Tommy Lasorda, the former Dodgers manager and Ted pal who was on hand for the ceremony, witnessed John-Henry take advantage of the moment by demanding that his father be compensated for the event. Recalled Lasorda, “Doubleday really got upset. He said, ‘Listen, you young squirt!’ I asked Doubleday later what that was about, and he said, ‘The guy wanted me to pay an appearance fee!’ They were honoring Ted, for Chrissakes. Doubleday said to me, ‘That young punk! That SOB!’ ”26
Years later, asked about the incident, Doubleday said he didn’t recall clashing with John-Henry. “I don’t have a memory of it, but I was prejudiced against the kid beforehand. I’d heard so many bad things and that he was ruining Ted’s life.”27
In any case, as far as John-Henry was concerned, the Shea Stadium appearance was a mere dress rehearsal for what he hoped would unfold in Boston the following month. On July 13, the All-Star Game was to be held at Fenway Park. To celebrate the end of the century, Major League Baseball was planning to announce an All-Century Team. The thirty-odd living players chosen for the hundred-man team would be flown to Boston and introduced by actor Kevin Costner in what was intended to be a re-creation of Costner’s Field of Dreams leitmotif. Old-timers like Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Bob Feller, and Yogi Berra would join the current All-Stars, including Nomar Garciaparra, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Derek Jeter. But to anchor the show, the Red Sox knew they had to have Ted throw out the first ball. So the team, and the league, assigned Dan Duquette to line the Kid up. “He wasn’t sure if he could come because of his health,” recalled Duquette. “I kept talking to him. I said we’d get him a private plane. All his friends would be there. The fans wanted to see him. He had to come.”
Part of the problem was that it now was getting increasingly hard to persuade Ted to go anywhere. Claudia Williams said he would work himself into a tizzy before he was scheduled to appear somewhere. “Two or three weeks before an event, he’d be a bear. ‘This is the last fuckin’ event I’m ever gonna go to!’ But then after it was over he’d say, ‘Wasn’t that great, and wasn’t it great to see so-and-so?’ ” She said the buildup to an appearance became so fraught that John-Henry would only tell him about an event two or three days in advance to curb the Sturm und Drang.
Duquette wasn’t the only one having a hard time closing the sale. John-Henry wanted his father to go to Boston both to burnish the Williams legacy and to reap the attendant commercial benefits. John-Henry told Peter Sutton, a Boston lawyer who helped represent the family’s interests, that he had fielded offers from a few corporations to pay Ted six figures if he were willing to wear their corporate logos on the field. John-Henry and Duquette both asked Sutton to get involved in persuading Ted to come. “I called Ted, and when I mentioned that there were some corporations who wanted him to wear their logo, that didn’t interest him, but then he turned to John-Henry, who was in the room, and said, ‘If I went for you, would that help your company?’ John-Henry said yes. So Ted said, ‘I’ll go for my son.’ John-Henry and I laughed later and said, ‘Why didn’t we think of that before?’ ”28
Claudia said: “At key moments in Dad’s life, we got him to do things by making it a personal appeal. ‘Will you do this for us, Dad? Me and John-Henry.’ ” If the question was framed in personal terms, she said, Ted’s attitude was, “ ‘Well, if you put it that way, sure I will!’ To protect Dad in that context meant to make everyone think he was going to the All-Star Game to see all the old players and all that. Really he was doing it for John-Henry.”
It was unclear initially how Ted would demonstrate his support for Hitter.net, but John-Henry soon confided his plans to the telecom sales representative: Ted would be making a series of appearances in and around Boston leading up to the game. He would wear both a polo shirt and a baseball cap emblazoned with the Hitter.net logo at each event and, finally, at the game itself.
“I said to John-Henry, ‘There’s no way Ted will wear the hat at the game. The guy never tipped his hat to the fans when he played. What makes you think he’s gonna wear your baseball cap?’ ” the sales rep recalled. “And John-Henry said: ‘Oh, I’m going to get him to do it. Blood is thicker than baseball.’ ”
Ted arrived in Boston several days before the game and checked into a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel overlooking the Public Garden. Traveling with him were John-Henry, Anita, and a caretaker, Jack Gard.
