The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived

How a park and a director helped Ted Williams rise to fame

By Steve Lasco

Although the term “latchkey kid” entered everyday speech in the 1980s, both the term and the condition of unsupervised children alone for hours existed long before. Wikipedia notes the first use of the term in a 1942 Canadian study on the effects of World War II on children with fathers in the military and mothers working in the war effort. In fact, many young Americans experienced this condition in the 1800s and 1900s, whether in single-parent homes or households with both parents working outside the home.

Photo: © Can Stock Photo / mflippo

One such home was located in San Diego in the 1920s and 1930s. Long before he achieved the status of a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer and USMC fighter pilot, Ted Williams and his brother Danny were born to Sam Williams, a self-employed photographer, and May (Venzor) Williams, a daily presence as a “street soldier” of the Salvation Army. May’s dedication to saving souls in San Diego and Tijuana was profound and admirable, but that devotion had a cost to her young sons. With both parents working well into the evening, Ted and Danny were left to fend for themselves after school. 

Fortunately for Ted, the family’s modest home was only two blocks from North Park, which featured open space, playground equipment, and baseball fields. It was here that Ted and neighborhood pals competed in a variety of baseball games and skill-building efforts, depending on how many kids showed up. Several kids on-site resulted in a pickup game, but Ted developed an array of games, drills, and habits that he could use alone or with only one other person. The chief activity, a two-person game, involved a pitcher throwing to a batter for three innings, then trading places. Ted and his neighborhood friends honed both their baseball skills and their interest in the sport, , starting around the age of 7. San Diego’s moderate climate enabled year-round park play, and Ted stayed until the 9 p.m. closing time.

Stiff Competition

When Ted was about 12, the competition level went up a few notches, thanks to a kindly and competitive park director. As Ted told the Hall of Fame in a 2000 interview, “Rod Luscomb was the playground director. He was in charge of North Park playground, which was two blocks from my house. He loved to be out on the playground, and he certainly had a customer in me because I loved to be there, too. I was a little better for my age than some kids, and we had quite a few competitive little games among ourselves. He brought enthusiasm with his playing. He never really instructed me to do anything, except he played hard against me, and I played hard against him. I was a teenager and he was probably 28. He loved his work, and I loved being on the playground. With him being so much better than I was, I liked that because it gave me a chance to get up against a little better competition than what we had in junior high school.”

Ted and Rod played their version of one-on-one baseball incessantly. Painfully thin and tall, and self-conscious about growing up in poverty, Ted worked with what became his singular trademark—near-obsessive discipline to improve his skills and get better at what he loved. Far removed from today’s opportunity set for developing ballplayers with skills academies, traveling youth teams, and age-appropriate competition, Ted constantly worked at his craft in any way possible, even practicing his swing in a mirror when there was no one with whom to compete. “I didn’t even consider playing baseball practice. The most fun I ever had in my life was if I was hitting a baseball and if I could hit one—pow!—gee, that felt good to me. And as you get better at something, you tend to like it a little more. And the practice, that was the most fun I ever had in my life.” 

As Ted matured and entered Hoover High School in San Diego, he was exposed to more organized forms of competitive baseball, including school, American Legion and sandlot levels. As do most adolescents, the gangly teen harnessed his coordination and bolstered his confidence with each new success or achievement. “About this time, I make the team, I’m starting high school, and I’m about 15 years of age. Fifteen. I started to play sandlot baseball; I’m playing American Legion baseball; and don’t forget, I’m practicing all the time.”

Laser Focused

Blessed with superlative eyesight, Williams always insisted that it was hard work and dedication rather than natural talent that made him a great hitter. Around this time he began to perceive his talent and foresee his Hall of Fame future, which eventually he expressed in a famous quote. In his second major league season at age 20, he said, “All I want out of life is that, when I walk down the street, folks will say, ‘There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived.’”

With San Diego’s significant U.S. Navy presence, Ted’s neighborhood teams challenged those formed from naval crews of docked ships, partly for competition and partly because the Navy squads had plenty of discarded bats and balls that the kids obtained second-hand. Playing again against grown men, Ted developed both his skills and his confidence, which gave him an edge when competing against players in his high school. The writer Bill Nowlin explains it this way in one of his entries for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR): “By the time Ted reached high school, he was an exceptional player who attracted the attention and support of coach Wofford Caldwell. It was his bat that first caught coach Caldwell’s eye, but Ted excelled as a pitcher for the Hoover High Cardinals. He often struck out a dozen or more batters in a game, but he hit well, too, and found a place in the lineup for every game.”

While a 17-year-old still at Hoover, Ted signed his first professional contract with the hometown San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. Two years later, the Boston Red Sox purchased his contract and sent him to Minneapolis for the 1938 season. A year later, Ted debuted as Boston’s right fielder and put up a .327 batting average, with 31 home runs and 145 runs batted in, which remains the all-time MLB rookie record. In 1941, he hit .406 by going 6-for-8 in a season-ending doubleheader, forging the foundation for that greatest-hitter-ever claim. Eighty years later, no major leaguer has hit .400.

In a sad, classic Cain-and-Abel or East of Eden twist about two brothers destined for opposite paths, Ted’s brother Danny lived a life of struggle. The younger latchkey sibling quickly fell into juvenile delinquency, followed by a lifetime of petty crime and hardscrabble living before succumbing to leukemia in 1960 at age 39. Although the brothers were very different individuals, it’s easy to speculate that, without the convenient allure and positive influence of a nearby city park and a caring, dedicated park director, Ted Williams might also have become a petty criminal instead of “the greatest hitter who ever lived.”

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latchkey_kid

https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/stories/baseball-history/ted-williams-retrospective

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ted-williams/

Underwood, John. It’s Only Me: Unguarded Conversations with Ted Williams. Book with accompanying audio interview CDs. Triumph Books, 2005.

Steve Lasco is a writer, a longtime subscriber of PRB and member of the National Parks & Recreation Association (NRPA). He served from 2007-2012 as an appointed member of the Carson City (Nev.) Parks & Recreation Commission, including one year each as Chair and Vice Chair. Reach him at wiwordsmith@gmail.com.