eddy Ballgame might as well be Teddy All-Star Game.
Ted Williams was looking mighty splendid to Joe DiMaggio (right) after his ninth-inning homer jolted the NL in the 1941 game. (AP file photo)
|
He enjoyed the greatest individual performance in the game's history, bashing two homers and going 4 for 4 with a walk and five RBIs in a 12-0 victory in his hometown park in 1946.
Williams hit the most dramatic home run in All-Star history, a three-run, game-winning blast in the ninth at Tiger Stadium in the mythic summer of 1941.
In another emotional moment, he threw out the first ball at the 1953 All-Star Game at Crosley Field in Cincinnati just four days after his discharge from the US Marines. The Red Sox brought him out of retirement to perform the same service when the All-Star Game was last held in Boston in 1961, and he'll do it again tomorrow night when the baseball world descends on Olde Fenway one last time before this century is done.
Since the All-Star Game was invented by a Chicago sportswriter in 1933, Ted Williams has probably participated in more All-Star moments than any other ballplayer. And not all the moments were good. In 1950, Ted broke his left elbow when he crashed into a fence in Chicago.
''I always liked the All-Star Game because I got a chance to see all the pitchers,'' Williams says today. ''I wanted to see the best pitchers, and the best pitchers in the league with the best records were there, and I got a big kick out of that. I enjoyed that. Sometimes I got struck out, but I enjoyed being there.''
Perfect. Never content to be the best hitter, Williams liked the All-Star Game because it was a chance to do more research on the genre of humans he hated most: major league pitchers. The All-Star Game was one-stop shopping for Ted - a chance to see all the best hurlers in one place on one day.
As Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle owned the World Series, Ted Williams owned the All-Star game. In 18 midsummer classics, Williams hit .304 (14 for 46) with four homers and 12 RBIs.
He doesn't remember throwing out the first ball before the boring (a 1-1, rain-stopped tie) Fenway All-Star Game of 1961. ''I thought my kid did that,'' Williams says. ''That was my first year after I stopped playing, and I did a lot of fishing and worked with Sears, Roebuck, and I was traveling around to boat factories and engine factories.''
Tomorrow, he does it again.
''My arm's about the same,'' he says. ''Not very good. But certainly going back to Boston will be big. There's a bunch of memories. I think the All-Star Game is a special time for any ballplayer. I think it ought to be. You're there with all the great players. They've been through the mill. They talk the same language.''
Williams, now 80, has suffered a couple of strokes and a broken hip in recent years. His vision is not good and he gets around either in a wheelchair or with a walker. But he's still in demand for ceremonial tosses. Last year he threw first balls in Florida and San Diego, and just last month Ted lobbed a short strike to Mike Piazza before a Red Sox-Mets game at Shea Stadium.
Ted didn't make the All-Star team his rookie season. Boston's representatives in the 1939 game were Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Joe Cronin (all Hall of Famers), and Roger Cramer. Ted's first All-Star Game was a 4-0 loss to the Nationals in St. Louis in 1940. He hit a couple of feeble grounders, was replaced by Hank Greenberg, and vowed to do better next time.
In the legendary summer of '41, Williams was en route to his .406 season and DiMaggio was in the midst of his 56-game hitting streak when the All-Star Game came to Detroit. At the break, DiMaggio's streak was at 48 games and Williams was batting .405.
Ted drove in the American League's first run with a fourth-inning double, but the AL trailed, 5-3, and Williams was due up sixth in the bottom of the ninth.
Frankie Hayes popped up to start the inning, and Williams figured he'd never get to bat. But Ken Keltner reached on an infield single, then Joe Gordon singled, and Cecil Travis walked. Joltin' Joe was next and he hit what should have been a game-ending double play, but a sliding Travis disrupted Billy Herman at second and Herman's throw to first was wide of the base. Keltner scored (he would later be the man who stopped Joe D's streak), and that brought Ted to the plate with two on, two out, and the AL trailing, 5-4.
