“You know what, Dad? You just made that bat worth ten thousand dollars,” he snapped at his father.
“I don’t care; he’s an old ballplayer,” Ted replied. “You know, I hope he can get fifty thousand for it. He needs the money. I’ll do anything for an old ballplayer.”
When John-Henry persisted in arguing, Ted cut him off. “It’s my signature. Fuck you!”
Ted would continue to sporadically end-run John-Henry and give autographs to whomever he wanted to. When Williams appeared at a memorabilia show in Atlantic City in November of 1996, a show that featured all the living players who had hit five hundred or more home runs, Brothers was with him, along with Dave McCarthy, the New Hampshire state trooper, and some of McCarthy’s friends who had served as Williams’s informal security detail on trips. Ted didn’t really need the security. It was just an excuse for McCarthy and his pals to hang out with their hero, and they did so at their own expense, without being paid. One of their perks was that Ted would give them memorabilia with his signature. “But these guys also knew that John-Henry would go nuts whenever Ted gave an autograph away, so one of them would be watching the hallway in the hotel on the lookout for the kid,” Brothers said. “Ted would be signing stuff for these four or five cops. It wasn’t a lot, ten or twelve pictures and whatever. But even Ted knew the kid was gonna be furious about him signing. So one of the guys in the hallway said, ‘Here comes the kid, here comes the kid!’ And me and Dave were throwing stuff under the bed to try and hide it from John-Henry.”23
Ted’s daily routine was to wake up each morning around 6:30. He’d sit in his room and talk to Brothers or Carter, maybe watch some news on TV. Then he liked to make phone calls. John-Henry often got the first call, but he hated to get up early and generally wouldn’t answer the phone, irritating Ted. (“I’m fuckin’ up, goddamn it, get your ass up!” he would bark into his son’s answering machine.) Then he might call Joe Camacho, his bench coach with the Senators, Dominic DiMaggio, Joe Davis, or old friend and divorce lawyer Daisy Bisz. Bob Breitbard would usually be phoned later in the morning because of the time difference in San Diego.
After the calls came the food. Breakfast had long been Williams’s favorite meal, and it continued to be a high point of his day. Ted loved eggs and sausage and was very particular about his grapefruit, which had to be cut just right and eaten last to “cleanse the palate.” (Williams would force visitors to eat grapefruit even if they didn’t like it.)
There would be physical therapy in Ocala three days a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a personal trainer would come to the house a few other days. When Brothers started, Ted would usually stop at the Grand Slam office in Hernando on the way back from physical therapy and sign for an hour or so. John-Henry might have some special items for Ted to sign on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To further maximize production, John-Henry enlisted Carter and Brothers to get Ted to sign routine items, like photos, any time they could around the house. He put them on an incentive plan, saying each man would get fifty cents for every signature they could get Ted to produce. Carter balked, telling John-Henry it was a conflict of interest for him and Brothers. They were supposed to be taking care of Ted. The staff at the office was supposed to be working with him on signatures. But John-Henry insisted, so George and Frank went along, though they were soon miffed because John-Henry rejected half the signatures that they turned in as not good enough.
Judy Ebers, forty-six, worked for Ted for about eight years starting in 1994. Nominally a cleaning woman, she would fill in for Carter and Brothers in caring for Ted and became a soul mate of sorts for Williams: seeing her in the morning, he would announce, “Forget the cleaning,” and ask her to come sit at his bedside, and they would talk for hours. He told her about how his father had all but ignored him growing up but then tried to cash in when Ted signed his first pro contract; about his crash landing in Korea; even about his date with the actress Julie Adams in 1954. At one point, suffering from a serious cold, Ted told Judy, “You know, if you weren’t married, you could be my wife.” Replied Ebers, “We’d kill each other, but what a ten minutes it would be.”
In fact, Ebers was happily married and the mother of five children. Williams would visit her house regularly and ask Judy’s husband, Herb, to sneak him a martini. Twice a year, Judy and her husband would host a party she called Sullivan County Days, named after her home county in the Catskills region of New York. They would have about fifty people over, mostly all Yankees fans, but Ted would be the star of the show, of course. (“They may be Yankee people,” Williams told her, “but they’re good people.”)
