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When he can't fish to relax, Ted plays with his daughter, ties trout flies, or putters with his collection of cameras. He is generally in bed by 11 p.m. and up at 7:30 for a huge breakfast. Loudly congenial in the clubhouse or when on the road with the club, he spends all the time he can with his family, with friends who are not ballplayers, and alone.
"My personal life," he keeps repeating, "is nobody's business but my own." His passion for privacy is one of the things that has made him unpopular with gossip-hungry sportwriters and fans. It has also helped conceal an extremely generous nature. On the road he is known to waiters and bellhops as a "buck-tipper" and a soft touch. He divided $1,000 of his 1946 World Series check among the clubhouse helpers. He sends his mother upwards of $7,000 a year, likes to visit shut-in children in hospitals, provided there are no reporters around.
In spring training, Ted's working day begins about 11 a.m. Sometimes he drives direct to the park; other times, his baby-blue Cadillac pulls up first before the swank Hotel Sarasota Terrace, where most of the Sox live. Studiously ignoring the murmurs of the fans which his arrival generally creates, Ted uncoils from behind the wheel and strides head down into the lobby. In natty slacks and sport shirt, but without a hat or tie,* he may pause a moment to chat with the girl behind the cigar counter and to pick up a copy of Sports Afield or else his new favorite paper, the Wall Street Journal.
"You know what I'd like to do when I retire?" Ted asks, punching a finger at the Journal by way of a hint. "This stuff. I'd like to know enough about stocks to be a regular trader. I've got some blue-chip stocks myself—I don't guess I'll ever be taken in—but I wish I had more education." Ted won't say how much he has to invest ("Naw, that's part of my privacy!"), but he has made around $550,000 from baseball and from such outside sources as personal appearances, a ghostwritten column in the Boston Herald and advertising testimonials.
Thunder & Sunshine. Ted strolls the dusty lot from the hotel to the clubhouse, announces his arrival there by whistling, then calling "Hey, hamhead!" at someone, or by setting up a richly profane squawk about the set of the wind or the whereabouts of his spikes. His teammates, who know that Ted's outbursts are his way of working off the impatience that perpetually gnaws at him, let him thunder away. When he subsides, one of them (often it is burly, chirpy Birdie Tebbetts, the first-string catcher) calls out: "Hey, that's telling them, Theodore!" Ted rewards such replies with a sunny smile, falls silent as he fusses with his shoe lacings to get just the right tension.
He takes equal care with his pants, adjusting the elastics that hold them far down on his shins. Ted's detractors have accused him of wearing his pants long to attract attention. Actually, the purpose is to hide his slat-skinny legs. Williams' weight is in his shoulders and club-heavy forearms.
The first thing Ted does when he reaches the bench is to pick up one of his bats. Awaiting his turn in the batting-practice cage, he looks as enthusiastic as he was at 14, and more so than he ever seems in the outfield. His level eyes take in each pitch and every swing.