This story was originally published in the June 1986 issue. Two years earlier, Richard Ben Cramer wrote a cover story on the city where he began his journalism career, and its mayor. Click here to read the six other greatest Esquire stories ever published -- in their entirety.

Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those. There's a story about him I think of now. This is not about baseball but fishing. He meant to be the best there, too. One day he says to a Boston writer: "Ain't no one in heaven or earth ever knew more about fishing."

"Sure there is," says the scribe.

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Well, God made the fish."

"Yeah, awright," Ted says. "But you have to go pretty far back."

It was forty-five years ago, when achievements with a bat first brought him to the nation's notice, that Ted Williams began work on his defense. He wanted fame, and wanted it with a pure, hot eagerness that would have been embarrassing in a smaller man. But he could not stand celebrity. This is a bitch of a line to draw in America's dust.

Ted was never the kind to quail. In this epic battle, as in the million smaller face-offs that are his history, his instinct called for exertion, for a show of force that would shut those bastards up. That was always his method as he fought opposing pitchers, and fielders who bunched up on him, eight on one half of the field; as he fought off the few fans who booed him and thousands who thought he ought to love them, too; as he fought through, alas, three marriages; as he fought to a bloody standoff a Boston press that covered, with comment, his every sneeze and snort. He meant to dominate, and to an amazing extent, he did. But he came to know, better than most men, the value of his time. So over the years, Ted Williams learned to avoid annoyance. Now in his seventh decade, he had girded his penchants for privacy and ease with a bristle of dos and don'ts that defeat casual intrusion. He is a hard man to meet.

Ted Williams can hush a room just by entering. There is a force that boils up from him and commands attention.

This is not to paint him as a hermit or a shrinking flower, Garbo with a baseball bat. No, in his hometown of Islamorada, on the Florida Keys, Ted is not hard to see. He's out every day, out early and out loud. You might spot him at a coffee bar where the guides breakfast, quizzing them on their catches and telling them what he thinks of fishing here lately, which is "IT'S HORSESHIT." Or you might notice him in a crowded but quiet tackle shop, poking at a reel that he's seen before, opining that it's not been sold because "THE PRICE IS TOO DAMN HIGH," after which Ted advises his friend, the proprietor, across the room: "YOU MIGHT AS WELL QUIT USING THAT HAIR DYE. YOU'RE GOING BALD ANYWAY."

He's always first, 8:00 A.M., at the tennis club. He's been up for hours, he's ready. He fidgets, awaiting appearance by some other, any other, man with a racket, where upon Ted bellows, before the newcomer can say hello: "WELL, YOU WANNA PLAY?" Ted's voice normally emanates with gale and force, even at close range. Apologists attribute this to the ear injury that sent him home from Korea and ended his combat flying career. But Ted can speak softly and hear himself fine, if it's only one friend around. The roar with which he speaks in a public place, or to anyone else, has nothing to do with his hearing. It's your hearing he's worried about.

Ted Williams can hush a room just by entering. There is a force that boils up from him and commands attention. This he has come to accept as his destiny and his due, just as he came to accept the maddening, if respectful, way his opponents pitched around him (he always seemed to be leading the league in bases on balls), or the way every fan in the ball park seemed always to watch (and comment upon) T. Williams's every move. It was often said Ted would rather play ball in a lab, where fans couldn't see. But he never blamed fans for watching him. His hate was for those who couldn't or wouldn't feel with him, his effort, his exultation, pride, rage, or sorrow. If they wouldn't share those, then there was his scorn, and he's make them feel that, by God. These days, there are no crowds, but Ted is watched, and why not? What other match could draw a kibitzer's eye when Ted, on the near court, pounds toward the net, slashing the air with his big racket, laughing in triumphant derision as he scores with his killer drop shot, or smacking the ball twenty feet long and roaring, "SYPHILITIC SON OF A BITCH!" as he hurls his racket to the clay at his feet?

And who could say Ted does not mean it be seen when he stops in front of the kibitzers as he and his opponent change sides? "YOU OKAY?" Ted wheezes as he yells as his foe. "HOW D'YA FEEL?...HOW OLD ARE YOU?...JUST WORRIED ABOUT YOUR HEART HA HA HAW." Ted turns and winks, mops his face. A kibitzer says mildly: "How are you, Ted?" And Ted drops the towel, swells with Florida air, grins gloriously, and booms back:

"WELL, HOW DO I LOOK?...HUH?...WHAT DO YOU THINK OF TED WILLIAMS NOW?"

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It is another matter, though, to interrupt his tour of life, and force yourself on his attention. This is where the dos and don'ts come in. The dos fall to you. They concern your conduct, habits, schedule, attitude, and grooming. It's too long a list to go into, but suffice it to recall the one thing Ted liked about managing the Washington Senators: "I was in a position where people had to by God listen."

The don'ts, on the other hand, pertain to Ted, and they are probably summed up best by Jimmy Albright, the famous fishing guide, Ted's friend since 1947 and Islamorada neighbor. "Ted don't do," Jimmy says, "mucha anything he don't want to."

He does not wait or bend his schedule: "I haven't got my whole career to screw around with you, bush!" He does not screw around with anything for long, unless it's hunting fish, and then he'll spend all day with perfect equanimity. He does not reminisce, except in rare moods of ease. He does not talk about his personal life. "Why the hell should I?"

His standing in the worlds of baseball and fishing would not net him an invitation a night, but he does not go to dinners. One reason is he does not wear ties, and probably hasn't suffered one five times in a quarter century. Neither does he go to parties, where he'd have to stand around, with a drink in his hand, "listening to a lot of bullshit." No, he'd rather watch TV.

He does not go to restaurants, and the reasons are several: They make a fuss, and the owner or cook's on his neck like gnat. Or worse, it's a stream of sportsfans (still Ted's worst epithet) with napkins to sign. At restaurants you wait, wait, wait. Restaurants have little chairs and tables, no place for elbows, arms, knees, feet. At restaurants there's never enough food. Lastly, restaurants charge a lot, and Ted doesn't toss money around. (A few years ago he decided $2.38 was top price for a pound of beef. For more than a year, he honed his technique on chuck roast and stew meat. Only an incipient boycott by his friends, frequent dinner guests, finally shook his resolve.)

The last reason is seized upon unkindly by restaurateurs in Islamorada and nearby Keys: "No, he doesn't come in. He's too cheap. He'd go all over town, sonofabitch, and he'd pay by check, hoping they wouldn't cash the check, they'd put it on the wall."

But this is resentment speaking, and it is Ted's lot in life to be misunderstood. Some are put off, for instance, by the unlisted phone, by the steel fence, the burglar alarm, and KEEP OUT signs that stud his gates when he swings them shut with the carbon-steel chain and the padlock. But his friends think nothing of it. A few have his number, but they don't call, as they know he's got the phone off the hook. No, they'll cruise by; if the gates are unchained, if they see his faded blue truck with the bumper sticker sign IF GUNS ARE OUTLAWED ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS, if it's not mealtime and not too late and there's nothing they know of that's pissing Ted off, well, then...they drive right in.

And this is the way to meet Ted: by introduction of an old friend, like Jimmy Albright. It's Jimmy who knows where to park the car so it won't annoy Ted. It's Jimmy who cautions, as we throw away out cigarettes, that Ted won't allow any smoke in his house. It's Jimmy who starts the ball rolling, calls out "Hiya, Ted!" as the big guy launches himself from his chair and stalks across the living room, muttering in the stentorian growl that passes with him as sotto voce: "Now who the hell is THIS?"

He fills the door. "Awright, come on in. WELL, GET THE HELL IN HERE." He sticks out a hand, but his nose twitches, lip curls at a lingering scent of smoke. Ted's got my hand, now, but he says to Jimmy: "S'that you who stinks, or this other one, too? Jesus! Awright, sit down. Sit over there."

"WELL, HOW DO I LOOK?...HUH?...WHAT DO YOU THINK OF TED WILLIAMS NOW?"

Ted wants to keep this short and sweet. He's in the kitchen, filling tumblers with fresh lemonade. Still, his voice rattles the living room: "D'YOU READ THE BOOK?" He means his memoir, My Turn at Bat. "Anything you're gonna ask, I guarantee it's in the goddamn book....Yeah, awright. I only got one copy myself.

"Where's the BOOK?" he yells to Louise Kaufman, his mate. Ted thinks that Lou knows the location of everything he wants. "HEY SWEETIES, WHERE'S THAT GODDAMN BOOK?"

Lou has raised three sons, so no man, not even Ted, is going to fluster her. She comes downstairs bearing the book, which she hands to Ted, and which he throws to the floor at my feet. He growls: "Now, I want you to read that. And then I'm gonna ask you a key question."

I ask: "Tomorrow? Should I call?"

"HELL NO."

"Jimmy says he'll arrange a meeting."

Ted says: "HOW'S THAT LEMONADE?"

"Good."

"HUH? IS IT?...WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME?"

