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Summary
Summary
At long last, the epic biography Ted Williams deserves-and that his fans have been waiting for.
Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than five hundred home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in World War II and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him-and traveled a long way himself, as Ben Bradlee, Jr.'s, grand biography reveals. Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. During his twenty-two years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified crowds across America-and shocked them, too. His notorious clashes with the press and fans threatened his reputation. Yet while he was a god in the batter's box, he was profoundly human once he stepped away from the plate. His ferocity came to define his troubled domestic life. While baseball might have been straightforward for Ted Williams, life was not.
The Kid is biography of the highest literary order, a thrilling and honest account of a legend in all his glory and human complexity. In his final at-bat, Williams hit a home run. Bradlee's marvelous book clears the fences, too.
Author Notes
Ben Bradlee Jr. graduated from Colby College. He served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan from 1970-1972. When he returned to the United States in 1972, he went to work as a reporter for the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, remaining there until mid-1975. He spent 25 years, from 1979 to 2004, with The Boston Globe as a reporter then an editor. As a deputy managing editor, he oversaw the Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and supervised the production of a book on the subject entitled Betrayal. He has written several books including The Ambush Murders, Prophet of Blood, Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, and The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The story of Ted Williams contains more twists and turns than the great American novel, and in this epic biography, former Boston Globe editor and investigative reporter Bradlee presents an often disturbing portrayal of the man perpetually known as "The Kid." The first major book about Williams since Leigh Montville's Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero published within two years of the 2002 death of baseball's greatest hitter at age 83, Bradlee focuses on elements of the Hall of Famer's life overshadowed by his still-historic .406 batting average in 1941, including his two wartime stints in the military at the height of his playing career, cantankerous relationships with fans and journalists, and the sad end-of-life saga perpetuated by his three reproachable children that concluded with the controversial cryonic preservation of Williams's head and decapitated body at a nondescript facility in Scottsdale, Ariz. Drawing on more than 10 years of research and 600-plus interviews, Bradlee explores Williams's Hispanic heritage and troubled childhood that left him feeling "ashamed," provides possible reasons for his irrational anger, and offers new insight into the cryonics case. Despite a few extraneous chapters, this big book rewards patient readers with as complete a portrait of Williams as history likely will allow. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Sprawling, entertaining life of the baseball great, renowned as a sports hero while leading a life as checkered as Babe Ruth's or Ty Cobb's. "My name is Ted Fuckin' Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball." So recited Williams, by Boston Globe editor Bradlee's account, as a mantra before each game, "interrupting it only occasionally to offer a lecture on the finer points of hitting to anyone who cared to listen." He had the credentials to deliver such lectures, of course; Bradlee does indeed acknowledge him as "the greatest hitter who ever lived," and few in baseball have bettered Williams' numbers. Like Ruth, Williams was a bruiser with a chip on his shoulder; like Cobb, race was his bte noire, for, as Bradlee reveals, Williams had a Mexican mother and took great pains to conceal that ancestry, both fearful of discrimination and perhaps with an element of self-loathing. Williams had a reputation as a military hero as well, which he did nothing to gainsay, even if he did his best to stay out of the draft in World War II and resisted his reactivation during the Korean War. Williams ended life with a bit of sideways fame as well, having been decapitated and frozen after death in a cryonics venture that did not end well; Bradlee's description of the macabre proceedings is not for the faint of heart. The author dishes plenty--one of the kindest things he says about Williams as a human being was that he was "self-absorbed"--but the repeated demonstrations of flawed character do nothing to diminish Williams' outsized stature as a player. Bradlee is as enthusiastic as Vin Scully or Harry Caray when it comes to describing Williams on the field: "He allowed three hits, one run, walked none, and struck out Rudy York on three pitches. The move seemed an attemptto placate angry fans with some pure entertainment in one of the worst losses of the year." An outstanding addition to the literature of baseball.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
