Read Online The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee Jr. - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ben Bradlee Jr.
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worked under Johnny Orlando, to make sure Williams got his daily
Record.
“Ted used to send me out to get the
Record
at about 5:00 p.m. to see what the Colonel wrote,” said Corea. 31 When the team was on the road, Williams would have his pals at home call and read him what the Colonel had written. If it was bad, Ted’s anger would usually help him go on a tear. Then he’d want to know if Egan had mentioned any of the good things he’d done. Invariably, there would be nothing, reinforcing Ted’s theory that the Colonel was simply out to get him.
Egan always felt that much of his so-called feud with Ted was simply good business for both of them. He knew that writing about Williams attracted more readers, and he felt that all the ink he gave Ted was instrumental in making him baseball’s first six-figure ballplayer. So the Colonel thought Ted feigned his outrage. Egan generally confined his criticism of Williams to his actions and behavior on the field. Off the field, when Ted was criticized for seeking a draft deferment in 1942, with World War II on, when he was off fishing when his first child was born, and when he was recalled for service in Korea, the Colonel came to Williams’s defense.
If Egan helped shape, even manipulate, public perceptions about Ted, he also directly affected Williams’s views of the writers as a whole. It didn’t matter to Ted that the vast majority of his press was favorable; when the Colonel unloaded on him, it was as if all the nice notices had never appeared.
After Ted popped off to Austen Lake—lashing out at Boston and saying that he had demanded to be traded—Egan wrote that “Williams is the prize heel ever to wear a Boston uniform.” When Ted was being honored by the Red Sox before going off to Korea in 1952, Egan again blasted him. “It seems disgraceful to me that a person such as Williams now is to be given the keys to the city. We talk about juvenile delinquency, and fight against it, and then officially honor a man whom we should officially horsewhip for the vicious influence that he has had on childhood in America.”
Some of the things Egan wrote about Ted were so harsh that the Hearst Corporation, owner of the
Record,
got nervous.
Record
publisher Pat Curran confided to Red Sox broadcaster Curt Gowdy, who took over as the voice of the team in 1951, that a Hearst lawyer had instructed him to have Egan tone it down. “Pat told me one day that a lawyer from Hearst came to him with a warning, saying, ‘Listen, this kid playing for the Red Sox, this Williams, it’s almost impossible for someone to win a libel/slander case against a newspaper, but we’ve gone over some of Egan’s columns, and this kid’s got a great case,’ ” Gowdy said. “This was somewhere in the fifties. So I went and told Ted, and I said, ‘Look, you’ve got a great case here. You ought to sue ’em.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t lower myself to do that.’ That’s the way he was.” 32
Bob Ajemian, then a young baseball reporter at the
American,
said Egan’s barbs against Ted made the jobs of the beat reporters much harder. “The bile Egan delivered, Williams would take it out on me and the other writers. Egan would write from the bunker. He was a figure in the locker room, which he never visited. GIs like me would dig out the information from the players in the locker room and take the abuse, and Egan would take the information while never going into combat himself.”
Ted would later mellow a bit in his attitude toward the press, but never toward Egan. Once, surrounded by a group of writers toward the end of the 1954 season, Williams was in a reflective mood about the interplay between ballplayers and reporters. Recalled George Sullivan, a former reporter for the
Traveler,
“He said, ‘You know, there are a lot of jerks in your business but a lot in mine, too.’ ” Then Williams added, “ ‘There’s one SOB that if someone came in that door and said, ‘Dave Egan just dropped
Record.
“Ted used to send me out to get the
Record
at about 5:00 p.m. to see what the Colonel wrote,” said Corea. 31 When the team was on the road, Williams would have his pals at home call and read him what the Colonel had written. If it was bad, Ted’s anger would usually help him go on a tear. Then he’d want to know if Egan had mentioned any of the good things he’d done. Invariably, there would be nothing, reinforcing Ted’s theory that the Colonel was simply out to get him.
Egan always felt that much of his so-called feud with Ted was simply good business for both of them. He knew that writing about Williams attracted more readers, and he felt that all the ink he gave Ted was instrumental in making him baseball’s first six-figure ballplayer. So the Colonel thought Ted feigned his outrage. Egan generally confined his criticism of Williams to his actions and behavior on the field. Off the field, when Ted was criticized for seeking a draft deferment in 1942, with World War II on, when he was off fishing when his first child was born, and when he was recalled for service in Korea, the Colonel came to Williams’s defense.
If Egan helped shape, even manipulate, public perceptions about Ted, he also directly affected Williams’s views of the writers as a whole. It didn’t matter to Ted that the vast majority of his press was favorable; when the Colonel unloaded on him, it was as if all the nice notices had never appeared.
After Ted popped off to Austen Lake—lashing out at Boston and saying that he had demanded to be traded—Egan wrote that “Williams is the prize heel ever to wear a Boston uniform.” When Ted was being honored by the Red Sox before going off to Korea in 1952, Egan again blasted him. “It seems disgraceful to me that a person such as Williams now is to be given the keys to the city. We talk about juvenile delinquency, and fight against it, and then officially honor a man whom we should officially horsewhip for the vicious influence that he has had on childhood in America.”
Some of the things Egan wrote about Ted were so harsh that the Hearst Corporation, owner of the
Record,
got nervous.
Record
publisher Pat Curran confided to Red Sox broadcaster Curt Gowdy, who took over as the voice of the team in 1951, that a Hearst lawyer had instructed him to have Egan tone it down. “Pat told me one day that a lawyer from Hearst came to him with a warning, saying, ‘Listen, this kid playing for the Red Sox, this Williams, it’s almost impossible for someone to win a libel/slander case against a newspaper, but we’ve gone over some of Egan’s columns, and this kid’s got a great case,’ ” Gowdy said. “This was somewhere in the fifties. So I went and told Ted, and I said, ‘Look, you’ve got a great case here. You ought to sue ’em.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t lower myself to do that.’ That’s the way he was.” 32
Bob Ajemian, then a young baseball reporter at the
American,
said Egan’s barbs against Ted made the jobs of the beat reporters much harder. “The bile Egan delivered, Williams would take it out on me and the other writers. Egan would write from the bunker. He was a figure in the locker room, which he never visited. GIs like me would dig out the information from the players in the locker room and take the abuse, and Egan would take the information while never going into combat himself.”
Ted would later mellow a bit in his attitude toward the press, but never toward Egan. Once, surrounded by a group of writers toward the end of the 1954 season, Williams was in a reflective mood about the interplay between ballplayers and reporters. Recalled George Sullivan, a former reporter for the
Traveler,
“He said, ‘You know, there are a lot of jerks in your business but a lot in mine, too.’ ” Then Williams added, “ ‘There’s one SOB that if someone came in that door and said, ‘Dave Egan just dropped
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