In the car, minutes later, Jimmy explains that Ted won't talk on the phone. "Ted gimme his number twenty-five years ago," Jimmy says. "And I never give it yet to any asshole." We both nod solemnly as this fact settles, and we muse on the subject of trust. I'm thinking of the fine camaraderie between sportsmen and...wait a minute. Jimmy and Ted have been friend forty years now.

Does that make fifteen years Ted didn't give him the number?

I'm glad it's over. Before anything else, understand that I am glad it's over...I wouldn't go back to being eighteen or nineteen years old knowing what was in store, the sourness and bitterness, knowing how I thought the weight of the damn world was always on my neck, grinding on me. I wouldn't go back to that for anything. I wouldn't want to go back....I wanted to be the greatest hitter who ever lived....

— Ted Williams, with John Underwood: My Turn at Bat

San Diego was a small town, and the Williams house was a small box of wood, one story like the rest on Utah Street. It was a workingman's neighborhood, but at the bottom of the Great Depression a lot of men weren't working. Ted's father was a photographer with a little shop downtown. Later he got a U.S. marshal's job, in gratitude for some election favors he'd done for Governor Merriam, and that remained his claim to fame. Ted never saw much of him. His mother was the strength in the family, a small woman with a will of steel who gave her life to the Salvation Army. She was always out on the streets, San Diego or south of the border, the Angel of Tijuana, out fighting the devil drink, selling the War Cry or playing on a cornet, and God-blessing those who vouchsafed a nickel. Sometimes she'd take along her elder boy, and Ted hated it, but he didn't disobey. He was a scrawny kid and shy, and he tried to shrink behind the bass drum so none of his friends would see. There was school, but he wasn't much good there. History was the only part he liked. And then he'd come home, and his mother was out, and sometimes it was 10:00 at night, and Ted and his brother, Danny, were still on the porch on Utah Street, waiting for someone to let them in.

Soon home lost its place at the center of Ted's life. There wasn't much in the little house that could make him feel special. It wasn't the place where he could be the Ted Williams he wanted to be. North Park playground was a block away, and there, with one friend, a bat, and a ball, Ted could be the biggest man in the majors. The game he played was called Big League: one kid pitched, the other hit to a backstop screen. "Okay, here's the great Charlie Gehringer," Ted would announce, as he took his stance. Or sometimes it was Bill Terry, Hank Wilson, or another great man he'd never seen. "Last of the ninth, two men on, two out, here's the pitch...Gehringer swings!" Ted swung. Crack! Another game-winning shot for the great...the Great Ted Williams.

They were just the dreams of a kid, that's all. But Ted went back to the playground every day. First it was with a friend his own age, then the playground director, Rod Luscomb, a grown man, a two-hundred-pounder who'd made it to the Cal State League. Ted pitched to Luscomb, Luscomb to Ted. At first they'd always tell each other when they were going to throw a curve. But then Ted started calling out: "Don't tell me, just see if I can hit it." Crack! Ted could hit it. "Listen, Lusk," Ted used to say. "Someday I'm going to build myself a ball park with cardboard fences. Then, I'm going to knock 'em all down, every darn one, with home runs." But Ted wasn't hitting homers with his scrawny chest, those skinny arms. Luscomb set him to push-ups, twenty, then forty, fifty, then a hundred, then fingertip push-ups. Ted did them at home on Utah Street. He picked his high school, Herbert Hoover High, because it was new and he's have a better chance to make the team. When he made it, he came to school with glove hung like a badge on his belt. He carried a bat to class. And after his last class (or before), it was back to the playground. Then in darkness, home for dinner, the push-ups, and the dreams.

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There were no major leagues in San Diego. There was no TV. He had no more idea of the life he sought than we have of life on the moon. Maybe less, for we've seen the replays. Ted had to dream it all himself. And how could he measure what he'd give up? He wasn't interested in school, didn't care about cars, or money, or girls. He felt so awkward, except on the field. There, he'd show what Ted Williams could do. Now Hoover High went to Pomona for a doubleheader, and Ted pitched the first game, played outfield in the second, and hit and hit, and Hoover won, and wasn't it great? There was an ice cream cart, and Ted ate eighteen Popsicles. His teammates started counting when he got to ten. But Ted didn't mind them making fun. That's how good he felt: him hitting, and Hoover winning, and the big crowd. Gee, that's the governor! And Ted found himself in the governor's path, the man who'd tossed his father a job, and he had to say something, and the awkwardness came flooding back, he felt red in his face. So Ted grabbed tighter on his bat and he barked at Merriam: "HIYA, GOV!"

Of course people called him cocky. But he only wondered: Was he good enough? At seventeen, as high school closed, he signed with the local team, the Coast League Padres. They offered him $150 a month and said they'd pay for the whole month of June, even though this was already June 20. So that was Ted's bonus -- twenty days' pay. He didn't care: he was a step closer, and each day was a new wonder.

He rode the trains, farther from home than he'd ever been. He stayed in hotels with big mirrors, and Ted would stand at a mirror with a bat, or a rolled-up paper, anything -- just to see his swing, how he looked: he had to look good. He got balls from the club, so many that his manager, Frank Shellenback, thought Ted must be selling them. No, Ted took them to his playground, got Lusk and maybe a kid to shag flies, and hit the covers off those balls.

Best of all, there were major leaguers, real ones, to see. They were old by the time they came to the Coast League, but Ted watched them, almost ate them with his eyes, measured himself against their size. Lefty O'Doul was managing the San Francisco Seals, and he was one of the greats. Ted stopped Lefty on the field one day. He had to know: "Mr. O'Doul, please...what should I do to be a good hitter?" And Lefty said: "Kid, best advice I can give you is don't let anybody change you." Ted walked around on air. After that, in bad times, he'd hear O'Doul's voice telling him he'd be okay. The bad times were slumps. If Ted couldn't hit, the world went gray. In his second year with San Diego, Ted hit a stretch of oh-for-eighteen. He hung around the hotel in San Francisco, moping. He didn't know what to do with himself. He got a paper and turned to the sports. There was an interview with O'Doul. The headline said: WILLIAMS GREATEST HITTER SINCE WANER. And Ted thought: I wonder who this Williams is?

It was a newspaper that told him, too, about Boston buying his contract. The Red Sox! Ted's heart sank. It was a fifth-place club and as far away as any team could be: cold, northerly, foreign. Still, it was big league, wasn't it?

He had to borrow $200 for the trip east; there were floods that spring, 1938. He got to Sarasota, Florida, about a week late. And when he walked into the clubhouse, all the players were on the field.

"Well, so you're the kid."

It was Johnny Orlando, clubhouse boy. The way Johnny told it, he'd been waiting for this Williams. "Then, one morning, this Li'l Abner walks into the clubhouse. He's got a red sweater on, his shirt open at the neck, a raggedy duffle bag. His hair's on end like he's attached to an electric switch....'Where you been, Kid?' I asked him. 'Don't you know we been working out almost a whole week? Who you supposed to be, Ronald Colman or somebody, you can't get here on time?'" Johnny gave Ted a uniform, the biggest he had in stock. But as Ted grabbed a couple of bats, his arms and legs stuck out, the shirttail wouldn't stay in his pants.

"Well, come on, Kid," Johnny said, and he led the bean pole out to the field. From the first-base stands, a voice yelled: "Hey, busher, tuck your shirt in! You're in the big leagues now."

"Someday I'm going to build myself a ball park with cardboard fences. Then, I'm going to knock 'em all down, every darn one, with home runs."

Ted wheeled around, face red. "Who's the wise guy in the stands?" Johnny told him: "That's Joe Cronin, Kid, your manager." Ted put his head down and made for the outfield. It wasn't the reception he'd expected, but at least he had his nickname. Everyone heard Johnny show him around. "Look here, Kid. Go over there, Kid." It stuck right away; it was a role, he knew. And soon Joe Cronin would fill the spot Rod Luscomb had held in Ted's life. Cronin was only thirty-one, but that was old enough. He was a hitter and a teacher, a manager, counselor, and Ted was ever the Kid.

Cronin had come from Washington, one of the Red Sox's imported stars. The owner, Tom Yawkey, was buying a contender. Along with Cronin, the Hall of Fame shortstop, Yawkey raided Washington for Ben Chapman, a speedy right fielder and .300 hitter. From the Browns, Yawkey got Joe Vosmik, a left fielder who would hit .324. From the A's, Yawkey bought two old greats, Lefty Grove and Jimmy Foxx, along with Doc Cramer, another .300 hitter, for center field.

These were the finest hitters Ted had seen. He couldn't take his eyes off the batter's box. But the presence of all those hitters in camp meant one thing of terrible import to Ted: no nineteen-year-old outfielder was breaking in, not that year, and the veterans let Ted know it. Vosmik, Chapman, and Cramer, rough old boys all of them, made sure he had his share of insults. He lasted about a week, until the club broke camp for the first game in Tampa.

