(4 of 7)
No one could deny that Ted was great, but some players, scores of sportwriters and not a few thousand fans thought that he was also a great pain in the neck. They rode him for blurting that his 1940 salary of $12,500 was chicken feed for a star of his magnitude, and for saying, in a rare moment of complete discouragement, that he would rather be a fireman than play baseball. The fans razzed him for seeming to loaf in the outfield, and for ignoring the tradition of tipping his cap to the applause after he had hit a home run.
Ted's reaction to the riding he took (and still takes) was typical. Boos burned him up, though he asked for them, and he could not help hearing every loud taunt from the bleachers. He had what ballplayers call "rabbit ears," which pricked and blushed at every hostile sound. "Why do they cheer me for hitting a homer," he asked, "and then boo me for grounding out the next time up? I'm still the same guy, ain't I? ... They can all go to hell. I'll never tip my cap to them." Baseball Immortal Eddie Collins, now Red Sox vice president, says with resigned melancholy, "If he'd tip his cap just once he could be elected mayor of Boston in five minutes. I don't think he'll ever do it."
Ted spent three years in the service, a year as a Marine pilot instructor at Pensacola. A Navy doctor found that he had the eyesight of one man in thousands. It pays off handsomely at the plate, though Williams himself thinks his eyesight is not the secret of his success. The ability to stand up to a fast, close pitch without flinching comes first, according to Ted, and eyesight is next. The third most important factor, Ted thinks, is "power, and the power is all here, in the wrist and forearm. Timing comes last. If you have the power you'll get the timing naturally."
When he went back to the Sox in the spring of 1946, the sportwriters wrote reams of copy about "the new Williams." Marine discipline, combined with the calming influence of his pretty, husky-voiced wife, had made him apparently less cocky, more affable. "But that's all balo-neyhead talk," Ted says. "I'm always nice enough in the spring, before I read what those obscenity-heads print about me."
Fishing & Forgetting. Since spring training began, five weeks ago, home for the Williamses has been a $350-a-month furnished apartment near the Red Sox camp at Sarasota. Ted has great admiration for clamp-jawed Manager McCarthy, but under McCarthy, spring means hard work, and work makes Williams wistful. He sorely misses fishing. "Fishing is how I forget my troubles. I go out alone, or with one other guy. We don't talk much. Boy, I get really relaxed!"
His moans about his "troubles," heard from his pinnacle of success, make some fans snicker with envy or disbelief. But the fact that his troubles stem largely from a walnut-hard competitive instinct, an inch-short temper and a worry wart as big as a baseball, makes them no less real to him.