Hard-hitting, trigger-tempered Ted Williams thinks most sportwriters ride him unjustly and that the fans—especially Boston fans—are a loud, unappreciative lot. "I will never," he likes to repeat, "tip my cap to them!" Last week during a doubleheader with Detroit in Boston's Fenway Park, Ted hit on some less polite gestures.
When Ted loped to the dugout after dropping an easy fly ball in the sixth inning of a 13-to-4 Red Sox rout, the fans loosed a chorus of derisive disapproval. Raging, Outfielder Williams responded by waggling his fingers defiantly at the crowd. In the second game (which Boston also lost) it happened again.
After fumbling a tricky grounder and letting three runs score, Ted came in for another round of raspberries. This time, before he reached the dugout, he replied with a gesture from the international sign language of obscenity which Boston sport-writers primly described as a "vulgar motion." Then, while waiting his turn at bat, Ted added one more gesture that even the most proper Bostonians were sure to grasp: he turned and spat disgustedly in the direction of the grandstand.
Next day the Boston newspapers almost unanimously shellacked Ted. The Hearst tabloid American went so far as to suggest that he be suspended, concluded its editorial with the reproving observation: "This man is not the great baseball player he thinks he is ... Yesterday he was a little man and, in his ungovernable rage, a dirty little man."
But the Red Sox badly needed "little" Ted. The club front office hastily issued a press announcement: "After a talk with Mr. Yawkey [the Red Sox owner], Ted Williams has requested that this announcement be made to the fans: Ted is sorry for his impulsive actions on the field yesterday and wishes to apologize to any and all whom he may have offended."
That second-hand apology seemed to work. Two days after Ted's "impulsive actions," the applause actually drowned out the boos when Ted stepped up to bat.