Ted wasn't going to Tampa. He was headed to Daytona Beach, where the Minneapolis farm team trained. Ted saw the list and the shame welled up, turned to rage. He yelled to the veteran outfielders: "I'll be back. And I'll make more money in this fucking game than all three of you combined." When he walked to the bus stop with Johnny Orlando, he asked: "How much you think those guys make?" And Johnny said: "I don't know, maybe fifteen thousand apiece." Ted nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. He had his salary goal now. Then he borrowed $2.50 from Johnny for the bus trip to the minors.

In Minneapolis, Ted led the league in everything: average, home runs, runs batted in, screwball stunts....There were tales of his conduct in the outfield, where he'd sit down between batters, or practice swinging an imaginary bat, watching his leg-stride, watching his wrist-break, watching everything except balls hit to him. If he did notice a fly ball, he'd gallop after it, slapping his ass and yelling, "HI HO SILVER!" He was nineteen, and fans loved him. But if there was one boo, the Kid would hear it, and he'd try to shut the sonofabitch up for good. Once, when a heckler got on him, Ted fired a ball into the stands -- and hit the wrong guy. That was more than the manager, poor old Donie Bush, could stand. He went to the owner, Mike Kelley, and announced: "That's it. One of us goes. Him or me." Kelley replied, quick and firm: "Well, then, Donie, it'll have to be you."

By the time Ted came back to Sarasota, the Red Sox were banking on him, too. They traded Ben Chapman, the right fielder who'd hit .340 the year before. Ted told himself: "I guess that shows what they think of ME." It was like he had to convince himself he was really big league now. Even after a good day, three-for-four, he'd sit alone in the hotel with the canker of one failure eating at him. If he screwed up, or looked bad, the awkwardness turned to shame, the shame to rage. As the team headed north, Ted was hitting a ton, but it wasn't enough. At the first stop, Atlanta, Johnny Orlando pointed out the strange right-field wall -- three parallel fences, one behind the other. Johnny said: "I saw Babe Ruth hit one over that last fence...." Ted vowed right there he'd do it, too. But the next day, he couldn't clear one fence. Worse still, he made an error. In the seventh, he put the Sox up with a three-run triple, but it wasn't enough. He had to show what Ted Williams could do! When he struck out in the eighth, he went to right field seething. Then a popup twisted toward his foul line. He ran and ran, dropped the ball, then booted it trying to pick it up. Rage was pounding in him. He grabbed the ball and fired it over those right-field walls. By the time the ball hit Ponce de Leon Avenue and bounced up at a Sears store, Cronin had yanked Ted out of the game.

Even Ted couldn't understand what that rage was to him, why he fed it, wouldn't let it go. He only knew that the next day in Atlanta, he smashed a ball over those three walls and trotted to the bench with a hard stare that asked Johnny Orlando, and anyone else who cared to look: Well, what do you think of the Kid now?

He had a great first year in the bigs. On his first Sunday at Fenway Park, he was four-for-five with his first home run, a shot to the bleachers in right-center, where only five balls had landed the whole year before. There were nine Boston dailies that vied in hyperbole on the new hero. TED WILLIAMS REVIVES FEATS OF BABE RUTH, said the Globe after Ted's fourth game.

From every town he wrote a letter to Rod Luscomb with a layout of the ball park and a proud X where his homer hit. He was always first to the stadium and last to leave after a game. He took his bats to the post office to make sure they were the proper weight. He quizzed the veterans mercilessly about the pitchers coming up. "What does Newsom throw in a jam? How about Ruffing's curve?" It was as if he meant to ingest the game. He only thought baseball. On trains, he'd never join the older guys in poker games or drinking bouts. At hotels, it was always room service, and Ted in his shorts, with a bat, at a mirror.

His roomie was Broadway Charlie Wagner, a pitcher with a taste for fancy suits and an occasional night on the town. One night, 4:00 A.M., Wagner was sleeping the sleep of the just when, wham, CRASH, he's on the floor, with the bed around his ears, and he figures it's the end. He opens his eyes to see the bean-pole legs, then the shorts, and then the bat. Ted's been practicing and he hit the bedpost. Does he say he's sorry? No, he doesn't say a damn thing to Wagner. He's got a little dream-child smile on his face and he murmurs to himself: "Boy, what power!"

He ended up hitting .327 and leading the league for runs batted in, the first time a rookie ever won that crown. He finished with thirty-one home runs, at least one in each American League park. There was no rookie of the year award, but Babe Ruth himself put the title on Ted, and that seemed good enough.

And after the season, he didn't go home. San Diego had lost its hold. His parents were getting a divorce, and that was pain he didn't want to face. He didn't want to see his troubled brother. He didn't want to see the crummy little house with the stained carpet and the chair with the hole where the mice ate through. He had a car now, a green Buick worth a thousand bucks. He went to Minnesota. There was a girl there he might want to see. Her dad was a hunting guide, and he could talk to her. And there was duck to hunt. As many as he wanted. And he could go where he wanted. And do what he wanted. He was twenty-one. And Big League.

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Everybody knew 1940 would be a great year. Ted knew he'd be better: now he'd seen the pitchers, he knew he could do it. Tom Yawkey sent him a contract for $10,000, double his rookie pay. "I guess that shows what they think of ME."

No one thought about this, but pitchers had seen Ted, too. And this time around, no one was going to try to blow a fastball by him. Cronin was having an off year and Double-X Foxx was getting old and would never again be batting champ. So the pressure fell to Ted. If they pitched around him and he got a walk, that wasn't enough, the Sox needed hits. If he got a hit, it should have been a homer. A coven of bleacherites started riding Ted. And why not? They could always get a rise. Sometimes he'd yell back. Or he'd tell the writers: "I'm gonna take raw hamburger out to feed those wolves." The papers rode the story hard: O Unhappy Star! Then he told the writers: "Aw, Boston's a shitty town. Fans are lousy." Now the papers added commentary, pious truths about the Boston fans as the source of Ted's fine income. So Ted let them have it again: "My salary is peanuts. I'd rather be traded to New York." That did it. Now it wasn't just a left-field crowd riding Ted. It was civic sport. He doesn't like Boston, huh? Who does he think he is?

Writers worked the clubhouse, trying to explain the Kid. Big Jimmy Foxx, a hero to Ted, said: "Aw, he's just bein' a spoiled boy." The great Lefty Grove said if Williams didn't hustle, he'd punch him in the nose. Of course, all that made the papers. Now when writers came to his locker, Ted didn't wait for questions. "HEY, WHAT STINKS?" he'd yell in their faces. "HEY! SOMETHING STINK IN HERE? OH, IT'S YOU, WELL, NO WONDER WITH THAT SHIT YOU WROTE." So, they made new nicknames for him: Terrible Ted, the Screwball, the Problem Child. Fans picked it up and gave him hell. It didn't seem to matter what he did anymore. And Ted read the stories in his hotel room and knew he was alone. Sure, he read the papers, though he always said he didn't. He read the stories twenty times, he'd recite them word for word. He'd pace the room and seethe, want to shut them up, want to hit them back. But he didn't know how.

And Ted would sit alone in the locker room, boning his bats, not just the handle, like other guys did, but the whole bat, grinding down the wood, compressing the fiber tighter, making it tougher, harder, tighter. He would string the ball, he'd show them. He'd shut them up. Jesus, he was trying. And he was hitting. Wasn't his average up? Wasn't he leading the league in runs? He was doing it like he'd taught himself, like he'd dreamed. Wasn't that enough? What the hell did they want him to be?

What else could he be? Some players tried to help, to ease him up a bit. Once, Ted gave Doc Cramer a ride, and they were talking hitting, as Ted always did. It was at Kenmore Square that Cramer said: "You know who's the best, don't you? You know who's the best in the league? You are." And Ted never forgot those words. But neither could he forget what was written, just as he couldn't forget one boo, just as he'd never forget the curve that struck him out a year before. Why didn't they understand? He could never forget.

And one day he made an error, and then struck out, and it sounded like all of Fenway was booing, and he ran to the bench with his head down, the red rising in his face, the shame in his belly, and the rage. Ted thought: These are the ones who cheered, the fans I waved my cap to? Well, never again. He vowed to himself: Never again. And he could not forget that either.

Lou is in a Miami hospital for heart tests. Ted says I can drive up with him. He figures we'll talk, and he'll have me out of his hair. We start from his house and I wait for him on the porch, where a weary woman irons. The woman is filling in for Lou and she's been ironing for hours. Ted may wear a T-shirt until it's half holes and no color at all, but he wants it just so. The woman casts a look of despair at the pile and announces: "She irons his underpants."

Ted blows through the back door and makes for the car, Lou's Ford, which he proclaims "a honey of a little car, boys!" When Ted puts his seal of judgment on a thing or person, by habit he alerts the whole dugout. We are out of Islamorada on the crowded highway, U.S. 1, the only road that perseveres to these islets off the corner of the country, when Ted springs his key question. "You read the book? Awright. Now we're going to see how smart YOU are. What would YOU do to start, I mean, the first goddamn thing now, the first thing you see when you're sitting in the seats and the lights go off, how would YOU start the movie?"

