Williams’s talks about how he always wanted to be the greatest hitter of all time through out the book. He says that a man needs to have a goal for a day, a lifetime and his was to hear people say, “there goes Ted Williams the greatest hitter of all time”. Williams also talks about how his 22 years of playing the game were the best years of his life but they were also some of the unhappiest. Through out his time as a professional ball player, he felt that people didn’t like him, for reasons that he wasn’t sure of and for things that he brought on himself. He felt that when he was a young player he didn’t get the protection that he needed for a player in his position. He was just a small town kid from California before he moved to the east coast to play for the sox. He did however make some stops along the way, but only a few, and they were with small teams such as the first minor league team he played for in Minneapolis. He recalls these players from the minor leagues as being lovers of the game; they just played because it was all they knew. There were no big contracts to get in the way and most importantly no press to make him look bad in the eyes of the public.
Williams also talks a lot about his mother and father at the start of the story. He says that he was never close to his father until he started to make it to the Major Leagues. He said his Father was a quiet man that worked for him self in a photographic shop Until Ted’s teen years and then he moved onto the San Diego police. He always respected his father but was never really close with him at all. Williams says his mother was the one who took care of him most of the time. He says that she worked her whole life for the Salvation Army. She worked 50 hours a week at her income job and the rest of the time she took care of Ted, his Brother and their $4,000.00 home on Utah St. in San Diego. Ted said he played baseball ever since he can remember. He said, him and his friends would play from sun up to sun down or until the lights from the field were shut off. He says this is why he was so skinny his whole life; because he never ate when he was a kid all his did was play baseball.
I felt that the most respectable times in Ted Williams’s life outside of the game were when he enlisted in the Navy. Williams fought in not one but two wars during his time as a professional baseball player. He was a pilot for the Navy on both occasions. At the time he wasn’t the only player to become a pilot, there were others such as Johnny Pesky, Johnny Sain and Joe Cloeman. Ted says that knowing that other players were willing to fight for their country made him fell better about himself going to war both times.
Ted is also a very down to earth type of guy, he loved to play the game but he also loved to fish. When he was growing up his neighbor Eddie Collins taught him how to fish, Ted and Eddie would fish the rest of their lives together. Ted says he would pick Eddies brain to learn more about how to become better as a fisherman, a lot like he would quiz his teammates when he first joined the Red Sox. He says he would be a nuisance, he would ask players about hitting, such as Cronin and Cramer, he would ask Vosmik about this pitcher or that one. He was the kind of guy that new others could help him and he wasn’t shy about seeking that help.
The Story of Ted Williams life didn’t change how I felt about him as a player but it did change how I felt about him as a person. Ted Williams was not a showboat kind of player; he even talks about how much he hated those kind of guys. He fought for his country because it was the right thing to do at the time. He never complained about how much money he was making, he was more concerned with how to better his swing or his bat speed. Ted Williams is a model of what ball players should be all about, and he should be a reality check to the present day major league players.
