The Competitive Instinct (See Cover)
Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox looked as fit as an Indian buck. After a winter out of doors, including a month of lazy fishing at the edge of the Florida Everglades, he was tanned to a light mahogany. His brownish green eyes were clear and sharp, his face lean, the big hands that wrapped around the handle of his 34-oz. Louisville Slugger were calloused and hard. He had 198 lbs., mostly well-trained muscle, tucked away on his 6 ft. 3¾ in. frame. He expected, he conceded, "to have a pretty good year." But as usual
Ted Williams had a number of worries at the back of his mind.
Most of his worries had to do with his specialty: batting at a consistently better clip than any other player of his time. It is his earnest and sorrowful conviction that the pitching in the American League is getting better & better as time rolls on. If so, this will obviously make it even more difficult than it has been in the past for Ted Williams to do what he wants to do every time he comes to bat, i.e., hit the ball into the right-field stand.
Simply & Forever. Fortunately, when it is his turn at bat, Ted is usually able to push all such pessimistic reflections well back in his head, leaving him in just the right state of mental tension and physical relaxation to give close attention to what the pitcher is throwing him. In St. Petersburg, Fla. last week he showed the World Champion New York Yankees just how this delicate adjustment of worry and ease is supposed to work. It was the last of five grapefruit-circuit games between the Yankees and the Sox; each team had won two games. In the first inning Williams came up wearing a solemn and purposeful frown; he looked at one pitch from Yankee Pitcher Bob Porterfield, found it not to his liking, and swung on the second. The ball took off and sailed over the right-field fence 340 ft. away. Since the Yankees did not score at all, that was the ball game. But Ted Williams did not have a full day, though he had won the game. On his next three times at bat the scorer added a "0" to the Williams line in the box score.
What would satisfy any other man in baseball is not enough for Theodore Samuel Williams. As a boy in San Diego, Calif, he resolved, simply and forever, to become the best ballplayer of his generation. Big Ted has never forgotten his boyish decision, and, at 31, he has come within a bat-length of achieving it.
Hits & History. There are plenty of fans who maintain that Ted has already achieved it. They consider him a greater player than even jolting Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees and Stan ("The Man") Musal of the St. Louis Cardinals. As proof, they point to Ted's 43 homers last year (265 in eight seasons*) and his eight-year batting average with the Red Sox. At .353 it is the third highest in modern baseball records, right behind Ty Cobb's .367 (for 24 seasons) and Rogers Hornsby's .358 (for 23) and ahead of such immortals as Ruth (.342 for 22 seasons), Gehrig (.340 in 17) and Jimmy Foxx (.325 in 20). That makes Ted the best hitter, at least, in the game today.