Ted is considering a film deal for My Turn at Bat. He is working the topic of moviedom, as he does anything he wants to know. Now as he pilots the Ford through Key Largo, he listens with a grave frown to some possible first scenes. "Awright. Now I'll tell you how it's supposed to start, I mean how the guy's doing it said....It's in a fighter plane, see, flying, from the pilot's eye, over KOREA, Seoul. And it's flying, slow and sunny and then bang WHAM BOOOOMMM the biggest goddamn explosion ever on the screen. I mean BOOOOOMMM. And the screen goes dark. DARK. For maybe ten seconds there's NOTHING. NOTHING. And then when it comes back there's the ball park and the crowd ROARING... and that's the beginning.

"Sounds great, Ted."

"Does it? LOOK IT THIS NOW. I wonder where he's goin'. Well, okay, he's gonna do that. Well, okay -- I'm passing, too. Fuck it." Ted is pushing traffic hard to be at the hospital by 2:00, when Lou's doctors have promised results from the heart tests. He is trying to be helpful, but he'd edgy.

"How long have you and Lou been together?"

"Oh, I've known Lou for thirty-five years. You shouldn't put any of that shit in there. Say I have a wonderful friend, that's all."

"Yeah, but it makes a difference in how a man lives, Ted, whether he's got a woman or not -- "

"Boy, that Sylvester Stallone, he's really made something out of that Rocky, hasn't he?...."

"So Ted, let me ask you what -- "

"LOOK, I don't wanta go through my personal life with YOU, for Christ's sake. I won't talk to you about Lou, I won't talk to you about any of it. You came down here and you're talkin' about me, as I'm supposed to be different and all that...."

"Do you think you're different?"

"NO, not a damn bit. I'm in a little bit different POSITION. I mean, I've had things happen to me that have, uh, made it possible for me to be different. DAMN DIFFERENT in some ways. Everybody's not a big league ballplayer, everybody doesn't have, uh, coupla hitches in the service, everybody hasn't had, uh, as much notoriety about 'em as I had ALL MY LIFE, so...."

"So...."

"I wanna go NORTH. I'm gonna go up here and go farther down. I made a mistake there, GODDAMNIT, HOW THE HELL DO I GET ON THE FUCKIN' THING? I'll make a U-turn...."

"Ted, I think you were more serious about living life on your own terms...."

"Well, I wanted to be alone at times. It was the hustle and the bustle of the crowd for seven months a year. So sure, I wanted a little more privacy, a little more quiet, a little more tranquility. This is the fucking left we wanted."

"Yeah, but it's not just privacy, Ted. I'm not trying to make it seem unnatural. But what you toss off as a little more privacy led you off the continent, so far off in a corner that -- "

"Well, lemme tell you about Koufax. He got through playin' baseball, he went to a fuckin' little shitty remote town in Maine, and that's where he was for five years. Everybody thought he was a recluse, he wasn't very popular just 'cause he wanted to be alone and he finally moved out. Lemme tell you about Sterling Hayward, Hayden. HELL of an actor. And still he wanted to be ALONE, he wanted to TRAVEL, he wanted to be on his BOAT GOIN' TO THE SOUTH SEAS. So, see, that's not way outa line!....I guess I'll take a right, that oughta do it. Eight seventy-four, do you see 874 anyplace? Go down here till I get to Gilliam Road, or some goddamn thing....Fuck, 874's where I wanted to go, but looked like it was puttin' me back on this fuckin' turnpike, shit. So, you know, seeking privacy and, uh, seeking that kind of thing...what road is this?"

"We're on Killian....So privacy, you don't think that's what?"

"Unusual, for Christ's sake. Shit."

"I don't think it's unusual either."

"WELL, YOU'RE MAKIN' A PROJECT OUT OF IT!"

"No, I don't think it's unusual....You don't think you're exceptionally combative?"

"Nahh, me? Not a bit. Hell, no. THAT SAY KENDALL? Does it? Well, I made a hell of a move here. HELL of a move! See, 874 is right off there, hospital's down here...."

"You're a half-hour early, too."

"Here it is, right here, too. Best hospital in Miami. Expensive sonofabitch, boy. Christ. I'm all for Medicare. And I've always thought that, ALWAYS thought that. Shit. WELL, WHERE ARE YOU GOING? Where ARE you going, lady? Cunt!" Ted takes the parking space vacated by the lady and tells me he'll be back in an hour.

When he comes back he has good news about Lou: all tests are negative, her heart is fine. "Gee, I met the big cardiovascular man, he came in and I met him." Ted sounds twenty years younger.

He's walking to the car when a nurse passes. "GEE, WASN'T IT A SHAME," Ted suddenly booms, "THAT ALLIGATOR BIT THAT LITTLE GIRL'S LEG OFF?" He casts a sly sideward glance at the nurse to see if she's fallen for his favorite joke.

There was no rookie of the year award, but Babe Ruth himself put the title on Ted, and that seemed good enough.

"Honey of a little shittin' car!" he sings out as we hit the road. Now there is no fretting with traffic. Ted makes all the turns. Along the way, he sings forth a monologue about cars, this car, this road, this town of Homestead, that house, his house, the new house he's planning in central Florida, up on a hill, just about the highest point in the whole goddamn sate, what a deal he's getting there, Citrus Hills, HELL of a deal; about his hopes for his kids, his daughter, Claudia, only fourteen, who lives in Vermont with her mother, Ted's third wife, who was too much of a pain in the ass to live with, but gee, she's done a hell of a job with those kids, HELL of a job, the little girl is an actress, she had the lead in the Christmas play and she was so good, the papers up there all said she bears watching, SHE BEARS WATCHING, and her brother, Ted's boy, John Henry, he's picking colleges now, he's a good boy and Ted's critical, but he can't see too much wrong with that boy, and even the big daughter, Bobby Jo, she's thirty-eight already, still can bust Ted's chops pretty good, boys, but she's straightening out now; and these islands, there's bonefish here, used to be wonderful, years ago, there was NOTHING, NOTHING except a few of the best fishermen God ever made, and a narrow road between bay and sea, just a little shittin' road, and some women who weren't half bad on the water of off it either, and the world here was empty and the water was clear and you could have a few pops of rum, maybe get a little horny, go see friends, that's all there was here, a few friends, thirty, thirty-five years ago, when this place was young, when he first fished with Jimmy and he met Lou....

"Gee, I'm so fuckin' happy about Louise," Ted says. "Goddamn, she's a great person. Have more fun with her than...Goddamn."

Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Image

They booed in Boston? Well, not in Detroit, the 1941 All-Star Game, with all the nation listening in. Ted doubled in a run in the fourth, but the National League still led 5-3, going into the ninth. Then an infield hit, a single, a walk, a botched double play, and here it was: two out, two on, bottom of the ninth. Here's the Great Ted Williams. Claude Passeau, the Cubbie on the mound, sends a mean fastball in on his fists. Williams swings! When the ball made the seats, Ted started jumping on the base path. DiMaggio met him at home plate, Bob Feller ran out in street clothes, Cronin jumped the box-seat rail, the dugout emptied. The manager, Del Baker, kissed him on the forehead. They carried the Kid off the field.

He was showing them all now; after the All-Star break, Ted was still hitting more than .400. Sure, guys hit like that for a month, but then tailed off. No one in the league hit like that for a year, not since the Twenties, and each day the whole country watched. Writers from New York joined the Sox. Life brought its new strobe-light camera to photograph Ted in his shorts, swinging like he did in front of the mirror. Ted was on national radio: "Can you keep it up, Kid?" It was murderous pressure. By September, he was slipping, almost a point a day. On the last day, the Sox would have two games in Philadelphia. Ted had slipped to .39955. The way they round off averages, that's still .400. Cronin came to Ted on the eve of the twin bill and offered: "You could sit it out, Kid, have it made." But Ted said he'd play.

That night, he and Johnny Orlando walked Philadelphia. Ted stopped for milk shakes, Johnny for whiskey. Ten thousand people came to Shibe Park, though the games meant nothing. Connie Mack, the dour and penurious owner of the A's, threatened his men with fines if they eased up on Williams. But Ted didn't need help. First game, he got a single, then a home run, then two more singles. Second game, two more hits: one a screaming double that hit Mr. Mack's right-field loudspeaker so hard that the old man had to buy a new horn. In all, Ted went six-for-eight, and .406 for his third season. That night, he went out, he went out for chocolate ice cream.

Who could tell what he'd do the next year: maybe .450, the best ever, or break the Babe's record of sixty homers. He got a contract for $30,000, and he meant to fix up his mother's house. He'd have more money than he'd ever expected. He was the toast of the nation. But then the nation went to war.