The first event on the schedule was at the Jimmy Fund, where Ted was to meet Einar Gustafson, the sixty-three-year-old Maine truck driver who was the original “Jimmy,” the pseudonymous boy who had become the poster child of the charity back in 1948. Brian O’Connor, the Polaroid executive and Jimmy Fund board member, had arranged the event, which he knew would be a publicity bonanza for the charity: Williams, its chief benefactor, was meeting its original namesake.
But O’Connor had nearly failed to get John-Henry to agree to the visit. “He didn’t think it was practical,” O’Connor said. “He didn’t see the benefit of Ted going to the Jimmy Fund. He didn’t see what he would get out of it, so I laid the law down. I said there was more to this than monetary benefit. He just didn’t see that. He was a cold kid.”
As it turned out, John-Henry was delighted when a swarm of media turned up for the Ted and Jimmy show. “Where’s this guy, Jimmy?” Williams shouted on arriving at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, wearing a powder-blue Hitter.net shirt and a red Hitter.net baseball cap. Ted was taken to meet some dignitaries first, but eventually caught up with Gustafson. “How are you, Jimmy baby?” Ted fairly shouted. “This is the biggest thrill of my trip, right here! Geez, you look great! You’re an inspiration to everybody!” The two sat in rocking chairs and reminisced about the Jimmy Fund’s early days, and then Williams made the rounds to visit the sick kids as he used to do.
“Boy, oh, boy, what a good-looking kid you are!”
“How are you doing with school now?”
“I bet you’re not here too long.”29
The next day, Ted traveled to Loudon, New Hampshire, to serve as grand marshal for the Jiffy Lube 300, a stop on the NASCAR circuit at the New Hampshire International Speedway. Ted, dressed in his Hitter.net finery again, fit right in with the NASCAR drivers, all of whom looked like human billboards, hawking motor oil, soft drinks, car companies, and various tire brands.30
Williams was introduced to a loud ovation from a crowd that he was astonished to learn numbered fully ninety thousand. Then he was taken for a spin around the oval in a green Chevy. He shook hands with each of the forty-three drivers, did an interview with the television announcer, and, when the time came, took the microphone and said the magic words of car racing: “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Then John-Henry brought his father up close to the rail for a taste of the energy as the cars roared past.
On the day of the All-Star Game, Ted and John-Henry went to Fenway Park to go over the logistics of Williams’s appearance that night. His limousine would get a police escort from the hotel to the park and enter in a holding area underneath the center-field bleachers, off Lansdowne Street. Then, after the other old-timers were introduced, Ted would make his grand entrance from center field in a golf cart driven by Al Forester, a member of the Red Sox grounds crew who had been working for the team since 1957. Williams knew Forester well and had often used his name as an alias over the years when checking into hotels.
During this walk-through, John-Henry asked Brian O’Connor what he thought about Ted wearing the Hitter.net hat. “I said I thought it was more appropriate that he wear the Red Sox hat, but if Ted wants to wear it, that’s his business. Ted had told me during those few days, ‘I’m up here to promote Hitter, period.’ So the hat, in that context, made sense.”
Jack Gard, the caretaker on the trip, was repulsed, but not surprised, by the decision. “It was disgusting. That really made a lot of Ted’s friends back away because they could see the kid was exploiting him.”31
Gard and John-Henry had a tense relationship. In 1998, Gard had filed a
formal complaint with Florida’s Department of Children and Families alleging that Ted was being abused by his son. A department investigator responded by going to Ted’s house, accompanied by a sheriff’s detective. After questioning Williams, the official decided the complaint was unwarranted. Ted said he enjoyed working with his son and helping him out.32*
Not long before the start of the game, Ted’s limo, escorted by a squad of policemen on motorcycles, eased down Lansdowne Street, behind the Green Monster, and pulled to a stop at an entrance behind center field. Spotting Williams, a crowd surged around him, chanting, “Ted! Ted! Ted!”
New Hampshire state trooper Dave McCarthy sprang into action with his two friends Eric Goodman and Dan Wheeler, each dressed in Hitter.net polo shirts. They formed a circle around Ted and got him out of harm’s way into a garage area where Al Forester was waiting in his golf cart.
