Teddy Ballgame
07-05-2005, 09:30 AM
- It shouldn't have suprised me when I heard on the news that he had passed that day. After all, he was only weeks shy of his 84th birthday and he'd had ten years of health challenges including at least three strokes and an eight hour open heart surgery (with the surgeon who did David Letterman's by-pass operation and a team of twenty health care specialists) that was almost never risked on a patient over 80 years of age. And ever since that eight hour ordeal 18 months before his death, he'd been (to use a baseball term) "listed as day to day" on this mortal coil.
- And it shouldn't have surprised me that he died on July 5th, one day after American Independence Day and one day before The All Star Game. He once told a reporter that when he was dropping off to sleep, the two songs that most often went through his mind were "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". After all, no baseball hero lost as much time fighting for his country in not one but two wars as he did. And no military hero (a real hero who flew 39 combat missions as John Glenn's wingman and crash landed his burning jet fighter with less than 30 seconds of fuel left not some celebrity actor or athlete who went around the military bases signing autographs and entertaining the real fighting men) had a baseball career through four decades even remotely as great as his.
- Still, when I heard the news on my car radio that Friday afternoon three year ago today, my first thought was it must be some mistake like the time I heard of Bob Hope's death two years before he really died. To me, this great American hero was indestructable. He'd survived Feller's fastball, broken elbows, broken collarbones, pneumonia, MIG machine gun and cannon fire, strokes, open heart surgery and more. But he still rose to the occasion even when, as in 1999 at the unforgettable All Star Game in Boston, he had to be helped to his feet to do so. Somehow, he still could cheer up the cancer kids at the Jimmy Fund hospital, still get that pitch over the plate to catcher Carleton Fisk, still have the right things to say in interviews on baseball or cooking or flying or fishing or photography or on so many other topics in which he focused his lazer like mind, and still have the other all stars of the game, past and present, approach him on his golf cart as if they were Cardinals given the privelege of an audience with the one true Pope of baseball.
- So I didn't want to believe it and I pulled my car off the road onto the shoulder and just sat there thinking and brooding and being very close to tears for several minutes.
- On the radio, the news was over and the talk show host decided to turn Ted Williams' death into the topic of the hour with the slant that the word hero was grossly over used when referring to celebrity actors and athletes like the now deceased Ted Williams. (I should brief you that the station has a talk show format, the largest talk show audience in Canada, the host at the time Christina is knowledgable about many things but sports and particularly baseball is not one of her fortes, and that I've done some talk shows for the station and have the private number that enables me to jump the talk show line of callers whenever I choose to do so.
- Anyhow, I sat in my car for awhile reminiscing and brooding and listening to the callers and their take on the topic of whether "hero" was grossly over used in reference to celebrity actors and athletes like Ted Williams. Most took the tack that "hero" was indeed grossly overused to apply to professional athletes like Williams.
- When I felt sufficiently composed to be coherent and informative and sufficiently fired up to want to call, I did. On this sad day, I at least was able to enlighten some 270,000 listeners on exactly why Ted Williams was one of those extremely rare athletes (others include Muhammed Ali and Jackie Robinson and that NFLer Pat Tillman who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan) who was put into heroic situations and who proved to be true heros.
- In the course of my extended telephone call (Christina welcomed my assistance in an area in which she was not very familiar), I made some of the comments I made earlier in this post. I also spoke about the thrill of seeing Williams in BP and in games when I was a teenager and he was playing in his favourite hitting park, Briggs Stadium in Detroit. And I recounted my two personal meetings with Teddy Ballgame in and around Chatham, NB where he fished for about forty years.
- The main point I made was that those who admiringly called Ted another hero like John Wayne were off the mark. In truth, Williams was the real deal, a flesh and blood hero who absolutely mastered the three different fields of baseball, fishing (he's in that International Hall of Fame, too) and combat flying, who served his country and kids with cancer and the game of baseball with extraordinary and often selfless distinction, and who was true to himself, true to the end. John Wayne, who never served his country in harm's way, was simply a celluloid work of fiction.
- It's three years today, Ted, but to some of us you'll never die.
- And it shouldn't have surprised me that he died on July 5th, one day after American Independence Day and one day before The All Star Game. He once told a reporter that when he was dropping off to sleep, the two songs that most often went through his mind were "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". After all, no baseball hero lost as much time fighting for his country in not one but two wars as he did. And no military hero (a real hero who flew 39 combat missions as John Glenn's wingman and crash landed his burning jet fighter with less than 30 seconds of fuel left not some celebrity actor or athlete who went around the military bases signing autographs and entertaining the real fighting men) had a baseball career through four decades even remotely as great as his.
- Still, when I heard the news on my car radio that Friday afternoon three year ago today, my first thought was it must be some mistake like the time I heard of Bob Hope's death two years before he really died. To me, this great American hero was indestructable. He'd survived Feller's fastball, broken elbows, broken collarbones, pneumonia, MIG machine gun and cannon fire, strokes, open heart surgery and more. But he still rose to the occasion even when, as in 1999 at the unforgettable All Star Game in Boston, he had to be helped to his feet to do so. Somehow, he still could cheer up the cancer kids at the Jimmy Fund hospital, still get that pitch over the plate to catcher Carleton Fisk, still have the right things to say in interviews on baseball or cooking or flying or fishing or photography or on so many other topics in which he focused his lazer like mind, and still have the other all stars of the game, past and present, approach him on his golf cart as if they were Cardinals given the privelege of an audience with the one true Pope of baseball.
- So I didn't want to believe it and I pulled my car off the road onto the shoulder and just sat there thinking and brooding and being very close to tears for several minutes.
- On the radio, the news was over and the talk show host decided to turn Ted Williams' death into the topic of the hour with the slant that the word hero was grossly over used when referring to celebrity actors and athletes like the now deceased Ted Williams. (I should brief you that the station has a talk show format, the largest talk show audience in Canada, the host at the time Christina is knowledgable about many things but sports and particularly baseball is not one of her fortes, and that I've done some talk shows for the station and have the private number that enables me to jump the talk show line of callers whenever I choose to do so.
- Anyhow, I sat in my car for awhile reminiscing and brooding and listening to the callers and their take on the topic of whether "hero" was grossly over used in reference to celebrity actors and athletes like Ted Williams. Most took the tack that "hero" was indeed grossly overused to apply to professional athletes like Williams.
- When I felt sufficiently composed to be coherent and informative and sufficiently fired up to want to call, I did. On this sad day, I at least was able to enlighten some 270,000 listeners on exactly why Ted Williams was one of those extremely rare athletes (others include Muhammed Ali and Jackie Robinson and that NFLer Pat Tillman who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan) who was put into heroic situations and who proved to be true heros.
- In the course of my extended telephone call (Christina welcomed my assistance in an area in which she was not very familiar), I made some of the comments I made earlier in this post. I also spoke about the thrill of seeing Williams in BP and in games when I was a teenager and he was playing in his favourite hitting park, Briggs Stadium in Detroit. And I recounted my two personal meetings with Teddy Ballgame in and around Chatham, NB where he fished for about forty years.
- The main point I made was that those who admiringly called Ted another hero like John Wayne were off the mark. In truth, Williams was the real deal, a flesh and blood hero who absolutely mastered the three different fields of baseball, fishing (he's in that International Hall of Fame, too) and combat flying, who served his country and kids with cancer and the game of baseball with extraordinary and often selfless distinction, and who was true to himself, true to the end. John Wayne, who never served his country in harm's way, was simply a celluloid work of fiction.
- It's three years today, Ted, but to some of us you'll never die.