Read Online The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee Jr. - Free Book Online
Authors: Ben Bradlee Jr.
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player-reporter relationship. In addition, some reporters were personally corrupt—part of a culture that was built on sloth and collaborating with one another, not competing.
Writers who were on the take had nonbaseball “accounts,” as they were called—clients who paid them to write stories, usually short items. The sponsors included racetracks, boxing promoters, wrestling promoters, dog tracks, or anyone else who wanted publicity. The papers, which knew of the practice and encouraged it, could thus pay their writers less, knowing they would supplement their salaries through such after-hours pursuits. 24
With Williams’s arrival in 1939, Yawkey had made a token effort to improve ties with the writers by hiring a public relations man, Ed Doherty. But Doherty was so hostile to reporters that he effectively served as the anti–press agent. Doherty “considered the writers parasites and made no attempt to conceal his contempt for them,” wrote Al Hirshberg, who covered the Red Sox of that era for the
Post
and the
Herald.
“His standard reply to anything but routine questions was, ‘How the hell do I know?’ ” 25
Partly as a result of Doherty’s antagonism, loyalties and affinities fluctuated. By the mid-’40s, relations between the writers and the team ranged from congenial to extremely tense. In late 1946, when the Red Sox clinched the pennant in Cleveland, a long-running feud between manager Joe Cronin and the
Evening American
’s Herb “Huck” Finnegan boiled over. There had been bad blood between the two for a while, and Cronin felt the hard-drinking and irascible Finnegan had been insufficiently appreciative of his leadership.
“Well, what do you say now, you fuckin’ bastard?” Cronin asked Finnegan when they chanced to run into each other in the elevator back at the hotel.
“You’ll never win another one!” replied Finnegan defiantly. 26
That night the Red Sox refused to include the writers in the team celebration. Though Yawkey paid for a separate press party, the moment was a watershed in Red Sox–press relations, and they got steadily worse.“The Red Sox just didn’t know how to make the press work for them, and the result was a multitude of unnecessary problems,” Hirshberg recalled. 27 Later, in choosing a successor to Doherty, the team underscored its disregard, or contempt, for the press by selecting aging bull-pen coach Larry Woodall, who also couldn’t stand reporters. Woodall made it his business at spring training to circulate among rookies and instruct them not to talk to the Boston writers because they couldn’t be trusted. 28
At first, the writers had thoroughly enjoyed their repartee with Williams. He was new, immensely talented, raw, spirited, amusing, clever, and, of course, he talked nonstop. He’d received a charmed press his rookie year, but in 1940, as he brooded and sulked, he began to lash out at the writers with increasing frequency. One of Williams’s favorite maneuvers was to give a scoop to an out-of-town writer—the better to antagonize his real or perceived enemies in the local press corps. Like the fans, reporters found Williams easy to provoke, and then his public rages would become fair game to report. “I remember one time I asked him how he could talk to the writers the way he did,” said Don Buddin, who played shortstop for the Red Sox from 1956 to 1961. “He said, ‘Son, if you hit .350, you can do a lot of things.’ ” 29
This new adversarial dynamic would be further fueled, especially after World War II, by the arrival of younger and better-educated writers who were not interested in writing one-dimensional stories about the game only. Readers were beginning to demand a more personal, behind-the-scenes treatment of their heroes, an approach Ted thought an unacceptable invasion of his privacy. In addition, while the number of major dailies in Boston began to decrease, each paper was starting to assign two or three writers to the Red Sox
Writers who were on the take had nonbaseball “accounts,” as they were called—clients who paid them to write stories, usually short items. The sponsors included racetracks, boxing promoters, wrestling promoters, dog tracks, or anyone else who wanted publicity. The papers, which knew of the practice and encouraged it, could thus pay their writers less, knowing they would supplement their salaries through such after-hours pursuits. 24
With Williams’s arrival in 1939, Yawkey had made a token effort to improve ties with the writers by hiring a public relations man, Ed Doherty. But Doherty was so hostile to reporters that he effectively served as the anti–press agent. Doherty “considered the writers parasites and made no attempt to conceal his contempt for them,” wrote Al Hirshberg, who covered the Red Sox of that era for the
Post
and the
Herald.
“His standard reply to anything but routine questions was, ‘How the hell do I know?’ ” 25
Partly as a result of Doherty’s antagonism, loyalties and affinities fluctuated. By the mid-’40s, relations between the writers and the team ranged from congenial to extremely tense. In late 1946, when the Red Sox clinched the pennant in Cleveland, a long-running feud between manager Joe Cronin and the
Evening American
’s Herb “Huck” Finnegan boiled over. There had been bad blood between the two for a while, and Cronin felt the hard-drinking and irascible Finnegan had been insufficiently appreciative of his leadership.
“Well, what do you say now, you fuckin’ bastard?” Cronin asked Finnegan when they chanced to run into each other in the elevator back at the hotel.
“You’ll never win another one!” replied Finnegan defiantly. 26
That night the Red Sox refused to include the writers in the team celebration. Though Yawkey paid for a separate press party, the moment was a watershed in Red Sox–press relations, and they got steadily worse.“The Red Sox just didn’t know how to make the press work for them, and the result was a multitude of unnecessary problems,” Hirshberg recalled. 27 Later, in choosing a successor to Doherty, the team underscored its disregard, or contempt, for the press by selecting aging bull-pen coach Larry Woodall, who also couldn’t stand reporters. Woodall made it his business at spring training to circulate among rookies and instruct them not to talk to the Boston writers because they couldn’t be trusted. 28
At first, the writers had thoroughly enjoyed their repartee with Williams. He was new, immensely talented, raw, spirited, amusing, clever, and, of course, he talked nonstop. He’d received a charmed press his rookie year, but in 1940, as he brooded and sulked, he began to lash out at the writers with increasing frequency. One of Williams’s favorite maneuvers was to give a scoop to an out-of-town writer—the better to antagonize his real or perceived enemies in the local press corps. Like the fans, reporters found Williams easy to provoke, and then his public rages would become fair game to report. “I remember one time I asked him how he could talk to the writers the way he did,” said Don Buddin, who played shortstop for the Red Sox from 1956 to 1961. “He said, ‘Son, if you hit .350, you can do a lot of things.’ ” 29
This new adversarial dynamic would be further fueled, especially after World War II, by the arrival of younger and better-educated writers who were not interested in writing one-dimensional stories about the game only. Readers were beginning to demand a more personal, behind-the-scenes treatment of their heroes, an approach Ted thought an unacceptable invasion of his privacy. In addition, while the number of major dailies in Boston began to decrease, each paper was starting to assign two or three writers to the Red Sox
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