Before long, Williams was letting his inhibitions down with Judy. One day, when she was filling in for Frank Brothers while he ran an errand, Ted wandered into the living room stark naked and announced he wanted to take a shower. She thought this either represented the dementia in fuller bloom, an immortal’s sense of entitlement, or both. She told him he’d have to wait until Brothers returned.
Ebers watched John-Henry and Ted clash frequently over signing autographs. She thought it was a case of an ill-equipped son trying to exploit his famous father. “John-Henry just did things the wrong way. He was trying to be a businessperson in a little kid’s brain. Ted was an old man who didn’t need to be doing this. He wasn’t stupid. He knew his son wasn’t making anything of himself—just using his name.”
Sometimes, when Ted argued with his son, he would yell out “Wettach!” in frustration. That was Dolores’s maiden name, and Williams was linking his son’s shortcomings to her. “She’s fucking crazy, and so is he!” Ted would shout.24 “Something was wrong with the way John-Henry was raised,” Ebers said. “When he grew up, his father was on the road, and his mother was nuts. How Dolores got along in public life without being certified I don’t know.”
Besides memorabilia, John-Henry, armed with his power of attorney, was also frequently having Ted sign various documents. Ted, his vision virtually gone, would ask what he was signing, but John-Henry would usually say it was just routine business and not give a specific reply.
“John-Henry was a wheeler-dealer, and Ted was mainly in oblivion to everything that went on—he really didn’t know what he was signing,” said Ebers, who quit for a time after John-Henry installed surveillance cameras throughout the house.25
Claudia Williams said the cameras were installed after the baseball that Babe Ruth had autographed for Ted was stolen along with a pair of boxing gloves that Muhammad Ali had given Williams, inscribed TO THE GREATEST FROM THE GREATEST. But the cameras caused resentment among the help, whose integrity was clearly being questioned.
Caretaker John Sullivan—like Carter, Brothers, and Ebers—witnessed regular flare-ups between Ted and John-Henry over signing memorabilia, but one argument stands out in his memory. Brothers and John-Henry had designed a device to facilitate Ted’s signing of bats. The bat would be clamped in, and there was an armrest so he could sign it at just the right angle, without strain. “There were two of these so-called bat carts or racks to place bats in, and they had a chemical that was used to wipe off a bad signature,” Sullivan recalled. “One day John-Henry was pushing Ted to sign, kind of getting on his case. Ted reacted by defying him. Once, Ted said, ‘That’s enough. Not now. I’m not gonna sign.’ John-Henry took that bat rack and threw it across the room, and bats flew all over.”
Sullivan, a former Marine who was in his sixties, thought that as Ted continued to fail he was growing more despondent. Religion was hardly any consolation, recalled Sullivan. “Ted would gaze heavenward and say, ‘You black, bearded, Jew son of a bitch and your whore mother.… I don’t believe in you anyway.’ ”26
Several of those who worked for Ted said they witnessed John-Henry occasionally mock his father behind his back, imitating his strained gait and smirking.
“I was in the kitchen one day; Ted was walking out to the car, and he kind of teetered on his feet,” recalled Marion Corbin, who worked part-time for Williams as a cook. “H
e couldn’t see. He was staggering. His son mocked him. It made me so mad I like to spit. The first time he did it, Ted said, ‘What are you doing, John-Henry?’ He said, ‘I’m just playing.’ John-Henry was walking like a drunk across the garage. He didn’t know he was going to be seen. And another time at the dinner table, we saw him shake his fist behind Ted’s head. He was a disrespectful, ugly man.”
