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Williams an unquestioned hit with him
By Peter Gammons, 7/7/2002
''Maybe I'd be out in a trout stream, ziiiiiiiiiip, casting the perfect cast,'' he said. ''Or maybe ... CLAP ... the crack of the bat.'' When the interview was over, he winked and said, ''As for that movie, just make sure it's called, `The Best Goddamn Hitter Who Ever Lived.''' They've never made a movie based on his life, but still, Williams got what he always wanted. When he walked toward a San Diego playground before the 1992 All-Star Game in his hometown, a man stopped his car, turned to his son, and said, ''There goes the best hitter who ever lived.'' It was his mantra, and it was repeated at Fenway Park in 1999, when surrounded by Henry Aaron and Mark McGwire, Tony Gwynn and Willie Mays, and the rest of the All-Century Team, when Gwynn spoke those very words. ''There's a special language between hitters,'' said Gwynn. ''So Ted and I have become very close. But it's a one-way thing. I do the listening, although he asks me more questions about hitting than anyone I've ever known.'' He was a man whom John Wayne and Robert Ryan played at being, John Glenn's copilot in Korea, the last man to bat .400. He also batted .388, at the age of 39 in 1957, without one infield hit. So was that his greatest hitting achievement? ''Nah,'' he said. ''That was the year my bat slowed down, but the league didn't adjust to me. I was late on a lot of balls and got hits to center and left-center. They were out of position a lot. No big deal.'' No big deal? .388? He was too stubborn to use the whole field, but his patience and simple creed - ''Get a good pitch to hit'' - defines all the plate discipline that marks the Yankees and A's of this era. He loved hitting, its science, all its attributes. When I was driving Williams and Wade Boggs to Clearwater, Fla., for a dinner of hitting talk with Don Mattingly in spring training 1986, Williams asked Boggs, ''Have you ever smelled the bat burning?'' ''What are you talking about?'' Boggs replied. Williams didn't answer. At dinner, Williams repeated the question to Mattingly. ''People think I'm crazy, but yes,'' replied Mattingly. ''It takes a perfect rising, four-seam fastball, a perfect swing, a foul straight back ... and you can smell the burn of the seams and the bat.'' ''Only the guys who whip that lumber have smelled it,'' said Williams. When all those great players surrounded Williams at Fenway at the '99 All-Star Game, he motioned for McGwire to come to him. He asked the same question. After the game, McGwire repeated the story of how Williams called him over and asked him if he had ever smelled the bat burning. ''I told him I had,'' said McGwire. ''But can you believe that he knew who I am?'' ''What are you talking about, smelling the bat burning?'' asked an All-Star teammate. That teammate didn't understand that Williams, McGwire, and Mattingly speak a language of their own, the language of the gods. In 1991, ESPN producer Debbi Wrobleski and I were trying to do an interview with Williams concerning the 50th anniversary of .406 and other subjects. At 6 a.m. one day, the phone rang. ''So,'' boomed the voice on the other end. ''when the hell are you coming down here?'' He said he had no more than 30 minutes, and finally had to leave for a court date after the interview had run more than 100 minutes. He recounted why he wouldn't sit out the second game after passing .400, and the best righthanded and lefthanded pitchers he ever faced were Bob Lemon and Herb Score. When he was finished, he called me into the kitchen. There, he'd set up six glasses with ice, two plates of nachos, and cheese and crackers for the six people in our crew. ''They probably got tired and hungry and thirsty listening to my B.S.,'' he said. In snapshots, he could be one of the warmest men on the planet, as he was the first time I met him doing a sidebar at a Senators-Red Sox game in 1970 as a young reporter. After an hour in his office, he said, ''Kid, you're OK. You like this game.'' No one loved baseball players more than Williams. At that dinner with Boggs and Mattingly, he asked each who was the toughest lefthander they had faced. Both answered Mark Langston and Matt Young. ''Matt Young?'' Williams bellowed. ''Don't you have to [expletive] win to be tough?'' Five years later, as a camera crew set up, he talked about watching a kid named John Smoltz on television. ''I'd only swing at his fastball,'' Williams said. ''The other pitches are tough, but they're not in the strike zone.'' In the late 1980s, when the Jimmy Fund had a night for Williams and brought in special guests from John Glenn to Dominic DiMaggio to Johnny Pesky to Joe DiMaggio, Williams had agreed to be interviewed with Joe DiMaggio by me for Sports Illustrated. When I arrived, DiMaggio politely said he didn't talk to SI and began walking away. ''This is my event, it's my town, and this is my friend,'' Williams said to DiMaggio. ''So you're talking to him.'' Williams could have been bitter about all the playing time he missed in World War II and Korea, plus injuries, but when he did a television spot for the Hall of Fame he so loved, he listed being a Marine as one of his two greatest accomplishments. Oh, he would also have hit more than 521 homers had he used the screen above the Green Monster, but he never whined. In fact, he was always contemporary. One day he called Dan Duquette out of the blue and said, ''Nomar Garciaparra is the best damn player who ever played for the Red Sox.'' He loved McGwire and Barry Bonds, and one time he told me, ''Every time I watch Paul Molitor hit, I close my eyes and see Joe DiMaggio.'' Molitor saw the interview on ESPN, and said he was floored. Soon thereafter, Molitor was at the Baseball Assistance Team dinner in New York, and when he went into the head table room, Williams was sitting in a corner telling stories with several of his contemporaries. ''Get over here,'' Williams hollered to Molitor. `'I want these guys to meet you. You're one of the greatest damned hitters who ever lived, kid.'' ''If I ever get lucky enough to make it to the Hall of Fame,'' said Molitor later, ''it may not be as great a moment as being recognized by Williams as one of his peers.'' Baseball needs someone to replace Williams as the man who bridges generations. Gwynn could be the guy. George Brett might be the best. But no one was more respectful of baseball in any era than Williams, who could wax about Ty Cobb or Rogers Hornsby in one sentence, then turn the subject to Bonds. But it had to be his way. When the Sports Illustrated baseball preview came out with Boggs on the cover, featuring the three-way discussion on hitting, Williams charged me, waving a copy of the magazine. ''See ... see .. look at Boggs' s bat,'' he hollered. ''Is it an uppercut? You're damned right it's an uppercut. See ... see. Ted was right, Walt Hriniak was wrong. Period.'' Unfortunately, Williams got one chance at a World Series, and in an exhibition before Game 1, he was hit by a pitch, damaged his wrist, and could barely swing the bat against the Cardinals. So he is left with the memorial that he was beloved by teammates, and that when Fenway Park holds his memorial service July 22, he will be remembered as the greatest damn hitter who ever lived.
This story ran on page C5 of the Boston Globe on 7/7/2002.
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ed Williams once was asked that if someone were to make a movie based on his life, how would he like it to begin?