“Yeah.” I blew out a gust of air and dropped my head back on the pillow. The whole incident, seeing the cop coming up to me, realizing it was Coombs, the flash of his gun, all came back to me as broken fragments.
Claire stood up, brushed herts without interruption. His one fight came when Jimmy Cannon arrived.just after The Miracle of 1957
Ted had finished an extensive forty-five-minute interview with a sizable group of other out-of-town writers. Joe McKenney, the Red Sox publicity director, asked Cannon to wait until Ted came back in but Cannon insisted on going out to left field to see Ted immediately. predictably, Ted blew his stack.
Even though Ted's league-leading average fell off sixty points, the 1958 season was in certain respects a greater accomplishment than the season of 1957. Not only was he beset by injury or illness throughout the year, but his physical problems were complicated, during the first half of the season, by that unseemly truce with his old enemies in the press box. If the human race has learned anything from history, it is that peace treaties do not do a thing for either world peace or for Ted Williams's batting average.
He had reported to camp with a tender ankle, the result of an accident suffered on a fishing trip in Labrador. On the second day he pulled a muscle in his side. He didn't even get into the lineup until after the Sox broke camp, and then he went in only as a pinch hitter against minor-league opposition. In his five appearances, he was sharp enough to get two home runs, a single, and two walks.
Then, on the night before the opening-day game against Washington, he ate some tainted oysters and came down with a case of food poisoning. When he returned to the lineup, his timing was a little off, and just when it was coming back into focus, he banged his wrist against the fence while catching a long fly ball. The wrist remained sore almost all year; Ted reinjured it again and again while sliding into base. The last time came, most uncharacteristically, while he was trying to go from second to third on a short fly ball to right field. On top of all that, he ran into a terrible streak of bad luck where by actual count, outfielders reached into the distant right-field bull pen at Fenway Park to take home runs away from him seven separate times in less than two months. There was also the annual arrival of the lung ailment, which put him out of action for thirteen days in September.
The result of it all was that Ted got off to such a terrible start that for the first time since his freshman season he did not make the starting All-Star lineup. The Boston writers, having studied him for twenty
years, shook their heads and let you know that Ted was not g around with those wrists anymore. They were reluctant, howev put their opinion into print. They had eaten those words too times. And, anyway, peace had descended comfortably between t
During that early low point, Ted told me, “I know what's w The little injuries that have kept me from getting my timing dow sharp. Little things bother you in this game. It's not like hocke football, where they can strap you up and send you out almost as as new. That's not an alibi, now, it's just a way of saying that as as I know why I'm not hitting, I'm not worried. When the time cc when I'm not hitting and I don't know why I'm not hitting, that be the time to quit. When they're throwing the fastball by me, wh, find myself striking out two or three times a game, that will be time I'll know my reactions are going. And nobody will have to me. I'll know it first of all.”
He was down to.225 when a Kansas City writer finally broke curity silence and wrote that Ted was obviously washed up. The n, day, as was to be expected, Ted hit a grand-slam home run, the st teenth grand slammer of his career, to give the Sox an 8-5 victor The day after that he slashed out three hits.
It was not until July, though, that he brought his average up to.30 and it was not until a Boston writer accused him of choking in tt clutch that he really begin to move. The day after the magazine ca tying that article hit the stands, Ted hit two home runs and a singk to knock in seven runs in an 11 - 8 victory. One of the home runs wa his seventeenth grand slammer, tying him with Babe Ruth for secom place in that category, behind Lou Gehrig's twenty-third.
By that time, the uneasy peace had already been shattered. On week earlier, in point of fact, Ted had brought the newspapers down on him again by spitting at a Kansas City crowd that was booing him for not running out a ball hit back at the pitcher. “I'm really sorry I did it,” Ted said, after Cronin fined him $250. “I was so mad that I lost my temper, and afterward I was so sorry. I'm principally orr about losing the $250.”
Once the feud with both the press and the public was on again, Ted's average began to move up in the charts like a bullet. On Augus 8, he pushed into a tie with his teammate, Pete Runnels, for the batting lead. Then, with the season running out, he began to slip back. Desperate measures were called for. With a week remaining, Ted landed on the front pages again, brought the wrath of the civilized world dowr. upon him, and, needless to say, embarked immediately on a hittin streak that carried him to another batting championship,
Ted entered the game in question, on September 22, trailing Runnels by six points. He had gone hitless in seven straight times at bat. In the first inning, Runnels singled, and Ted, hitting right behind him, grounded into a double play. Two innings later, Runnels singled again, and Ted took a third strike. Completely disgusted with himself for taking the pitch, Ted turned toward the dugout and angrily flung his bat away. Unfortunately, the bat caught for a moment on the stick, substance he used on it to give himself a firmer grip. Instead of skidding across the dirt, the bat spiraled into the air, sailed into the box seats seventy-five feet away, and hit a sixty-year-old woman. The woman, Mrs. Gladys Heffernan, turned out to be Joe Cronin's housekeeper and a longtime admirer of Ted Williams. Otherwise, the Sox would have had a healthy lawsuit on their hands.
Ted, appalled, rushed to the railing, where the motherly Mrs. Hefleman paused to reassure him before being taken off to the first-aid room. Ted went back to the dugout with tears streaming down his face and emerged only after the umpire-in-chief, Bill Summers, had assuree him that everybody knew he had not meant to throw the bat. Ted took his outfield position to the familiar strains of unrestrained booing. his next turn at bat, he answered the boos by doubling home a run.
Cronin, who was almost as upset as Ted was, told the press, “I was an impetuous act, but no one is sorrier than Ted is. He feel awful. We will take no disciplinary action. It was unfortunate, but we certainly know Williams didn't do it intentionally.” Mrs. Heffernan interviewed from her hospital bed, said, 'I don't see why they had to boo him. It was not the dear boy's fault. I felt awfully sorry for hirr
after it happened. I should have ducked.“ Williams said, ”I just almost died.'
From the time of the bat-throwing incident to the end of the season, he had nine hits in thirteen times at bat. The Red Sox were ending their season in Washington, and with two games remaining Ted and Runnels were tied down to the ninth decimal point,.322857643. Frank Malzone was Runnels's roommate: “Pete and I were talking before the game. He said, 'What do you think?' I said, 'Just go out and get some hits. You can still win it.'” Runnels started off with a triple. Ted followed with a walk. Runnels then singled, and Ted singled behind him. On his third time at bat, Runnels hit a home run, only to have Ted hit one right behind him.
“He comes over to me,” Malzone says, “and he said, 'He's not going to let me win this thing, is he?' ”
“I said, 'Naw, I guess not, Pete.' I said, 'Got to get another one. If you get another one, he can't catch you.'”
