Ted Williams Life and Baseball Career

With look at Ted Williams’ life and baseball career, HBO hits a home run

Ted Williams' perfect swing was a product of hard work, HBO reveals.

The day after the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball’s annual celebration of the game, HBO is unveiling “Ted Williams,” an unvarnished look at arguably the game’s greatest hitter. It shows Williams as a complex man whose skills at the plate couldn’t compensate for his troubled relationships with his parents, wives, children, the media and fans.

Seventy years after Williams broke into the game as a rookie with the Red Sox, and more than six decades after he hit .406, baseball is still looking for a hitter who can match his splendor. Good luck finding one.

One of the most striking things the show reveals was how much respect for the game Williams had. The documentary, which airs on HBO at 9:30 p.m. tonight, shows how Williams broke down hitting to a science, which helped him to groove his swing. He walked 147 times and struck out just 27 times in 1941. It was a timeless and enduring swing. Williams batted .388 in 1957 at age 39.

Williams set out to be the best hitter ever, and he accomplished that, and hit 521 home runs despite giving up five years of his prime to fight in World War II and Korea. After batting .406 in 1941 and during his Triple Crown-winning season of 1942, Williams joined the Navy as a fighter pilot. He had been classified 3-A, because he was the sole support of his mother, but he decided to join the service anyway. He spent three years as a flight instructor, never seeing combat.

When Williams returned to the Red Sox in 1946, he was a changed man. He wasn’t so combative with the fans or the media. That same year he went to his one and only World Series. The documentary makes a point to highlight that Joe DiMaggio, Williams’ rival with the Yankees, won nine championships. That was one area in which DiMaggio outshined Williams.

Williams is the last major leaguer to hit .400. It is a feat that has stood since 1941. Tony Gwynn was the last to come close, batting .394 in the lockout-shortened season of 1994. Before that, George Brett batted .390 in 1980. Williams’ accomplishment, along with DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, are probably untouchable. Times have changed in baseball since the days that Williams and DiMaggio, baseball rivals, played the game.

Pitchers are consistently throwing in the mid-90s now. Plus there are specialized pitchers, so a batter is likely to see a few different ones during a game.

Even if a guy could stay healthy, and overcome the various in-game pitching changes, outside pressures would be too much. The money, steroid suspicions and the 24-hour sports/news cycle would be crushing obstacles for a modern-day player.

The Steroid Era has changed the perception of the players. Williams operated outside of that suspicion.

Williams also demonstrates the difference between the players today and yesterday. In his final season he was offered a contract for $125,000. He turned it down and asked that the amount be lowered to $90,000 because he didn’t feel like he had played up to his standards the year before.

The documentary showed the aged Williams return to the All-Star Game in 1999 while being surrounded by that year’s players. He asked Mark McGwire if he smelled wood burning when he hit the ball. It was a touching moment as the players gathered around an infirm Williams to shake his hand and be in his presence, treating him like the baseball royalty he was.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t associate Williams with being the greatest hitter the sport has ever known. They associate him with being cryogenically frozen. His son, John Henry Williams, fought to have his father placed in biostasis after producing a handwritten piece of paper signed by Williams to that effect. It went counter to Williams’ will that stated he wanted to be cremated.

The documentary shows the personal wreckage that was left in the wake of Williams becoming baseball’s greatest hitter. It also highlights the sad truth that the game will never see another hitter that comes close to Williams.

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