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MY TURN AT BAT
The Story of My Life
Ted Williams with John Underwood
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Baseball great Ted Williams was born in
1918. His mother, May Venzer, was a Salvation
Army worker. She was part Mexican and part
French. His father, Samuel Stuart Williams, was
a soldier, U.S. marshal, and photographer. He
was part Welsh and part Irish.
Their son, Ted, came to
have several nicknames,
including “Teddy Ballgame,”
“The Splendid Splinter,”
and “The Kid.”
Ted recalls his childhood:
Wilber Wiley was my first real boyhood
pal. Wilber had a job delivering the Evening
Tribute, and when he’d get through about an
hour before dark, we’d go to the playground,
just the two of us, and hit, hit, hit, and throw,
throw, throw.
The playground director
was a man named Rodney
Luscomb, and Rod Luscomb
was my first real hero. I know
when I walked up to the
rostrum in Cooperstown the
day they inducted me into
the Hall of Fame Rod Luscomb was one of
the people on my mind, one of the people I
felt made it possible. That should tell you
something about how much a coach can
mean to a kid.
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I suppose the first strong
influence I had to continue in
baseball, to make it my life’s work,
was my coach at Herbert Hoover High
in San Diego, a wonderful man named
Wos Caldwell.
I’ll never forget one day I hit a ball
they say went 450 feet, between the right
and center fielders. I fell down rounding
third—a big skinny kid, all arms and legs—
and I got thrown out at home plate.
San Diego was a ballplayer’s town, yearround, and by the time I was a pitcher at
Herbert Hoover High I was hooked. As a
pitcher-outfielder, I batted .583 and .406 my
last years in high school, .430 for three years.
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Ted recalls his baseball career:
I signed my first professional contract with
the San Diego Padres at age 17 and discovered
the joys of paychecks and train rides. I never
had so much fun.
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In 1937, the Padres sold Ted
to the Boston Red Sox. In 1938,
at the Red Sox’s farm club in
Minneapolis, Williams led the
league in hitting. He moved
up to the Red Sox team
the next year.
That spring I was a nuisance to everybody,
asking questions about hitting … I quizzed
every player on the team, and they all had
something to say, and the weight of the
evidence pretty much proved out. I can’t
imagine anyone having a better, happier first
year in the big leagues. I used to send Rod
Luscomb diagrams showing how the parks
were laid out and where I had hit my home
runs, telling him how happy I was. I hit a
home run in every park, completing the list
in Yankee Stadium on the last day.
)-
BASEBALL HISTORY TIME LINE
Sept. 28, 1941 - Williams goes
6-for-8 in a doubleheader and finishes with
a .406 average.
1947 - Williams wins the Triple Crown
by batting .343 with 32 homers and
114 RBIs.
1948 - Williams wins the American League
batting title with a .369 average.
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1949 - Williams drives in a career-high
159 runs. He leads the league with
career-high 150 walks and wins the
American League MVP award.
1951 - Williams hits .318 with 30 homers
and 126 RBIs. He scores 109 runs
for the season.
July 23, 1955 - Williams hits a 450-foot
home run onto the right-field roof at
Comiskey Park.
July 29, 1958 - Williams hits the
17th and final grand slam of his
career in an 11–8 win over Detroit.
Sept. 28, 1960 - The final game of
Ted Williams’ baseball career as a player.
July 25, 1966 - Williams is inducted
into the Hall of Fame.
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Baseball Hall of Fame
In 1941, only his third
season in the majors,
Williams chased a
.400 batting average.
A man has to have goals—for a day, for a
lifetime—and that was mine, to have people
say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest
hitter who ever lived.”
Ted W illiams
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Rod Luscomb used to
say that in seven years on
the playground I never broke
a bat hitting a ball incorrectly,
that all my bats had the bruises in the same
spot, like they were hammered there by a careful
carpenter, right on the thick of the hitting
surface. That might be an exaggeration, but I
believe it is true that when you put in as much
time as I did you get results.
A hitter can’t just go up there and swing.
He’s got to think. Listen, when I played I knew
the parks, the mounds, the batters’ boxes, the
backgrounds. I studied the pitchers. I knew what
was going on at that plate. It used to kill me to
strike out, but when I struck out I knew what it
was that got me and what I was going to try to do
about it.
*%
LF 1939-1942, 1946-1960
Class of 1966
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Theodore Samuel Williams
Born: August 30, 1918, San Diego, CA
Died: July 5, 2002, Crystal River, FL
Bats: Left Throws: Right
Played for: Boston Red Sox
(1939-1942, 1946-1960)
rs: 1966
Elected to Hall of Fame by Baseball Write
282 votes of 302 ballots cast (93.38%)
Hitting Stats
H HR RBI SB SLG
AB R
AVG G
24 .634
.344 2292 7706 1798 2654 521 1839
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