Ted wanted to play. He'd read where some admiral said we'd kick the Japs back to Tokyo in six months. What was that compared to hitting? A lawyer in Minnesota drew up a plea for deferment, and Ted okayed the request: he was entitled, as his mother's support. When the local board refused deferment, the lawyer sent it up for review by the presidential board. That's when the papers got it. In headlines the size of howitzer shells, they said Ted didn't want to fight for his country. Teddy Ballgame just wanted to play.

Tom Yawkey called to say he could be making the mistake of his life. The league president told Ted to go ahead and play. Papers ran man-on-the-streets polls. In Boston, Ted was bigger news than war in the Pacific. At spring training, Joe Cronin said he'd be on his own with fans. "To hell with them," Ted spat. "I've heard plenty of boos." Still, he remembered the venomous letters that said he was an ingrate or a traitor. The one that hurt the most said nothing at all: it was just a blank sheet of paper, yellow paper.

Opening day in Boston, reporters sat in the left-field stands, out there with soldiers and sailors, to record reaction to Ted. The Kid treated the day as a personal challenge. His first time up, two on, two strikes, he got a waist-high fastball and drilled it into the bleachers. All the fans rose to cheer, servicemen among them. The Kid was back, and Fenway was with him. "Yeah, 98 percent were for me," Ted said later, as he scraped his bat. A writer said: "You mean 100 percent. I didn't hear a boo." Ted said: "Yeah, they were for me, except a couple of kids in the left-field stand, and a guy out in right. I could hear them."

In May, he enlisted for Navy wings and that shut up most of the hecklers. Still, he was always in a stew of contempt for some joker who said something unfair. It seemed Ted courted the rage now, used it to bone his own fiber. Now there was no awkwardness, no blushing before he blew. It was automatic, a switch in his gut that snapped on and then, watch out for the Kid. One day in July, a fan in left was riding Ted pretty hard. Ted came to bat in the fifth: he took a strange stance and swung late, hit a line drive, but well foul into the left-field seats. Next pitch, again he swung late, hit another liner, but this stayed fair -- and Ted didn't run, barely made it to second. Cronin yanked him out of the game, fined him $250 for loafing. But Ted wasn't loafing, the hit caught him by surprise. He's been trying to kill the heckler with a line drive foul.

Ted loved the service, its certainty and ease. He never had a problem with authority. It was drawing his own lines that gave him fits. He had his fears about the mathematics, navigation problems, and instrument work. But at Amherst College, where the Navy started training, he found his mind was able, and he was pleased. And he loved the feel of an airplane. He was good, right from the start. There was coordination in it, and care: those were natural to him. And he was a constant student, always learning in the air. But he was proudest of his gunnery, the way he could hold back until the last pass, then pour out the lead and shred the sleeve. That wasn't study, that was art. He got his wings near the top of his class and signed on as an instructor at Pensacola, Florida. He was happy, and good at his job. Strangely, in uniform, he was freer than before.

On the day he was commissioned (second lieutenant, U.S. Marines), he married that daughter of the hunting guide, Doris Soule from Minnesota. Now, for the first time, he'd have a house, a place on the coast near the base. And now, on off days, he'd scrape up some gas stamps, grab his fly rod, find a lonesome canal, and lose himself in a hunt for snook. But back at the base, Ted would grab a cadet and take him up in his SNJ, and the new guy of course was goggle-eyed, flying with Ted Williams, and Ted would make his plane dance over the coast, then he'd dive and point, and yell to the cadet: "That's where the Kid fished yesterday."

Orders came through slowly for him. What base commander would give him up as ornament and outfielder? At last he got combat training and packed up for the Pacific. But Ted was just getting to Hawaii when Japan folded. So he packed up again for Boston, and now he felt he was going to war.

He came back like he owned the game. Opening day, Washington, after a three-year layoff: crack, a four-hundred-foot home run. And then another and another, all around the league. By the All-Star break in '46, he was hitting .365, with twenty-seven home runs. In the All-Star Game, Ted alone ruined the National League: four straight hits, two homers, and five runs batted in.

And the Red Sox were burying the American League. Tom Yawkey's millions were paying off. The team as a whole was hitting .300, and Ted was hammering the right-field walls. In the first game of two in Cleveland, he hit three homers, one a grand slam when the Sox were behind, the second with two on to tie, the third in the bottom of the ninth to win 11-10. As Ted came up in the second game, Cleveland's manager, Lou Boudreau, started moving men: the right fielder backed toward the corner, center fielder played the wall in right-center; the third baseman moved behind second, and Boudreau, the shortstop, played a deep second base; the second baseman stood in short right, the first baseman stood behind his bag. There were eight men on one half of the field (the left fielder was alone on the other) and Ted stood at home plate and laughed out loud.

There never had been anything like it. He had bent the nature of the game. But he would not bend his own, and slap the ball for singles to left. He hit into the teeth of the Shift (soon copied around the league), and when he slumped, and the Sox with him, the papers started hammering Ted again, his pride, his "attitude." At last, against the Shift in Cleveland, Ted sliced a drive to left-center, and slid across the plate with an inside-the-park home run, first and last of his career. The Sox had their first pennant since 1918. But the headlines didn't say, SOX CLINCH. Instead, eight-column banners cried that Ted stayed away from the champagne party. "Ted Williams," Dave Egan wrote in the Record, "is not a team man." And when St. Louis pulled the Shift in the Series and held Ted to singles, five-for-twenty-five, a new banner read: WILLIAMS BUNTS. And the Red Sox lost the Series, first and last of his career, and after the seventh game, in St. Louis, Ted went to the train, closed his compartment, hung his head, and cried. When he looked up, he saw a crowd watching him through the window. The papers wrote: "Ted Williams cannot win the big ones." The Associated Press voted him number two in a poll for Flop of the Year.

It seemed like Ted couldn't laugh anymore, not in a ball park. He said he was going to Florida to fish. He didn't want to see a bat for months. Soon that was a pattern: one year, before spring training, he tucked in a week in the Everglades. Next year, it was a month. Year after that, longer. In early 1948, the papers discovered that Doris was in a Boston hospital to deliver Ted's first child. But where was the big guy? In Florida? FISHING? The mothers of Boston pelted the press with angry letters. "To hell with them," Ted said. He didn't come north for two days. And two days later, he was back fishing. In two years, he'd moved Doris and his daughter, Barbara Joyce, to a house in Miami, the first he'd ever owned. Hut he never stayed home there either. He heard about some men in the Keys catching bonefish with light fly tackle. When Ted tried this new sport, he found a love that would last longer than any of his marriages.

Ted didn't care for the money as much as the record. It was history now that was the burr on his back. The joy was gone, but not the dream.

The Keys were empty, their railroad wrecked by a hurricane in 1935. There were only a few thousand souls on one road that ran for a hundred miles; the rest was just mangrove and mosquitoes, crushed coral islands, and shining water. In Islamorada -- a town of one store, a bar, a restaurant, one gas pump -- a few fishing guides, led by Jimmy Albright, were poling their skiffs over shallows that only they knew, hunting bonefish and inventing an art as they went along. These were Ted's kind of men, who'd sneer or scream at a chairman of the stock exchange if he made a lousy cast. Islamorada was a strange meritocracy: if you could not play a fish, tie a fly, cast a line through the wind, you were no one in this town.

Ted could do it all, brilliantly. The guides didn't make much fuss about his fame, but they loved his fishing. His meticulous detail work, always an oddity at Fenway Park, was respected here as the mark of a fine angler. Ted had the best tackle, the best reels, best rods, the perfect line, his lures were impeccable. He'd work for hours at a bench in his house, implanting balsa plugs with lead so they'd sail off a spinning rod just so, then settle in the water slowly like fly. He could stand on the bow of a skiff all day, watching the water for signs of fish, and soon he was seeing them before the guides. His casts were quick and long, his power was immense. He never seemed to snap a line, never tangled up, his knots were sure, his knowledge grew, and he always wanted to know more. He'd question Jimmy relentlessly and argue every point. But if you showed him something once, he never needed showing again. He fished with Jimmy week after week, and one afternoon as he stood on the bow, he asked without turning his head: "Who's the best you ever fished?" Jimmy said a name, Al Mathers. Ted nodded, "Uh-huh," and asked another question, but he vowed to himself: "He don't know it yet, but the best angler he's had is me."

Every winter, he'd fish the flats, then head north to make his appearance at the Boston Sportsmen's Show. He'd spend a few days doing fly-casting stunts and then take a couple of hours, at most, to tell Tom Yawkey what he wanted for a contract. His salary was enormous. He was the first to break Babe Ruth's $80,000. Ted didn't care for the money as much as the record. It was history now that was the burr on his back. The joy was gone, but not the dream.

