
With an off day scheduled to
give the Cardinals more time to print and sell tickets for game 7, Ted stewed in his own juices, but he seemed upbeat during the Red Sox workout. Some of his teammates were stirred by the news that the losers’ share in the Series would be $2,094 per player, or less than the $2,500 each umpire would earn. “We can’t let that happen,” said Rudy York. “If we’re not worth more than the umpires, we shouldn’t be in the business.”
When batting practice began, and it was Ted’s turn to step in the cage against pitcher Mace Brown, many of the Red Sox stopped to watch number 9, hoping he’d find his groove and set the proper tone for the team. After a few languid swings to get loosened up, Williams began talking quietly to himself. Hy Hurwitz of the Globe pressed against the cage to listen.
“There’s a 3–2 count on me, the bases are full, and it’s the last of the ninth with two out,” Ted said to psych himself, just as a Little Leaguer might. “Throw me a low fast one, and I’ll blow it out of the park.”
Brown delivered it low and hard, and Williams drilled the ball over the pavilion roof in right field and out onto Grand Avenue, where fans were waiting in line to buy tickets.
Then the chatter began. “Now you’re swinging,” said Bobby Doerr from behind the cage. “You’re not pushing it the way you have been. You’ve got your shoulders into it.”
“Attaboy, Teddy,” chimed in York. “Cut at all of them that way and you won’t be an out man.”
Williams kept ripping the ball for the next fifteen minutes—line drives, rising line drives, deep, towering fly balls, many of them home runs. His teammates “began to acquire new confidence that they’d be better paid than the umpires,” Hurwitz wrote. Said one unnamed player: “Hits like that tomorrow and somebody’s gonna get murdered.”
Back in the clubhouse, Brown said to Williams: “You hit the ball good, Ted, and I had good stuff out there today.”
“You’re darn right you had good stuff. Are you sure I hit the ball good?” Ted replied, the insecurity creeping back in.55 But when the writers came around looking for quotes, Williams put his bravado back on, saying he’d gotten good wood on the ball today and had a feeling he “might break loose tomorrow.”56
That night, Williams was again alone in his hotel room when Grantland Rice called and insisted they go out to dinner. Ted quickly agreed. He was glad to have company, so he took Rice and a writer pal that the columnist brought along to a restaurant in South Saint Louis that served a good steak. Rice, sensing the Kid’s vulnerability, tried to get Williams to relax by talking about hunting and fishing. But Ted, who had two glasses of wine with his meal, only wanted to talk about the seventh game. “I’d give anything in the world if we could win that game tomorrow,” he said.
“And if you could get a couple of home runs?” Rice asked.
“I wouldn’t care if I didn’t get a single, unless it could mean winning the game,” Williams replied. “Naturally I’d like to get four singles. Or four home runs. But if I struck out four times, I’d be happy—if we could just win. Tom Yawkey… Joe Cronin… all the fellows on the ball club… have waited so long for this. I hate like hell to think they might miss it.” Rice thought Ted meant he hated to think the Red Sox might lose because of him.57
It was sunny and warm the day of the deciding game, in the mid-seventies. Boo Ferriss was starting for the Red Sox; slight right-hander Murry Dickson for the Cardinals.
The Sox opened with a run in the top of the first. Wally Moses led off with a single, Pesky singled Moses over to third, and Dom DiMaggio hit a sacrifice fly to score Moses. Williams then hit a bomb more than four hundred feet to dead center, but the ball lingered in the air just long enough to allow center fielder Terry Moore, who had been positioned in right-center in the shift, to race over and make a beautiful catch.
Williams made a nice defensive play of his own in the bottom of the first, fielding Red Schoendienst’s leadoff single cleanly and throwing him out at second when he tried to leg out a double. But in the bottom of the second, with a runner on third and one out, Ted didn’t appear aggressive enough in left field, catching a fly ball of medium depth and not even attempting to throw the runner tagging at third out at the plate.
Leading off the fourth, with the score 1–1, Williams crushed another four-hundred-foot drive, to left-center, and this time left fielder Harry “the Hat” Walker raced over to make another fine catch, nearly colliding with Moore. “Ted turned disgustedly toward the bench, his cup of woe overflowing,” wrote Austen Lake in the American.58
The Cardinals got to Ferriss for two runs in their half of the fifth. Ted, batting with two outs and a runner on first in the sixth, flied to right.
The score remained 3–1, Saint Louis, until the Red Sox came to bat in the eighth inning. Utility infielder Rip Russell, pinch-hitting for catcher Hal Wagner, singled to lead off. Outfielder Catfish Metkovich then pinch-hit for pitcher Joe Dobson, who had replaced Ferriss in the fifth, and doubled. With runners on second and third and no one out, Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer pulled Murry Dickson and brought in Harry Brecheen—again. The Cat had pitched nine innings just two days earlier, after throwing another nine in the winning game 2.