Marion also said she saw John-Henry forge Ted’s name on memorabilia. “He’d be sitting and signing Ted’s name. Sometimes he did it in the house, and sometimes he did it in his office.… He had his daddy’s signature down pat. He signed correspondence for Ted, and I saw him do this on pictures and balls. He’d tell Ted they had to sign stuff, and what Ted didn’t finish, John-Henry did. I wouldn’t want to buy anything, because you wouldn’t know they weren’t forged.”27 Her husband, Jim Corbin, said that he once saw John-Henry sign his father’s name on several bats at the museum and on shirts at Williams’s house. “He didn’t seem to care if I was watching,” Corbin said. “I saw him do that at least a half dozen times.”28
Anita Lovely, however, doubted that John-Henry ever signed Ted’s name on memorabilia. “I can assure you that from my experience… he never, ever, produced autographs,” she said. “We really guarded that—the authenticity of his dad’s signature so the public could understand that all of those pieces were authentically signed by his dad.” But she could not be 100 percent certain: “Could John-Henry have done something like that? Possibly. He could have. But he wouldn’t say something like that to me if he did that. I don’t think he would, anyway.”29
Claudia Williams, who returned from Germany in 1996 and settled in Saint Petersburg, some seventy-five miles south of Citrus Hills, was absent when most of the memorabilia signings took place. But she said the caretakers’ criticisms should be viewed skeptically. “They wanted to hate John-Henry and didn’t approve of what he was doing to our father,” Claudia insisted. “They would say, ‘He’s going to die anyway. Let him eat what he wants to eat.’ Or, ‘He’s too old. He doesn’t need to sign anymore.’ What they failed to recognize was, Dad wanted to live longer. He wanted to sign. He wanted to do stuff for John-Henry. It made him feel alive. He no longer cared about making money for himself. He wanted to make money to help John-Henry succeed.” Not surprisingly, Claudia felt that John-Henry was right to take action against any caretaker insolence: “When things got out of hand, out of control, John-Henry didn’t like how it was going, and he fired some of these caretakers, like any good employer would. They were disgruntled. And they decided, ‘How can we get back at him? Let’s say something mean, say something wrong. Base it loosely on fact; maybe something that might have happened, but let’s turn it around and twist it.’ ”
Ted now left his house less often because of his failing health, but in December of 1995, he flew up to Boston for a major honor: a $2 billion tunnel running under Boston Harbor and connecting Logan Airport to the Massachusetts Turnpike extension was being dedicated in his name.
Williams was driven through the tunnel for the official inaugural ride in a 1966 Thunderbird convertible by then-governor Bill Weld, a Republican. In the backseat were two former Democratic governors who also had had a hand in the project, Michael Dukakis and Ed King, though they despised each other and barely spoke, even on this joyful occasion. With John-Henry at his side, Ted appeared before a crowd of about three thousand fans, politicians, and hard hats still putting the finishing touches on the tunnel. In the winter chill, Ted, walking with a cane, was dressed in a who-gives-a-shit blue knit ski cap and Windbreaker that unceremoniously said RANGER BOATS, FLIPPIN, ARK. on its back.
“Certainly, the last few weeks, I thought of me being in front of all you Bostonians,” Williams said. “And everyplace I go, they’re waving at me, sending out a cheer… and I can’t help but keep thinking, Geez, for people to be so… nice and respectful and enthused… I’ve only seen that when somebody looks like they are gonna die—or they are gonna die. And I’d just like to say this one thing today.… I’m a long way from that.”30
But excursions like that one were increasingly the exception. Ted mostly stayed at home, ever more reliant on John-Henry, Anita, and the caretakers. Once Claudia arrived on the scene, she began spending more time with her father. From her new base in Saint Petersburg, where she was competing in triathlons under a sponsorship, Claudia would get on her bicycle and bike the seventy-five miles to Citrus Hills, stay for the weekend, then bike back again.
“I think it impressed him that I could do that,” she said. “I would get off the bike and just go right back—cleats and all, go right back into the bedroom—crawl right into bed, and give him a big kiss. He’d be like, ‘Jesus Christ, you stink! Go take a shower.’ But he was just so happy to see me.”
Claudia had been away for years, and now she was acutely aware that her father was getting old. “Dad was like a grandfather to me, not really a dad,” she said. “We skipped generations. When we were together, we were all like kids, playing. Dad was never the dad to say, ‘Did you do your homework?’ It was playtime, and the happier you were, the better. But if you showed any sign of weakness, it infuriated him.”
Now, though, she was pulled into his inner circle with John-Henry. “I was finally included in the group, and we became the Three Musketeers. At breakfast he’d be saying, ‘Where’s John-Henry?’ It was John-Henry, John-Henry, John-Henry. Then finally it was Claudia, too.”
