OF GRACE AND ITS LIMITS :

The Man They Called 'The Kid' : Goodbye, Ted. (Geoffrey Norman, July 8, 2002, National Review)

My father took me to see one of the first games Ted Williams played after the Marine Corps had released him from active duty during the Korean War. My father was a Navy pilot, himself, and not really much of a baseball fan. He was a Ted Williams fan, though. There were a lot of ballplayers around for kids like me to idolize; players like Mickey Mantle, whom I had seen play. But there was a quality in Ted Williams, something greater than his athletic gifts, that grown men and fellow fighter pilots recognized and respected a lot more than home runs and batting titles.

He was good with kids - especially sick kids - and not so good with women. Next to hitting a baseball, what he liked to do most was fish. He was a legendary angler, among the pioneers of salt-water fly-fishing for bonefish and tarpon on the flats around the Florida Keys where his eyes and his reflexes paid off just like they had in the cockpit and on the baseball diamond. A Keys guide I know likes to tell stories about Williams and Jack Brothers, one of the men who frequently guided him. Brothers was a gifted guide, an Irishman of very little patience. When a client was having trouble getting the fly to a fish, Brothers would yell helpful things, such as, "Just throw the goddamned thing to him, will you." He was loud and profane and when he and Williams were in a boat together, "You could hear them all the way to Miami," my friend says. "And the language? The way those two talked, my God, it would melt the wax in your ears."

Fighter pilot, hall-of-fame baseball player, and world-class angler. It seems almost predictable that Williams would have had trouble staying married. Even grace has its limits.

Thought we were done with Ted, but Geoffrey Norman is a terrific private eye novelist who writes about sports and Vermont politics far too infrequently for National Review. This essay reminds me of the ESPN Outdoors fishing show where they took Ted Williams to Russia to salmon fish on the 50th anniversary of the year he hit .400. They took along Bobby Knight too. You could barely see them on screen because of the fog of testosterone they were exuding. The host looked scared.

MORE :
In answer to a question asked earlier today :
Say Hey, Kid! (Wired News, April 22, 1999)

For years, Joe DiMaggio held the title of baseball's greatest living player. As of 8 March that was no longer possible, so the Denver Post surveyed ex-players, managers, and sportswriters to anoint a successor. Their choice: Willie Mays. While a quick look at the stats is impressive (the Giants outfielder was the ultimate "five-tool" player: He could hit, hit for power, run, field, and throw), many believe what separated Mays from the others was his sheer baseball intelligence. In topping the survey, the Say Hey Kid beat out some pretty fair competition: Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, and Sandy Koufax, in that order.

I'm actually inclined to put Mike Schmidt on any list like this.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2002 6:50 PM