Every day, every season, he was still first to the ball park, where he'd strip to shorts and bone his bats; still first out to the cage, where he'd bark his imaginary play-by-play: "Awright, Detroit, top of the ninth..." Then back to his locker for a clean shirt and up at a trot to the dugout, to clap a hostile eye on the pitcher warming up, to pick apart his delivery, hunting for any weakness. No, Ted would not give up on one game, one time at bat, a single pitch. No one since Ruth had hit so many home runs per times at bat. No one in the league hit like Ted, year after year: .342, .343, .369, .343.... It seemed he never broke a bat at the plate, but he broke a hundred in the clubhouse runway. If he failed at the plate he'd scream at himself, "YOU GODDAMN FOOL!" and bash the cement, while the Sox in the dugout stared ahead with mute smiles. Once, after a third strike, he smashed the water pipe to the cooler with his bare fists. No could believe it until the flood began. And on each opening day, Ted would listen to the national anthem and he'd feel the hair rise on the back of his neck, and his bands would clench, and he'd vow to himself: "This year, the best ever."

In the 1950 All-Star Game, he crashed the outfield wall to catch a drive by Ralph Kiner. His elbow was broken, with thirteen clips off the radius. Surgeons thought he was through, but Ted returned in two months. His first game back, once again: home run, and four-for-four. But Ted could tell as weeks went by that the elbow was not the same. The ball didn't jump off his bat. So all next winter, Ted stayed in the Keys, where he poled a skiff, hunting bonefish and rebuilding his arm. He was pushing thirty-three now, just coming to know how short was his time. But then, after the '51 season, he was called back to the Marines, drafted for a two-year hitch in Korea. It seemed like his time was up.

Thomas S. England/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Image

TED'S LIVING ROOM HAS A WIDE white armchair, into and out of which he heaves himself twenty times a day; the chair has a wide white ottoman onto which he'll flop, as whim dictates, one or both of his big legs. From this chair, he roars commands and inquiries, administering the house and grounds. Across the room, a big TV shows his National Geographic specials. At his side, a table holds his reading correspondence. At the moment, these piles are topped by Yeager: An Autobiography, and teachers' reports on his son, John Henry. To Ted's right, ten feet away, there's a doorway to the kitchen, through which Lou can supply him and let him know who that was on the phone. To his left and behind, a grand window affords a view of a patio, his dock, some mangrove, and some Florida Bay. Finally, ahead and to the right, in a distant semicircle, there are chairs and a couch for visitors.

"NOW WE'RE GONNA SEE HOW MUCH YOU KNOW, SONOFABITCH," Ted is shouting at Jack Brothers. Jimmy Albright is there, too. The shouting is ritual.

"Ru-mer. R-U-M-E-R." Brothers contends he is spelling the name of the first spinning wheel. But Ted had hurled himself up to fetch a fishing encyclopedia, and now he's back in the chair, digging through to the section on spinning. Just so things don't get dull, he says: "Where'd you get that HAIRCUT? D'you have to PAY FOR IT?"

Ted and Jimmy began this colloquy in the early Truman years. Jack helped heat it up when he drifted down from Brooklyn a few years after the war, before Islamorada got its second restaurant or first motel, not to mention the other ten motels, the condos, gift shops, Burger King, or the billboard to proclaim this place: SPORTFISHING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. These elders are responsible for a lot of history here, as they helped create flats fishing and turn it into a sport/industry (which they not quietly deplore). Jimmy and Jack were teachers of the first generation of saltwater anglers. Ted is the star of that generation, and its most ferocious pupil.

"Here. HERE! 'Mr. Brown began importing SPINNERS, starting with the LUXAR....' THE LUXAR, WANNA SEE? GO AHEAD, SONOFABITCH!"

"Yeah, but that don't say the first spinning reel manufactured." Brothers grins in triumph. "Sonofabitch, with your books!"

"This is the goddamn HISTORY, Brothers. Not a FUCKING THING about RUMOR, RHEUMER, RHOOOMAN...I GUESS YOU DIDN'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT SPINNING REELS, DID YOU?"

Ted is always the one with the books. He wants answers, not a lot of bullshit. Ted is always reading history, biography, fact of all kinds. He doesn't like much made of this, as he's tender on the subject of his education. Once in a camp in Africa, while he and his coauthor, John Underwood, gazed at the night sky, Ted turned from the stars and sighed: "Jeez, I wish I was smart like you."

Now he reports to his friends on his college tours with his son, John Henry: "So we get to Babson and I like it. Babson's a pretty good school, boys. HELL of a school, but, uh, they got dorms, boys and girls all in one dorm, see, and I look on the walls and they're written all over, Fuck this and Fuck that, I'm thinking, Gee, right out there on the walls. It just seemed, you know..."

"Liberal?" Jimmy suggests.

"Well, I like to see a place with a little more standards than that. So we get to Bates. We got this German girl to show us around, see? And she was a smart little shit, two languages, and she's telling us what she's studying, aw, a smart little shit! She give us the tour, see, and John Henry loved Bates, LOVED it. We get back to the office and she goes out. I don't know, she musta told someone, told some of her friends, who she just showed around, see? Then somebody told her. She didn't know, see....

"Well, a minute later, she's back with some kid and he says, OH, Mr. Williams! And OH this and OH that. And then we start talking. And how about this, how about that, and how would John Henry like to come for a weekend, get the feel of the place, you know...."

Ted stops for a moment and thinks to himself. He doesn't really have to finish the thought for his friends, who can see him beaming in his big chair. So he just trails off, to himself:

"...boy mighta thought the old man wasn't gonna...you know, around a college....Well!"

The mayor and the Red Sox held a day for Ted when he left for flight school. Three weeks into the '52 season, at Fenway, they gave him a Cadillac, and made a donation to the Jimmy Fund, a charity for sick children that Ted supported. They gave him a Ted Williams Memory Book, with signatures of four hundred thousand fans. For his last at bat, bottom of the seventh, he gave them a three-run homer to win the game 5-3. He threw a party that night, at his Boston hotel. The crowd was mostly cooks and firemen, bellhops, cabbies, ice cream men. Ted never liked a smart crowd. Smart people too often asked: "Oh, was your father a ballplayer?" "Oh, what did your mother do?" Ted didn't like to talk about that.

He was just Captain Williams, U.S. Marines, at his flight base at Pohang, Korea. He had a shed for a home and a cot with inner-tube strips for springs. The base was a sea of mud, the air was misty and cold, and he was always sick. He was flying close air support, low strafing, and bombing runs. His plane was a jet now, an F-9 Panther, but he couldn't take much joy from flying. He was in and out of sick bay. Doctors called it a virus, then pneumonia, but his squadron was short of pilots, so he always flew.

On a bombing run, north of the 38th parallel, Ted lost sight of the plane ahead. He dropped through clouds, and when he came out, he was much too low. North Koreans sent up a hail of bullets. Ted's place was hit and set afire. The stick stiffened and shook in his hand; his hydraulics were gone. Every warning light was red. The radio quit. A Marine in a nearby F-9 was pointing wildly at Ted's place. He was trying to signal: "Fire! Bail out!" But Ted's biggest fear was ejecting; at six three, wedged in as he was, he'd leave his kneecaps under his gauges. So the other pilot led him to a base. Ted hauled his plane into a turn and he felt a shudder of explosion. One of his wheel doors had blown out. Now he was burning below, too. He made for a runway with fire streaming thirty feet behind. Koreans in a village saw his plane and ran for their lives. Only one wheel came down; he had no dive breaks, air flaps, nothing to slow the plane. He hit the concrete at 225 miles per hour and slid for almost a mile, while he mashed the useless brakes and screamed, "STOP YOU DIRTY SONOFABITCH STOP STOP STOP." When the F-9 stopped skidding, he somersaulted out the hatch and slammed his helmet to the ground. Two Marines grabbed him on the tarmac, and walked him away as the plane burned to char.

He was flying the next day, and day after. There weren't enough pilots to rest a man. Ted was sicker, weak and gaunt. Soon his ears were so bad he couldn't hear the radio. He had flown thirty-seven missions and won three air medals when they sent him to a hospital ship. Doctors sent him to Hawaii and then to Bethesda, Maryland, where at last they gave him a discharge. His thirty-fifth birthday was coming up, he was tired and ill. He didn't want to do anything, much less suit up to play. But Ford Frick, the commissioner, asked him to the '53 All-Star Game, just to throw out the first ball.

So Ted went to Cincinnati, sat in a sport coat in the dugout. Players greeted him like a lost brother; even Ted couldn't hear a boo in the stands. Tom Yawkey was there and Joe Cronin; they worked on the kid. The league president asked him to come back; the National League president, too. Branch Rickey sat him down for a talk; Casey Stengel put in a plea. Ted when to Bethesda to ask the doctors, and then he told the waiting press to send a message to the fans at Fenway: "Warm up your lungs." He took ten days of batting practice and returned with the Red Sox to Boston. First game, Fenway Park, bottom of the seventh: pinch-hit home run.