Williams climbed into the passenger seat and chatted with well-wishers, then Forester drove over behind a red curtain that was covering the open garage door. In a few minutes Ted would emerge from the curtain and make his entrance on the center-field warning track. The other members of the All-Century Team had already walked onto the field to be introduced.
As John-Henry waited, he took McCarthy aside. The son was having a last-minute twinge of doubt about putting his father in the Hitter.net hat. Someone from the Red Sox had brought a team hat for him to wear on the field. Ted was already wearing the company shirt. McCarthy thought the hat would be overkill. John-Henry said he still thought Ted should wear the Hitter hat, but was looking for reassurance.
McCarthy said this was the All-Star Game, a national showcase, and each player was expected to wear his team hat. If he put Ted in the Hitter.net hat, John-Henry should expect a heavy backlash. John-Henry noted that Carl Yastrzemski, Ted’s successor in left field for the Red Sox, had just been introduced as a member of the All-Century Team wearing no hat at all. Recalled McCarthy, “He said, ‘You know, millions of people are gonna be watching this on TV. It’s good for Dad and good for me and the company. Watch how many hits we’re gonna get on the website.’ ”33 So John-Henry put a sparkling white Hitter.net hat firmly on his father’s head and sent Ted out into the night, into the roaring crowd.
Forester took a slight left and headed his golf cart along the two right-field bull pens. He drove slowly to give the 34,187 adoring fans, and Williams himself, plenty of time to soak up the moment. Then he took a hard right at Pesky’s Pole, went past the Red Sox dugout, behind home plate, and past the visitors’ dugout. The American League and National League All-Stars all applauded as they stood along the baselines, as did the All-Century players. Ted waved the unfamiliar white hat early and often to the delirious crowd—hat tipping, after all, was now routine for him since he’d shattered his own taboo against the practice back in 1991.
Then Forester took a right around third base and headed to the pitcher’s mound, where Ted was engulfed by players young and old in a memorable tableau of spontaneous joy and adulation. The younger players seemed especially eager to bask in Ted’s aura, and he happily greeted some of his favorites, including Tony Gwynn, of the San Diego Padres, and Nomar Garciaparra. Mark McGwire pressed in for a blessing and Ted asked him if he had ever smelled burned wood when he fouled off a pitch. “All the time,” McGwire replied.
The players kept crowding around and wouldn’t leave, despite pleas from the public-address announcer to do so. “Everybody said no,” recalled Garciaparra. “Nobody wanted to leave.”
It was a magical moment, one of the greatest nights in Ted’s life. “I’m a rather emotional guy, and when I got up there, tears were coming out of Ted’s eyes,” said Larry Walker of the Colorado Rockies. “I kind of turned away. It almost brought tears to my eyes. The greatest player in the world is surrounded by more great players. It was outstanding to see.”
Finally Tony Gwynn helped Ted out of the golf cart and pointed him toward home plate so he could throw out the first ball. As Gwynn took firm hold of his left arm, Williams stood in front of the mound and tossed a ball in on the fly to Carlton Fisk, the former Red Sox catcher. A giddy Fisk then jogged out to hug Ted.34
After the ceremony, Al Forester drove Ted up to luxury box L-22, the Polaroid suite, overlooking left field, which had been rented by Gerry Rittenberg for four days during the All-Star festivities. Rittenberg was there with his father and two sons. John-Henry was there, thrilled, along with Anita. Actor Matt Damon came by with his father. The four pilots who had buzzed Fenway in their jets during the pregame flyover dropped by to pay their respects, and Ted quizzed them on what altitude they’d been cleared for. The pilots said twelve hundred feet.
“You weren’t at twelve hundred feet, you were at seven hundred feet, right?” Ted said.
“You’re right, sir,” the pilots replied sheepishly. Then they talked in detail about the specs of the jets: their engine thrust, how fast they could go, and how they compared to those Williams had flown in Korea.35
Predictably, John-Henry took a shellacking in the press for his Hitter.net play. Even some of his close friends and his sister Claudia questioned the move. But Claudia said her father himself later told her he’d been all in. “Dad said, ‘I wouldn’t go out on the goddamn field if I wasn’t wearing the hat.’ ”
However, at Williams’s next public appearance, that October—a cameo at the second World Series game in Atlanta, which John-Henry did not attend—Ted took the field in his Red Sox hat.
