“All I want out of life is that, when I walk down the street folks will say, there goes the greatest hitter who ever lived,” said twenty year old Ted Williams. Considering his success in high school, that dream wasn’t too far fetched. During his last years at Herbert Hoover High, Ted caught the attention of many professional scouts. Batting a .583 his junior year and striking out 23 batters one game during senior year, it’s hard to wonder why. Bill Esseck, a scout for the Yankee’s offered Williams $200 a month to come play with them in New York but Ted’s mother, May Williams, turned down Esseck’s offer, because she didn’t want her 17-year-old son to give up his studies and move so far away. Ted continued to play semi-pro baseball for $3 a week until he graduated from Herbert Hoover High in 1935. In 1936, Williams began playing for the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League, and then for the Triple-A Minneapolis team. The following year Ted William joined the Red Sox, inheriting Ben Chapman’s position in right field, along with his number, #9.

Judging by the headlines, when Ted Williams played he was the ball game. He set the rookie record for RBI’s at 145 his first year playing for the Red Sox. His 1941 season was one of the most notorious season in baseball.

Of all the home runs that have been hit in the history of baseball, sailed past the outfield and into the stands, few have ever gone the distance that William’s did that year in Chicago. The first was a fast ball that Ted knocked high and deep into the upper right field stands, a good 500 feet from the plate. The second, though, was the shooting star, said to be the longest home run ever hit in Comiskey Park. It was the eleventh inning, and John Rigney thought mixing it up with a slow curve would do the trick. Williams sent that ball up and over the roof of the second tier in the deepest section of right center to win the game. It did the trick alright.

Then there was the 9^th annual All-Star game in Detroit. It was the bottom of the ninth inning, 5 runs to 3, bases were loaded with one out, and DiMaggio was up. He hit a grounder to the shortstop who threw it home for the second out, and then to first for what would have been a perfect double play and the game, but the throw to first took baseman Frank McCormick off the bag. DiMaggio was safe on first with a runner on third, two outs, now 5-4, and Ted Williams was up. Pitcher, Claude Passeau brought the count to 1 and 2, and with the next pitch Williams brought the crowd to their feet. He stopped just paces down the baseline to watch as the ball soared towards the foul line in deep right field. “It was the most thrilling hit of my career,” said Williams, remembering the moment. A spotlight seemed to follow him around the bases, as DiMaggio’s famous hitting streak was forgotten just for that afternoon.

The final day of the season the Red Sox were scheduled for a double-header and Williams was sitting on a .39955 average, which rounded to the magic .400 mark. It was a sure thing, but Ted wouldn’t take the easy way out. He played both games that day and went 6-for8, earning his .406 average that remains untouched to this day.

Ted Williams ended his 1959 season with a splinter stuck right in his pride. His only season to ever bat under .300 was that year, at age 40 with a .254. There was no telling just how much his career suffered from his absence the five seasons he spent fighting in WWII and the Korean War, but to end on a bad note was simply unacceptable to Ted. The next season he averaged a .316 and now all he wanted was the perfect ending. It came. In the last game against the Orioles, the last home game he’d ever play, the eighth inning, third pitch, there it was. “It was in the books while it was still in the sky,” as John Updike, writer for the New Yorker Magazine put it. That was it. After 19 years with the Boston Red Sox, 521 homers and 2,654 hits, Williams ran the bases at Fenway one more time and headed for the dugout.

Williams had a love-hate relationship with his fans. One home game early in his career, Ted struck out and then missed a wind-blown pop fly in the same inning. The boos from the crowd echoed in his head all the way to the dugout where, he admits, “I swore never again to tip my hat in Fenway Park.” That bitterness stayed with him for the remainder of his career. “I’m the guy they love to hate,” he said. That was as true about the fans as it was about the press. Throughout Williams career there were few headlines that could possible be considered complimentary. Many believe that if it weren’t the press who had the privilege of voting on the MVP awards, “Terrible Ted” would have received more than two over his record-breaking career. At the end though, despite the rivalry between Williams and spectators, Boston had a hard time letting go of the player they grew to appreciate and love. Before his final game at Fenway Park, Williams acknowledged his fans with a few kind words, “I want to say that my years in Boston have been the greatest of my life.” Those words that lingered over the next nine innings became Ted’s adieu to Boston. He did not come out of the dugout following his eighth inning homer, despite the crowd’s persistence. He meant what he said about cherishing his time in Boston, but still, he would not tip his hat to the fans at Fenway Park.