Splendid final act results in a classic victory

By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff, 07/11/99

He was born in 1918, in the dying days of one world war, and broke into the big leagues in 1939, as German tanks rolled across Europe in the first days of a second global conflict.

In the summer of 1941, Ted Williams was 22 years old. Within a year, he would be in the Marines, training to be a fighter pilot.

But first the skinny kid from San Diego would give an entire nation a reason to turn its worried eyes from the dark dispatches crawling across the front pages to follow his hitting exploits on the sports pages.

This was the summer Ted Williams hit .406. No one has hit over .400 since. And in the middle of that summer, on July 8, 1941, in Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Williams would crystallize the magnificence of that season into a single swing, delivering what is still considered the most dramatic moment in All-Star history.

With the American League trailing, 5-4, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Williams hit a walkoff, three-run home run off Chicago Cubs pitcher Claude Passeau, a drive that struck the football press box high in the right-field stands. It was the first All-Star Game to be won in the last inning.

There since have been others, including Johnny Callison's home run off Red Sox pitcher Dick Radatz in the 1964 game. But the homer struck by Teddy Ballgame still ranks No. 1.

And if Williams ever expressed more joy than he did during that crazy chicken dance he did while spinning around the bases, Dom DiMaggio hasn't seen it. "I've never seen him happier," DiMaggio said. "I was in the on-deck circle when Ted hit the home run. He was so excited. He was extremely jubilant, jumping up and down."

Bob Feller, the Indians' Hall of Famer, was the American League's starting pitcher that day. "I gave up a hit to the first guy [Stan Hack], retired the next nine, and took a shower," he said. "I was in street clothes, sitting on the bench next to Ted, in the ninth inning. We were just passing the time of day. He was anxious to get up there."

Williams almost didn't get the chance. The National Leaguers had taken a 5-2 lead when Arky Vaughan, the Pittsburgh Pirates' Hall of Fame shortstop who would hit just six home runs all season, hit his second homer of the afternoon, a two-run shot in the eighth. His first, also with a man aboard, had come an inning earlier.

"Arky Vaughan, he was the star of the game until Ted," said Bobby Doerr, Boston's Hall of Fame second baseman who was playing in his first All-Star Game and had taken the train to Detroit with Williams, his close friend.

"He had a very unusual stance, a real, real open stance," Doerr said of Vaughan. "He was a lefthanded hitter who could fly. But that day he hit two balls for home runs, and they weren't cheap."

DiMaggio, who entered the game as a replacement for rightfielder Jeff Heath, came to bat in the bottom of the eighth with his brother Joe on board with a double. Dominic scored his brother with a single, making the score 5-3. "That's the only time I can ever remember driving in Joe," DiMaggio said. "Even when we went to the [West] Coast to play exhibitions, I always batted leadoff and Joe hit third or fourth."

The AL Stars were still down two runs at the start of the ninth against Passeau, who five years later would start for the National League in the 1946 All-Star Game in Fenway Park.

"Passeau's a good friend of mine, a guy I knew in Des Moines, Iowa," Feller said. "The Indians wanted to sign him, and were supposed to scout him one afternoon, but they came to see me that morning and missed him. They never signed him.

"He was a sinkerball pitcher, a control pitcher. He didn't throw hard. He wasn't overpowering, but he had a great motion, like Eddie Lopat or Whitey Ford."

Passeau, who had entered the game at the start of the seventh, struck out Williams in the eighth. But with one out in the ninth, Ken Keltner, the Indians third baseman whose flashing glove would help end Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak nine days later, pinch hit and bounced a single off the glove of shortstop Eddie Miller.

Yankees second baseman Joe Gordon, who had replaced Doerr, also singled, and Cecil Travis of the Washington Senators walked to load the bases. The next two batters? Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

National League manager Bill McKechnie stayed with Passeau, and he appeared to have been rewarded for his faith when DiMaggio struck a double-play ball to Miller. But the relay throw by Brooklyn second baseman Billy Herman pulled first baseman Frank McCormick off the bag, and DiMaggio was safe.

"Joe really hustled down the line," Dominic DiMaggio said. "He wasn't known as a good runner, but he ran like hell."

Feller wouldn't hear of it. "It was a bad throw," he said. "What was he supposed to do, jog down the line?"

First and third, one run in, two outs, Williams at the plate. Dom DiMaggio, watching from the on-deck circle, saw the National League infield gather around Passeau. He figured they were planning to walk Williams, even if that meant putting the winning run on second base, and pitch to him.

"They had a big powwow for the longest time," said DiMaggio. "Maybe they were talking about having Ted go after a bad pitch. I was surprised they didn't walk Ted. But if they felt there was a bigger risk in loading the bases and pitching to me, then that makes me feel better."

Here, in Williams's own words to biographer John Underwood, is what happened next:

"Passeau was always tough. He helped pitch the Cubs to the pennant in 1945. He had a fast tailing ball that he'd jam a lefthand hitter with, right into your fists, and if you weren't quick he'd get it past you.

"He was a competitor, and I knew he wasn't going to walk me if he could help it, because in the eighth inning he had struck me out. I was late on that one, and as I came up in the ninth I said to myself, 'Damn it, you've got to be quicker, you've got to get more in front of this guy. You've got to be quicker.'

"He worked the count to 2 and 1, then he came in with that sliding fastball around my bat, and I swung. No cutdown protection swing, an all-out home run swing, probably with my eyes shut. My first thought was that I was late again ... But gee, it just kept going, up, up, way up into the right-field stands."

His teammates, including Feller in street clothes, gathered at the plate to greet him. "Our manager, Del Baker, kissed him in the clubhouse," Doerr said.

"I was just so happy," Williams told Underwood, "I laughed out loud."

Fifty-eight years later, the echoes of that laughter can still be heard.