THE PEOPLE AT the Alcor cryonics facility, in Scottsdale, Ariz., would have us believe that Ted Williams really is immortal. They have his body there, the head severed from the rest, flash-frozen in a giant thermos-like tank and awaiting only the scientific advancement that will allow him to be thawed, resuscitated and rejuvenated. Meanwhile, with every passing season, his longevity in the statistical department seems more and more certain. While other baseball records fall with actuarial regularity, Williams's 1941 batting average of .406, the highest in nearly 90 years, shimmers ever more brightly, a landmark that even a hitter like Barry Bonds was unable to approach. Baseball was different then. The season was shorter; there were many fewer night games and no long plane flights; relief pitching had yet to become the specialty it is today, with setup men and closers deploying advanced weaponry like the cutter and the split-finger fastball. But Williams was also a different kind of hitter. Especially later in his career, he was a better fielder than he is sometimes given credit for, and he was not hopeless as a base runner, yet Williams merely tolerated those parts of the game, waiting impatiently for his turns at the plate. Hitting was what he cared about, with a single-mindedness that caused critics to complain that his team's record mattered less to him than his own. By nature both a perfectionist and an obsessive, he turned hitting into a science and an art. He yearned not just to be good but to look good, and spent hours in front of the mirror practicing that long, smooth swing of his, the leisurely stride, the hips exploding, the arms sweeping through and then the wrists rolling over in a graceful follow-through. Hotheaded and opinionated, unable or unwilling to hold back, Williams had a famously contentious relationship with the press, but he was always good copy (once the expletives had been expunged). Even during his lifetime books about him began to appear, some fluffy and dwelling on things like Williams's war heroism, his genius as a fisherman, his secret generosity and his kindness to sick children; others gently venturing into the darker territory: his volcanic temper, his lack of team spirit, his occasional disdain for the fans and habit of spitting at them. (In 1956 Williams was docked $5,000 for an especially ugly episode of expectoration, and some die-hard fans took up a collection to pay the fine for him. Among these was my mother, who that same year alarmed me by declaring, after Williams had enjoyed a particularly good day at the park, that she would gladly leave my father for him.) Williams's 1969 autobiography, "My Turn at Bat," written by John Underwood in a voice that uncannily reproduces the Kid's own, is still one of the best instances of the "as told to" genre. In 2004, less than two years after Williams's death, the Boston sportswriter Leigh Montville (who has since rejoined The Globe, where Ben Bradlee Jr., the son of the legendary Washington Post editor, was a deputy managing editor) published a quick but serviceable biography that seemed to cover all the bases. There is also a scholarly biography by Michael Seidel, a Columbia professor, that focuses on baseball and leaves the psychologizing to others. What distinguishes Bradlee's "The Kid" from the rest of Williams lit is, first of all, its size (thick enough to chock a car during a tire change, it's surely one of the longest books ever about a sports figure) and the depth of its reporting. Bradlee seemingly talked to everyone, not just baseball people but Williams's fishing buddies, old girlfriends, his two surviving wives and both of his daughters (a son, JohnHenry, died in 2004), and he had unparalleled access to Williams family archives. His account does not materially alter our picture of Williams the player, but fills it in with much greater detail and nuance. He argues persuasively, for instance, that Williams's .388 average in 1957, when he turned 39, was in its way an even greater feat than the youthful .406. Bradlee also devotes almost half his book to Williams's life after baseball, something that would have enraged the Kid (or Teddy Ballgame, as he also referred to himself), who loved fame but considered his private life off limits. But Bradlee's expansiveness enables his book to transcend the familiar limits of the sports bio and to become instead a hard-to-put-down account of a fascinating American life. It's a story about athletic greatness but also about the perils of fame and celebrity, the corrosiveness of money and the way the cycle of familial resentment and disappointment plays itself out generation after generation. Williams was born in San Diego in August 1918. His mother, May, was Mexican, something that Williams found so shameful he tried to keep it secret, but that probably accounts for the way he readily embraced other outsiders, welcoming the racial integration of baseball and urging the inclusion of players from the Negro leagues into the Hall of Fame. May Williams was also a religious zealot, a soldier in the Salvation Army, spending more time on the streets with her tambourine, hoping to save souls, than she did with her own family. Williams's father, Samuel, ostensibly ran a photography studio but was mostly a drinker and a layabout, and the two Williams children (Ted had a younger brother, Danny, who became a small-time hoodlum) grew up neglected, poorly clothed, often hungry, in a house so shabby and unkempt they were ashamed to have visitors. From this lonely, Dickensian childhood Bradlee traces almost everything: Williams's atheism, his shyness and insecurity, his difficulty getting along with women, the