30
Spiraling
Ted’s joy at the reception he received at the All-Star Game was short-lived, tempered by the death, that same month, of his longtime faithful dog, the Dalmatian named Slugger.
Williams had grown so attached to the dog that he had told many of his friends that he wanted to die before Slugger did. He’d even said so publicly. “I’ve got a dog I absolutely love,” Ted told the Boston Globe in 1998, just a year earlier. “I asked that guy in heaven to drop me dead before my dog. That’s how much I love my dog.”1
But Slugger had already been operated on for cancer, and now, at the age of thirteen, was struggling with kidney failure. And so the local vet, Charles Magill, who had been caring for Slugger for several years, was summoned. The dog was lying on his bed in the garage when Magill put him down.
Williams “was very stoic but quite verbal about his attachment to the dog,” Magill recalled. “ ‘Dogs are a lot more loyal than people and a lot nicer,’ he said.”
When talking with friends or his caretakers about his hope that he would die before his dog, Ted would usually go on to say that he and Slugger would both be cremated and their ashes tossed in the sea. That’s what he told his My Turn at Bat ghostwriter John Underwood five months after Slugger’s death, when Underwood visited with his wife just before Christmas. “Once, Ted paused in front of a picture of Slugger and said, ‘Yeah, he’s dead, and I’m going to have my ashes mixed with his and thrown out to sea,’ ” Underwood said. “We have a videotape of this.”2
Three years later, after Ted died, Magill was shocked to read a quote from John-Henry in the local paper in which the younger Williams said that he had buried Slugger’s ashes in Ted’s backyard. Actually, John-Henry had never picked up the dog’s ashes, and Magill still had them. “Ted loved Slugger so much,” Magill said. “I think John-Henry may have been a little jealous of the dog.”
Magill contacted Ted’s estranged daughter, Bobby-Jo, and gave the ashes to her.3
Since John-Henry’s arrival in Citrus Hills in 1994, he had narrowed Ted’s circle of friends to those he deemed necessary or would never dare exclude, such as old Red Sox pals Dominic DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr. John-Henry could monitor who was calling the house from his office in Hernando, and he decided that certain calls and messages for Ted would go undelivered and thus unanswered.
“Ted had a huge network of friends from all walks of life,” said Rich Eschen, who helped with the memorabilia business in Hernando. “Military friends, baseball friends,
local schmucks, and he loved us all. I think John-Henry resented that. I think he wanted that attention. When John-Henry came down here, some of the people that Ted used to consider friends felt shut out. Friends of Ted’s for fifty years who would come visit and shoot it with him—that all stopped around ninety-four.”4 Mail stacked up, and many Christmas cards and birthday wishes to Williams remained unopened or never given to him. As a result, Ted gradually felt more isolated. Buzz Hamon, a former director of Williams’s museum, said Ted would call him and complain that he felt like a prisoner.5
Ted used the same word—prisoner—with two closer friends: Elden Auker, his former Red Sox teammate, and Tommy Lasorda. “John-Henry wouldn’t let anyone get near Ted,” Lasorda said. “Ted said to me, ‘I’m like a prisoner. I can’t get to see any of my friends.’ He was in that house, and he couldn’t get out. He couldn’t do anything about it. I think I was one of the few he let in at all times. Me and Elden Auker.”6
In March of 2000, Lasorda arranged to spring Ted from his house and fly him over to Vero Beach in a private plane to watch a Dodgers spring training game. Williams met with the Dodgers players in the clubhouse before the game and seemed offended when only about a dozen of them said they had read his book The Science of Hitting. “There are, what, sixty of you in this room, and only twelve of you have read that book? That’s horseshit!” Ted said as the Dodgers laughed.7
In the stadium, Williams was introduced to the crowd, and Lasorda, mindful of Ted’s failing vision, supplied a pitch-by-pitch account of the game as Auker sat next to them and looked on. “Afterwards, Ted said to me, ‘Tommy, you made me the happiest guy in the world taking me down here today,’ ” Lasorda said.
The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams Page 91