Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams seemed in stature like a Greek god to myself and thousands of other boys growing up in New England in the 1950’s. This photo shows him hitting a homerun against the Washington Senators in 1960.

Note the swing. William’s classic swing has never been equaled. I recall at least one game at Fenway Park that I attended in which Williams was playing, but I do not recall it well. I was sitting far back and could barely see the field.

I remember best watching Williams bat in televised games. Even from that vantage point, I admired his swing.

I had to drink Ted’s Creamy Root Beer, a local product sold at that time, only became it was TED’s root beer and his picture was on the bottle.

Williams drove a Cadillac. Once, my older brother and friends were able to encounter Williams after a game, either in or getting into his car. (I was not there and do not exactly recall the details as told to me then by my brother.) They asked him, naturally, for an autograph. “I‘m sorry boys, I can’t,” he said (words to that effect), “but if you write to the Red Sox, they will send you an autographed picture.”

 

— Roger W. Smith

    October 2016

 

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Addendum:

 

An interview with former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent was featured on the Brian Lehrer show, on the New York radio station WNYC, on March 31, 2008. An audio of the show is posted here.

 

If you go to nearly the end of the audio clip — at a point around a minute and half from the end of the program — there is a call from a listener who attended a Red Sox-Yankees game at Yankee Stadium in the 1950s. He had the same experience as my older brother in requesting an autograph from Ted Williams.

 

 

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Addendum:

A follow up exchange via Facebook, October 31, 2016:

Bob Stocker: I watched Ted Williams’ last game with my grandfather. I recall only one thing about the game: Williams hit a home run in his last at-bat.

Roger Smith:Awesome that you were there.

I wish I had been.

I understand that the attendance at the game was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 11,000

And, it wasn’t televised.

A college roommate of mine from West Springfield, MA was there. He was a junior in high school then and skipped school to attend the game.

Not many people can say, like you, that they were there.

My friend used to like to retell how Ted narrowly missed hitting a homerun in a previous at bat.

He said that Orioles outfielder Al Pilarcik shrugged his shoulders after making the catch and turned toward the stands with a gesture that seemed to be saying, “sorry I caught it.”

 

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See also my post

Ted Williams’s last homerun: a footnote or two, and some trivia