towering rages that afflicted him almost like fits of madness, his perfectionism and his need to excel and be noticed. The great disappointment of his career was that he seldom got to display his gifts on a bigger stage. During his time with the Red Sox, the team made the World Series only once, in 1946, when Williams failed to distinguish himself, and by the time I began to follow the Sox in the mid-50s, though he was pretty much the only player worth paying attention to, his heart wasn't always in it. If the team was way behind or it looked as if he might not get up to bat again, he would sometimes leave early to beat the traffic. As the product of such a miserable upbringing, Williams predictably became a rotten father and husband himself. Each of his three marriages was on the rocks almost before it began, and he was 0-3 when it came to attending the births of his children. As they grew older, he substituted bluster for affection. But when he finally retired from baseball in 1972, after returning briefly to manage the Washington Senators, Williams underwent a transformation. The private rages continued, so extreme that those close to him sometimes likened them to episodes of mental illness, but the public Williams softened and mellowed. He became a familiar figure at spring training and a genial ambas sador for baseball, basking in the warmth of his fans' regard. As if making up for lost time, he even reconnected with the offspring of his third marriage, Claudia, born in 1971, and especially his son, John-Henry, born in 1968. (Williams was by then more or less estranged from his first child, Bobby-Jo, believing her to be after his money, and eventually cut her out of his will.) Williams adored his son, though except for Claudia he was about the only one who did. John-Henry, who died of leukemia less than two years after his father, emerges from Bradlee's account as tragic and needy but thoroughly unlikable: a liar, a thief, a forger, a flashy spender, a sucker for get-rich schemes, someone so out of touch with reality that at 33 he tried to follow in Williams's footsteps and become a ballplayer. He had his father's looks, but none of the charm or smarts. As Williams's health declined, John-Henry gradually took over his father's affairs and made him a virtual prisoner in his own home, forcing Ted, who at this point could barely see, to churn out autographs for the booming memorabilia market. The Alcor idea was John-Henry's, naturally - he imagined it would enable him to sell his father's DNA, apparently not realizing he needed only a lock of hair or two, not an entire fast-frozen cadaver - and he cajoled his father and his sister into going along. (It's not clear, though, if Williams truly understood what was entailed or gave his full consent.) Bradlee goes into more detail about this whole sorry business than some readers may want, pointing out, for example, that Williams's severed head now has an eyebolt screwed into the neck (for ease in handling) and rests upside down on a can of what is probably Bumble Bee tuna but might be Dinty Moore beef stew. No one wants to think of Williams this way - that splendid physique of his marinating in antifreeze - and this last chapter of his life adds a sad and freakish note to what should have been a much more uplifting story. Williams partly mastered his own demons and, unlike so many (Joe DiMaggio, for one, with whom Williams is always bracketed in the annals), even found joy and fulfillment in the life of a retired ballplayer. Bradlee insists that, by the end, "John-Henry's cryonics decision for Ted seemed less about exploitation than it was about not wanting to let go." That's possible. Something like this is what so many of us feel about great athletes. It's in the nature of fandom to believe that just by cherishing them we can stop our heroes from abandoning us. THE KID The Immortal Life of Ted Williams By Ben Bradlee Jr. Illustrated. 855 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $35. Both a perfectionist and an obsessive, Williams treated hitting as a science and an art. CHARLES MCGRATH, a former editor of the Book Review, is a contributing writer for The Times.
Choice Review
Bradlee offers a full portrait of "the kid," from his rough childhood to the odd circumstances surrounding his death. Williams' personal life provides the most interesting fodder for this exhaustive biography. Bradlee reveals Williams's efforts to conceal his Mexican heritage and to appeal a change in his draft status, which made him eligible for service in WW II. Additionally, he details Williams's deep resentment toward the US government for recalling him into service during the Korean War. The author paints an unflinchingly critical portrait of Williams as husband, romantic partner, and father to three children. He draws a connection between Williams's unhappy childhood with two distant parents to his own failings as a parent to Bobby-Jo, Claudia, and John-Henry. As Bradlee shows, Williams's attempts to make amends with his only son facilitated John-Henry's success in controlling most aspects of the ailing slugger's life. Bradlee devotes space to Claudia's passionate defense of her older brother, who died in 2004. But the author closes this engrossing narrative with two apt yet sad conclusions that contradict Claudia's defense: John-Henry "plainly exploited his father," and Williams "reaped what he sowed as a father." Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. C. M. Smith Cabrini College
