As you probably heard, it was a very cold, dank day type thing. Williams earlier had hit a ball off of me to right field—a fly ball that our right fielder, Al Pilarcik, caught back close to the warning track. So Williams had hit the ball pretty well that time, and I thought, Uh oh, but it was an out. So, it’s the seventh inning, and he comes up, and Jackie Jensen was their next hitter, right-hand hitter, and with the short left-field wall there, I thought, There’s no way I’m gonna pitch around Williams.

I think the first pitch was a ball. The next pitch—he swung and missed—was another fastball. The next pitch I just went to another fastball and he hit it out. Made the score four to three.

I mean, all I was trying to do was win the ballgame. The fact that he hit the home run wasn’t that big to me because I’d actually had pretty good success against him.

After he hit the home run, he went in [the dugout] and of course, as you know, he kind of ignored the fans and everything. And they were all standing and waiting and wanting him to come out of the dugout and wave to him or something like that. And finally, he’s sitting on the bench and he waved to me and said, “Go ahead and pitch. I’m not gettin’ up.” I actually stood behind the mound and waited for him to come out, but he didn’t.

We went back to Baltimore, probably by train, at that time. And got to the hotel room, and I thought I knew what hotel he stayed at in Boston. So I gave him a call, and asked for Ted Williams’s room. And I’ll be damned—they hooked me up, and Ted answered the phone! And I said, “Well, I guess I got to congratulate ya for, you know, retiring on a home run and everything.” He pretty much told me, at the time, “Hey, I wanna thank you for challenging me, and not really pitching around me or anything.” And I said, “Hell, I’m two runs up in the game. What am I pitching around you for?” So I did get to talk to him, that night after we got home.

One of the sportswriters looked it up, and he said that Williams lifetime was two for thirteen off of me. So I did all right against him.