Cub righty Claude Passeau, who had fanned Williams in the eighth, was on the mound. Ted fouled the first pitch, then took two balls. On Passeau's fourth offering, an inside slider, Williams launched a game-winning, three-run bomb into the stands in right. This homer has been replayed about 10 million times and it's impossible to forget Williams's sheer joy as he clapped his hands and jumped around the bases. He was 22 years old.
Dominic DiMaggio, Ted's teammate and Joe's brother, had a great view from the on-deck circle. ''Those two guys were the two main guys in the victory of the American League over the National League,'' he said. ''Joe beat out that hard grounder that gave Ted a chance to come to bat. They had a powwow on the mound and I was in the on-deck circle, thinking they'd walk Ted to get to me. It was the only thing to do. But they pitched to Ted and, oh God, it was only a matter of if that ball was going to stay in the park. Ted was prancing up and down. I can't ever remember seeing him so happy.''
Today, Ted downplays the event as merely ''one of my highlights,'' but in his autobiography he refers to the home run as ''the most thrilling hit of my life.'' It's still considered baseball tragedy that Williams's greatest hardball moments came in All-Star Games, while Joe DiMaggio is remembered for winning World Series.
Ted went 1 for 4 in the 1942 All-Star Game at the Polo Grounds, then joined the massive war effort for the next three years. In 1946, he returned to the All-Star Game with his tour de force at Fenway Park. Williams's Fenway All-Star homer off Rip Sewell's famous eephus pitch is still one for the ages.
Ted's next All-Star moment of any significance was at Comiskey Park in 1950 when, in pursuit of a Ralph Kiner fly ball, he slammed into fence and broke his elbow in the first inning of a 4-3 NL win.
Almost a half-century later, Williams has complete recall of the play:
''It was a fly ball to left-center. Kiner hit it and his ball always kept carrying and carrying. I was running and running, and I was going to get it, but I didn't realize how close I was. I got the ball and turned around and there's the fence right there. I turned around and tried to hold myself off, but I broke my left elbow. I didn't hit the wall that hard, but I was like this [gestures with elbow extended as if to break a fall] when I hit it and I just crushed my left elbow.
''I played two or three more innings. I put the American League ahead two innings later. It hurt me the rest of the year; in fact, they weren't even sure I was going to play anymore. Doc [Jack] Fadden was a tremendous trainer and he knew exactly what I had done and he said, `This is pretty serious.'''
''That fence was all concrete,'' remembered Dom DiMaggio.
It was a stunning development. Williams had always insisted it was a bad idea to crash into walls while playing defense. To get hurt in a game that didn't count in the standings seemed even more wasteful.
Ted stayed in the game for eight innings. Casey Stengel was the AL manager and he kept checking to see if the slugger was OK. Williams made another good catch on a second Kiner fly ball and hit his own fly ball to the warning track. Ted's fifth-inning single put the AL ahead, 3-2, but after he fanned in the eighth, he was replaced by Dom DiMaggio. Two days later, Williams underwent surgery that sidelined him for two months and crushed Boston's pennant hopes.
Williams had 25 homers at the All-Star break, but would hit only three more that year. He played in just 89 games in 1950, but still managed 97 RBIs. To this day, he says his elbow was never again right and he was never the same hitter.
Ted was in Korea, serving as John Glenn's wingman during the 1952 All-Star Game, but returned from war in time to throw out the first ball at the midsummer festival in '53. Three years later, he hit his fourth and final All-Star homer, a shot off Warren Spahn in a 7-3 AL loss at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Williams was one of four players who homered in the game, a lofty group that included Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Mickey Mantle.
By 1958, Ted was still an All-Star, but no longer a starter. His last All-Star appearance was in 1960 when he hit a seventh-inning pinch single off Cardinals righthander Larry Jackson at Yankee Stadium. His next All-Star moment will be tomorrow night.