Ted Williams was the greatest old hitter. In two months, upon return from Korea, he batted .407 and hit a home run once in every seven at bats. For the next two years, he led the league (.345 and .356), but injuries and walks robbed him of the titles: he didn't get the minimum four hundred at bats. In 1956, he lost the title in the season's last week to twenty-four-year-old Mickey Mantle (who finished .353 to Ted's .345). The next year, Mantle had an even better season, but Ted, at age thirty-nine, pulled away and won, at .388, more than twenty points ahead of Mantle, more than sixty points ahead of anyone else. With five more hits (say, the leg hits that a younger man would get), it would have been .400. As it was, it stood at the highest average since his own .406, sixteen years before. In 1958, Ted battled for the crown again, this time with a teammate, Pete Runnels. They were even in September, but then, once again, Ted pulled way to win at .328. For the final fifty-five games (including one on his fortieth birthday), he batted .403.

He accomplished these prodigies despite troubles that would have made most men quit. In 1954, he made spring training for the first time in three years, but he wasn't on the field a minute before he fell and broke his collarbone. He was out six weeks and had steel bar wired into his clavicle. (First day back, twin bill in Detroit: two home runs, eight-for-nine, seven RBIs.) In 1955, Doris alleged in divorce court that he'd treated her with "extreme cruelty" and constant profane abuse. Boston papers ran the story under two-inch headlines: TED GETS DIVORCE, with a "box score" on the money, the house, the car, and "Mrs. Ted's" custody of Bobby Jo. In 1956, Ted came forth with his Great Expectorations. In a scoreless game with the Yankees, in front of Fenway's biggest crowd since World War II, he was booed for an error, and he let fans know what he thought of them: he spat toward the right-field stands and spat toward the left, and when fans rained more boos on his head, he leaped out of the dugout and sprayed all around. "Oh, no, this is a bad scene," Curt Gowdy, the Sox broadcaster, mourned to his microphone. Tom Yawkey heard the game on the radio, and Ted got a $5,000 fine (tying another Babe Ruth record). Boston writers said Ted ought to quit. But Ted was in the next game, Family Night, and at his appearance, fans gave him a five-minute ovation. (He then hit a home run in the bottom of the eighth and clapped his hand over his mouth as he scored the winning run.) In 1957, grippe knocked him flat and stuck him in his hotel for seventeen days in September. He came back and hit four consecutive home runs. In 1958, ptomaine from bad oysters wrecked opening day, then he injured an ankle, pulled a muscle in his side, and hurt his wrist twice. In September, after a called third strike, Ted threw his bat and watched in horror as it sailed to the stands and clonked a gray-haired lady on the head. Ted sat in tears in the dugout and had to be ordered to his place in left field. But over the next twenty at-bats, he hit .500.

Now the switch in his gut was always on. The Red Sox gave him a single room and barred the press from the clubhouse for two hours before each game. But it wasn't outside annoyance that was fueling Ted's rage. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, screaming obscenities in the dark. He kept himself alone and pushed away affection. There were plenty of women who would have loved to help. But Ted would say: "WOMEN?" and then he'd grab his crotch. "ALL THEY WANT IS WHAT I GOT RIGHT HERE." Now the press didn't cover just explosions on the field. The American wrote him up for shredding a telephone book all over the floor when a hotel maid failed to clean his room. "Now tell me some more," wrote Austen Lake, "about Ted's big, charitable, long-suffering spirit." Roger Kahn reported a scene when Ted was asked about Billy Klaus, the shortstop who was coming back after a bad year. "You're asking ME about a BAD YEAR?...OLD T.S.W., HE DON'T HAVE BAD YEARS."

But old Ted had a terrible year in 1959. A pain in his neck turned to stiffness, and he was in traction for three weeks. When he came out, he could barely look at the pitcher. He average languished below .300 for the first time in his career. For the first time, he was benched for not hitting. The sight of the Kid at plate was pathetic; even the papers softened. They started summing up his career, treating him like an old building menaced by the wrecking ball. He finished at .254 and went to Tom Yawkey. "Why don't you just wrap it up?" Yawkey said, and Ted started to boil. No one was going to make him retire. Ted said he meant to play, and Yawkey, who loved the Kid, offered to renew his contract: $125,000, the highest ever. No, Ted said, he'd had a lousy year and he wanted a cut. So Ted signed for $90,000 and came back one more time.

Opening day, Washington: A five-hundred-foot home run. Next day, another. He slammed his five-hundredth in Cleveland, passed Lou Gehrig and then Mel Ott. Only Foxx and Ruth would top him on the all-time list. At forty-two, Ted finished his year with twenty-nine homers and .316. Talk revived that Ted might be back. But this was really quits. On his last day at Fenway, a headline cried: WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT TED? And though the day was dreary and the season without hope, ten thousand came out to cheer him and hear him say goodbye. There was another check for the Jimmy Fund and, this time, a silver bowl. And Ted made a speech that said, despite all, he felt lucky to play for these fans. And when he came up in the eighth and they stood to cheer, he showed them what Ted Williams could do. He hit a Jack Fisher fastball into the bullpen in right field. And he thought about tipping his cap as he rounded first but he couldn't, even then, couldn't forget, so he ran it straight into the dugout, and wouldn't come out for a bow.

Now it was no hobby: Ted fished harder and fished more than any man around. After his divorce from Doris, he'd made his home in Islamorada, bought a little place on the ocean side, with no phone and just room for one man and gear. He'd wake before dawn and spend the day in his boat, then come in, maybe cook a steak, maybe drive off to a Cuban or Italian joint where they served big portions and left him alone. Then, back home, he'd tie a few flies and be in bed by 10:00. He kept it very spare. He didn't even have a TV. That's how he met Louise. He wanted to see a Joe Louis fight, so Jimmy took him to Lou's big house. Her husband was a businessman from Ohio, and they had a TV, they had everything. Lou had her five kids, the best home, best furniture, best car, and best guides. Though she wasn't a woman of leisure, she was a pretty good angler, too. She could talk fishing with Ted. Yes, they could talk. And soon, Lou would have a little money of her own, an inheritance that she'd use to buy a divorce. She wanted to do for herself, she said. And there was something else, too. "I met Ted Williams," Louise said. "And he was the most gorgeous thing I ever saw in my life."

Now Ted's life was his to make, too. He signed a six-figure deal with Sears, to lend his name to their line of tackle, hunting gear, and sporting goods. Now, when Hurricane Donna wrecked his little house on the ocean, he bought his three-bedroom place on the bay, near Louise's house. Now he bought a salmon pool on the Miramichi, in New Brunswick, Canada, and he fished the summer season there. In Islamorada, he was out every day, fall, winter, spring. He wanted the most and biggest -- bonefish, tarpon, salmon -- he called then the Big Three. He wanted a thousand of each, and kept books on his progress. He thought fishing and talked fishing and taught fishing at shows for Sears. He felt the joy of the sport, still. But now there was something else: the switch that clicked when he'd get a hot fish that ran and broke off his lure: Ted would slam his rod to the deck, or break it in half on the boat. "HERE, YOU LOUSY SONOFABITCH..." He'd hurl the rod into the bay. "TAKE THAT, TOO."

He married again in 1961, a tall blond model from Chicago, Lee Howard. They'd both been divorced, and they thought they'd make a go. Ted brought her down to the Keys. But he still wasn't staying home: he'd be out at dawn without a word on where he'd go, or what he planned, and then he'd come home, sometimes still without words. Sometimes there was only rage and Lee found she was no match. After two years, she couldn't take it. She said: "I couldn't do anything right. If we went fishing, he would scream at me, call me a ---- and kick the tackle box."

So Ted found another woman, one to meet him, fire with fire. Her name was Dolores Wettach, a tall, large-eyed, former Miss Vermont. He spotted her across the aisle on a long plane flight. He was coming from fishing in New Zealand. Dolores had been in Australia, on modeling assignment for Vogue. He wrote a note: "Who are you?" He wadded it up, tossed it at her. She looked over, tossed one back: "Who are you?" He tossed: "Mr. Williams, a fisherman," and later told her his first name was Sam. It wasn't until their third date that she found out he'd done anything but fish. When he found out she was a farm girl who loved the outdoors as much as he, he figured he'd met his match. In a way, he had. She learned to fish, she could hunt, could drink, could curse like a guide. And when they fought, it was toe to toe, and Ted who slammed out of the house. They had a son, John Henry, and daughter, Claudia. But that didn't stop the fights, just as it hadn't with Bobby Jo, the daughter he'd had with Doris. Ted would tell his friends he wasn't cut out for family. He was sick at heart when Bobby Jo left school and didn't go to college. He would seethe when any woman let him know that he'd have to change. What the hell did they want? When Dolores became his third divorce, Ted was through with marriage.

John Mahler

Ted made the Hall of Fame in 1966. His old enemies, the writers, gave him the largest vote ever. So Ted went north to Cooperstown, and gave a short speed outside the Hall. Then he went back to Florida. He never went inside. They gave him a copy of his plaque. It listed his .406 year, his batting titles, slugging titles, total bases, walks, home runs. It didn't say anything about the wars, the dream, the rage, the cost. But how much can a plaque say?