Brecheen struck out Wally Moses and got Johnny Pesky to line out to right field. That brought Dom DiMaggio up, and Dyer went out to the mound to confer with Brecheen. First base was open, but DiMaggio knew he would not be intentionally walked with Williams on deck. Brecheen pitched carefully to DiMaggio, a right-handed batter, nibbling the corners, staying out of the heart of the strike zone. With the count three and one, Dom guessed Brecheen would come with his most effective pitch, a screwball on the outside corner. He guessed correctly and laced the ball off the top of the right-field fence, about two feet from a home run.
“When I got to first base, I thought if I could just get to third they’re going to be very careful, because Ted Williams is hitting behind me,” DiMaggio recalled. “If they make the slightest passed ball, I’m going to score. Well, that was a bad mistake, because as soon as I turned first base and dug for more, I popped my hamstring.”59
DiMaggio was lucky to hobble into second safely, much less reach third, but two runs had scored, tying the game. DiMaggio had to leave the game and was replaced by outfielder Leon Culberson.
Now Williams dug in against Brecheen for what was easily his most important at bat of the Series. The momentum was back with the Red Sox, and the go-ahead run was at second, waiting to be knocked in. It was a pivotal situation, a moment when the hitting star of the team was expected to deliver. But it didn’t happen. Ted merely popped up to Schoendienst to end the inning.
In the bottom of the eighth, the Cardinals quickly capitalized. Enos “Country” Slaughter led off with a single to center. Red Sox reliever Bob Klinger retired the next two batters and then faced Harry Walker. Slaughter noticed Klinger was not holding him close enough at first, so he took off for second with a big jump. Walker swung away and hit a soft liner that fell between Williams and Culberson, who had replaced DiMaggio in center. The ball landed just as Slaughter was reaching second, and he raced ahead, the play unfolding before him.
Culberson retrieved the ball, but without the sense of urgency that the situation required. Then, making things worse, his relay to Johnny Pesky lacked the requisite zip. Slaughter, well aware that Culberson’s arm was weaker than DiMaggio’s, had made up his mind even before he hit second that he was going to try and score, and he was flying around third by the time Pesky, in a play that lives on in baseball lore, hesitated slightly before firing to the plate. He was not nearly in time to nail the sliding Slaughter. “I’m the goat,” Pesky said afterward, bravely, and so it has played in the books, but in truth, Culberson shared much of the blame for Slaughter’s mad dash because of his lackadaisical approach to Walker’s hit—as did Klinger, for not holding Slaughter on first properly to begin with.
The Red Sox had their chances in the ninth when York and Doerr led off with consecutive singles, but the next three men went down quietly, and the C
ardinals won, 4–3. Ted never got a chance to redeem his eighth-inning failure.
It had been a thrilling World Series, but the blame game began immediately. The Globe’s Harold Kaese said the Sox were beaten by “the three W’s: World Series inexperience, winning the pennant too early, and Williams’s batting slump.” Cardinals shortstop Marty Marion was more specific: “We won the Series by stopping Williams,” Marion said, and that seemed to be the consensus in the Saint Louis clubhouse.60
Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer revealed to the Globe’s Roger Birtwell that his team had systematically drawn up a plan to stop Williams. Since it was a foregone conclusion that the Red Sox would win the pennant, the Cardinals had dispatched two of their scouts, Ken Penner and Tony Kaufmann, to follow Boston starting in August. Penner and Kaufmann were to gather daily information on all the Red Sox but pay particular attention to Williams. (National League president Ford Frick provided Saint Louis with money to hire another scout, and the Dodgers, after losing to the Cardinals in the playoffs, turned over their dossier on Williams, which corroborated what the others had found.)
“Williams was the key man,” said Dyer.61 “We came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was pitch him tight, but we needed more than that. We could not put every pitch to him in the same place.” Dyer, Penner, and Kaufmann concluded that Ted was fundamentally a guess hitter: he would study opposing pitchers closely and learn their tendencies in a given situation so that when he faced that circumstance, he would be looking for a certain pitch from a certain pitcher. So the Cardinals told their pitchers what Williams would be expecting from them in a variety of situations and then ordered them to keep him off balance by throwing something different.
The plan worked. Williams did not get one extra-base hit in the Series, scattering just five singles over five games and striking out five times for a .200 batting average. He did reach base five more times through walks. And a combination of good defense and the shift took away several potential extra-base hits on balls that Ted hit on the nose, but that was part of Dyer’s plan, too.
The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams Page 36