Claudia had been largely uninterested in her father’s memorabilia ventures, but now that she was back in the United States she began to consider her own finances. She was comforted by two thousand signed bats that Ted had given her, which were in storage as a nest egg. Furthermore, Ted planned to either sell or give the balance of the shares in Ted Williams Family Enterprises to her and her brother, with John-Henry (who had already convinced his father to sell him a small stake) retaining the controlling interest.
Eric Abel drafted an agreement on behalf of Ted and John-Henry calling for Claudia to receive 45 to 50 percent of Ted Williams Family Enterprises in return for the company acquiring her two thousand signed bats. Since he was representing Ted and John-Henry, Abel advised Claudia to get her own lawyer to review the agreement and protect her interests. But when Claudia’s lawyer questioned the fairness of the deal, Ted went ballistic. “He thought he was helping his daughter out, and now she goes and gets an attorney and they’re demanding things,” Abel said. “Ted thought it was disloyal or ungrateful. So he said fuck it, and John-Henry ended up with the whole thing.”
Claudia was upset and even called Bobby-Jo to commiserate, apparently in an attempt to mount a sisterly alliance of convenience against Ted and John-Henry. Bobby-Jo was surprised to get the call and thought Claudia was nervy asking for her help, given that they had no relationship to speak of. “There wasn’t anything I could have done about that anyway,” Bobby-Jo said.
So Claudia watched her brother run the memorabilia business from a certain remove, but she was home one weekend when John-Henry made an unusual request of his father. Ted flew a ten-by-fifteen-foot American flag in front of his house. The flag had grown a bit tattered, and a new one had been ordered. Rather than just throw the old flag away, John-Henry decided it would be a good idea for Ted to sign it, then they would sell it on eBay.
“We took this Old Flag and decided to give it a place in History forever,” John-Henry wrote in his online sales pitch. “Ted Williams signed it in blue Sharpie on a white stripe in big bold letters. This is the only flag of its kind in existence. The other flags were not as lucky as this one.”
The flag drew twenty-eight bids and sold for $3,050.31
The press found out, and a mild stir ensued. Claudia said no one thought the issue through. She initially thought it was a great idea until she was told that many would see it as exploitive. “After we decided to get a new flag, we brought the old one into the house, laid it on the table, and John-Henry said, ‘Dad, what do you think about signing this?’ He
was like, ‘Get a pen!’ Thought it was a great idea. None of us, including Dad—the man who served his country twice—said, ‘Don’t disfigure this flag.’ ”
By now, Eric Abel had emerged as a key figure in the Williams circle, a consigliere to both Ted and John-Henry. He extricated the family from the Upper Deck contract after both sides became dissatisfied with the deal, prepared the power of attorney that empowered the son to take legal control of his father’s affairs, and rewrote Ted’s will. Along the way, Abel served as a right hand and eventually best friend to the isolated and untrusting John-Henry.
Abel could sense that Ted, in his weakened condition, wasn’t happy with his lot, so one day, when they were alone, he asked Williams if he was tired of living. “He said he was tired of taking these goddamned pills, but no, he wasn’t tired of living. And he said, ‘We’ll not talk about that again.’ The man was happy for every day he lived. But he had dignity. And there were times when he had his fill of being told what to do.”
Abel found himself occasionally yanked out of the legal arena into the nitty-gritty task of helping convince Williams to take his daily batch of pills.
“John-Henry would say, ‘I’m leaving this fuckin’ place if you don’t take the pills,’ ” Abel recalled. “Ted would say, ‘Go ahead!’ Then I would come up and talk him into it. He was used to total control. Fame gave him that. I don’t know if spoiled was the word, but that was the way he was used to doing things.”
Abel and John-Henry would sometimes stay up all night playing video games. Anita Lovely disapproved of these marathon sessions and worried that they underscored John-Henry’s immaturity. Abel also helped facilitate Ted’s interest in placing the occasional sports bet, usually on college football, boxing, or the horses. Abel’s brother Ken, a quadriplegic, was a bookie and happy to take Ted’s money. “Ted had some tipster out of New York, and he would check that information with Ken,” said Eric. “Once, they bet on a horse named the Splendid Splinter.”
The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams Page 88