There are no statistics on fans, how they felt, what they took from the game. How many of their days did Ted turn around? How many days did he turn to occasions? And not just with hits: there was a special sound from a crowd when Ted got his pitch, turned on the ball, whipped his bat in that perfect arc -- and missed. It was a murmurous rustle, as thousands at once let breath escape, gathered themselves, and leaned forward again. To see Ted suffer a third strike was an event four times more rare, and more remarkable, than seeing him get a hit. When Ted retired, some owners feared for attendance in the league. In Boston, where millions came through the years to cheer, to boo, to care what he did, there was an accretion of memory so bright, bittersweet, and strong that when he left, the light was gone. And Fenway was left with a lesser game.

And what was Ted left with? Well, there was pride. He'd done, he felt, the hardest thing in sport: by God, he hit the ball. And there was pride in his new life: he had his name on more rods and reels, hunting guns, tackle boxes, jackets, boots, and bats than any man in the world. He studied fishing like no other man, and lent to it his fame and grace, his discerning eye. He had his tournament wins and trophies, a fishing book and fishing movies, and he got his thousand of the Big Three. Jimmy Albright says to this day: "Best all around, the best is Ted." But soon there were scores of boats on the bay, and not so many fish. And even the Miramichi had no pools with salmon wall to wall. And Ted walked away from the tournaments. There wasn't the feeling of sport in them, or respect for the fish anymore. Somehow it had changed. Or maybe it was Ted.

Last year, Ted and Lou went up to Cooperstown together. This was for the unveiling of a statue of the Kid. There are many plaques in the Hall of Fame, but only two statues: just the Babe and him. And Ted went into the Hall this time, pulled the sheet of his statue and his looked at his young self in the finish of that perfect swing. He looked and he looked, with the crowd got quiet, and the strobes stopped flashing. And when he tried to speak, he wept.

"HEY, WHERE THE HELL IS HE?" It's after 4:00, and Ted's getting hungry. "I'M GONNA CALL HIM."

Lou says, "Don't be ugly."

"I'm not ugly," Ted insists, but quietly. He dials, and bends to look at me. "Hey, if this guy doesn't come, you can eat. You wanna eat here?" Then to the phone: "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?"

"Ted, don't be mean."

"I'm not. YEAH. TOMORROW? WELL, OKAY BUDDY." Ted has had a successful phone conversation. Quick, and to the point.

"Awright, you can eat. Hey, sweetie, take him up so he can see."

There are no mementos in the living room, but Lou has put a few special things in a little room upstairs. Most of the pictures have to do with Ted, but the warmth of the room, and its character, have to do with Louise. This is no shrine. It is a room for right now, a room they walk through every day, and a handsome little place, too. Now it is filled with her quiet energy. "Here's Ted Williams when I met him," she says. "And if that isn't gorgeous, I'll eat my hat." And here's an old photo of Lou in shorts, with a fly rod, looking fragile next to a tarpon she pulled from Florida Bay. She does not seem fragile now. She is spry and able. She has been with Ted ten years straight, and that speaks volumes for her strength and agility. She gets angry sometimes that people do not credit Ted with tenderness -- "You don't know him," she says, and her voice has a surprising edge -- but she also knows he'll seldom show it. So here she shows a lonely young Ted with a little suitcase, off to flight school. Here's Ted and Tom Yawkey, and look: Mr. Yawkey had pictures of Ted behind him, too. "Here he is in Korea," says Louise. "You know, when he landed that place, the blood was pouring from his ears. I have to tell people that...because he's so loud. Big, too." Lou picks up a cushion of a window seat. There are pictures beneath. "See, he's done so many things...."

"Hey, you want a drink?" Ted is calling. "TED WILLIAMS IS GONNA HAVE A DRINK."

Soon he flops into his chair with a tumbler, and hands over a videotape. He wants it in the VCR. He says: "This is the most wonderful guy. Hell of a guy. Bill Ziegler. I got him into the majors...." That was when Ted came back in '69 to manage the Senators. Bill Ziegler was the trainer.

"So he had a son and named him Ted Williams Ziegler. You're gonna see him now. IS IT IN? HEY, YOU LISTENING?" The tape shows Ziegler's two sons batting. Ziegler sends the tapes for analysis. The sound track sends out a steady percussion: thwack...thwack...thwack. Both boys get wood on the ball. "I'm gonna show you the first tape he sent, and I'm gonna ask what's the difference. See this kid, I told him his hips, he's got to get them OPEN."

From the kitchen, Lou protests: "Ted! Not now. Wait for me!"

"SEE?...." Thwack. "Ground ball. A little slow with his bands."

From Lou: "Okay, okay, I don't know nothin'."

"HANDS THROUGH!" Thwack. "Center field, always to center, see where his hips are pointed? He's got to [thwack] OPEN 'EM UP."

From Lou, coming in, wiping her hands as she watches: "He doesn't step into it like Ted Williams."

Ted pretends he doesn't hear. "Hips come through OPEN...."

"He doesn't bring his hands around like you do, honey."

"Yeah, he's got to. GROUND BALL! See, when I'M up" -- and now Ted takes his stance in the living room -- "I'm grindin'...." Now his hands are working. "I got the bands cocked. COCKED!" And here's the pitch. "BAMMMM!" says Ted, as he takes his cut and asks: "We got Bill Ziegler's number? WHERE'S HIS NUMBER?"

Ted is yelling on the phone in the kitchen, and Lou is in the living room, fitting her thoughts to small silences. "When Ted talks [thwack] it's always right now...."

"BILL, I WANNA SEE HIM ON HIS FRONT FOOT MORE, AND THE HANDS QUICK, QUICK...."

"You know, the baseball players...it's not macho, they're just...athletes, just beautiful boys...."

Ted hangs up and throws himself into his chair: "AWRIGHT, MAJOR LEAGUE! LET'S SET IT UP." That means dinner. Lou's cooking Chinese. Ted's still watching Ziegler's kids. "Ground ball. You don't make history hittin' 'em on he ground, boys." Now he pulls away from the TV. "Sweetie," he sings playfully. "We got any sake-o?" Lou sings, "Not tonight-eo." Ted sings: "Well, where's the wine-o?"

Lou says grace while all hold hands. Then we set to food, and Ted is major league. "It's good, huh?" he says between mouthfuls. "Well, isn't it? HEY! Aren't you gonna finish that rice?"

He's finished fast and back in his chair. "We got any sweets?"

A little album on the coffee table has pictures from Christmas. John Henry gave his letter of acceptance from Bates as his present to Ted. It's got Ted thinking now about the car he's got to buy so John Henry can take a car to school. "Got to have a car...." He's thinking aloud so Louise can check this out. "Course, there's gonna have to be rules...." He's working it over in his mind, and he muses: "Maybe say that other than school...he can't take the car if his mother says no...." Lou is in a chair across the room. She'd nodding. "HAVE to be rules," Ted says, "so he doesn't just slam out of the house...slam our and JUMP IN THE CAR...."

Something has turned in his gut, and his face is working, growing harder. There's a mean glitter in his eye, and he's thinking of his elder daughter, walking away from him....

"SLAM OUT...LIKE MY DAUGHTER USED TO...."

His teeth are clenched and the words are spat. It's like he's turned inward to face something we cannot see. It is a fearsome sight, this big man, forward, stiff in his chair, hurling ugly words at his vision of pain...I feel I should leave the room, but too late.

"...THAT BURNED ME..."

The switch is on. Lou calls it the Devil in him.

"...A PAIN IN MY HAIRY RECTUM!"

"Nice," says Lou. She is fighting for him. She has not flinched.

"Well, DID," he says through clenched teeth. "AND MAKES YOU HATE BROADS!..."

"Ted. Stop." But Ted is gone.

"...HATE GOD!..."

"TED!"

"...HATE LIFE!"

"TED!...JUST...STOP!"

"DON'T YOU TELL ME TO STOP. DON'T YOU EVER TELL ME TO STOP."

Lou's mouth twists up slightly, and she snorts: "HAH!"

And that does it. They've beaten it, or Lou has, or it's just gone away. Ted sinks back in his chair. His jaw is unclenched. He grins shyly. "You know, I love this girl like I never..."

Lou sits back, too, and laughs.

"SHE'S IN TRAINING," Ted says, "I'M TEACHIN' HER..."

"He sure is," Lou says, like it's banter, but her voice is limp. She heads back to the kitchen, and Ted follows her with his eyes.

Then he finds me on his couch, and he tries to sneer through his grin: "WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING? HUH?

"...JESUS. YOU'RE LIKE THE GODDAMN RUSSIAN SECRET POLICE!

"...OKAY, BYE! YEAH, SURE, GOODBYE!"

Ted walks me out to the driveway. As I start the car, Lou's face is a smile in the window, and Ted is bent at his belly, grabbing their new dalmatian puppy, tickling it with his big hands while the dog rolls and paws the air. And as I ease the car into gear, I hear Ted's voice behind, cooing, very quiet now: "Do I love this little dog, huh?....Yes, this little shittin' dog....Yes, yes I love you....Yes, I do."