Williams Claudia - Ted Williams, My Father

In memory of my beloved father and my beloved brother. I miss you every day, always.

For my mom, who is the great woman who stood behind the great man. I love you.

For my husband, Eric, thank you for being by my side throughout this journey; I love you dearly. And to his three beautiful, smart, and sensitive daughters: Emma, Erin, and Elise, I hope you always cherish and love the wonderful father that you have.

For Courtney, my dear friend, whom I love like family.

Contents

F ROM THE BEGINNING OF MY LIFE , I KNEW T ED W ILLIAMS AS my father first and a fisherman second. Baseball player might not even have been third. I knew nothing specific about what hed done on the field or over his career. I only vaguely knew he had played baseball, and that was long before I was born.

On September 28, 1960, a cold, overcast day, Ted Williams stood at home plate for the last time. The stands were only partially full. Very few people realized this would be the last time they would ever see the Splendid Splinter play.

Twenty-two years later I saw my father in a baseball uniform for the first and only time in my life; I was ten years old and my father was sixty-three. It was May 1, 1982, at an Old-Timers Game in Fenway Parka perfect spring day with the stands packed. I didnt have a clue what I was about to experience. From where I sat, it was almost as exciting that my big brother, John-Henry, was on the field as an honorary bat boy, and the fact that he was going to pick up the bats after the hitters went to the plate was thrilling.

As my mom and I sat in the stands, I knew I was going to see my dad at any moment. The announcers voice echoed through the stadium. Before the game began, he introduced each player as he took the field, but the announcer never said their names first. As if teasing the crowd to guess which player it was, he would only mention some of the players statistics and maybe a small bit of his historyalmost testing the crowd to see if they knew the player about to emerge from the dugout before actually hearing his name. When the announcer began each introduction, Id tug on my moms jacket.

Is that Dad?

Then the name would be said, and the announcer would start again with stats of another player.

Is that Dad? Followed by another. Is that Dad? When is Dad coming?

Bobby Doerr... Dom DiMaggio... Johnny Pesky...

Finally, the announcer started highlighting a player whose career had big numbers, records that still stood, and how this player had served two hitches in the Marines. Those were the last words I heard. The crowd came alive. A wave of excitement swept over me as my senses responded to the peoples reactions all around me. Something was building, something was happening. The claps and the cheers were so loud I could feel the vibration of the whole stadium and the electric energy racing through the air. Whoever this next player was, he was surely good. I couldnt even see my dad as he walked out on the field because everyone was standing up. I was swallowed up by a sea of people. I wouldnt have thought it possible, but the uproar grew even louder, and through the deafening noise I felt only emotion. My skin tingled and the rippling sensation traveled right up my back and behind my ears. The intensity was so great. I strained to see him, to catch even a glimpse. I was looking up and around and trying to weave my eyes through the crowd to see him. I so wanted to see him. It was then that my mom looked down at me.

Thats Daddy.

It was at that moment that I first realized that my dad had done something very special on a baseball field. I stood lost in the middle of the stadium among thousands of people, and I was proud. I was stunned by the roar of the crowd and the reaction to my father. I suddenly knew, as I looked at the backs of so many people standing in front of me, that Dad was more than a phenomenal fisherman. My mom reached down to pick me up and hold me above her shoulders. I saw my dad. He seemed so far away. As his little girl, I felt like he was now completely out of reach. He stood tall next to the other players on the baseball field, but now he was even larger than before. My dad is something else, I thought. Over the coming years I came to have a much better understanding of just what that was.

F IVE YEARS AFTER T ED W ILLIAMS WAS INDUCTED INTO THE National Baseball Hall of Fame, I was born. I learned his complexities long before I learned his statistics. My parents divorced when I was young, and while my brother and I were largely raised by our mother, our relationship with our father grew and changed over time. We spent weekends and summers with him and eventually much more time than that. We saw him not just as a figure who existed between the lines of a diamond but as the very human person that he was. My relationship with him was not defined or shaped by the game. It was shaped by him, it was shaped by me, and it was shaped by my brother. Together the three of us were a team. Together we formed our own little family.

Even after my parents divorced, they remained close. Throughout her life, Moms memories of her relationship with him have been some of her most treasured. In January 2008, my mom suffered a stroke. She had to move from the hills of Vermont to Florida, just down the road from where I live, so that I could better care for her. Since the day she started her recovery, all she has longed for is to be better and to return to her home on the hill in the woods of Vermont. The funny thing with my moms stroke is that she remembers what she wants to remember, and as I help her through her therapy and recovery I start to realize how precious memories are. Slowly, she is forgetting them, one by one.

I promised my mom that I would not let her forget Dad or John-Henry, despite her progressive dementia. I promised her that I would preserve as much as I could by writing down the memories of our family. She wants to remember the moments in life when Ted Williams was like a man no one else knew. She wants people to know who her son really was, and I want to tell the story. I want to share for the first time in my life what it was like to have these incredible people as part of my family. I want to share with women and men, sons and daughters, the importance of a father and the lessons one can always learn from him regardless of any family dynamic. No one knows my family like I do. And no one else knows these stories.

Mom wants to remember her life on the hill. She wants to remember the family inside the house that stares out over a vast and beautiful view of New England. Her children are laughing and playing and enjoying every bit of life. Her husband, a fisherman, a Marine, an American hero, and a baseball player, is the only man she will ever marry, and she loves him every day. She wants to return to her house of memories, sit by the fireplace, and have me sit beside her and tell these stories.

I decided to write this book as a testament to what it was really like to grow up with Ted Williams, my father. I have read a lot of what has been written about my father. People have been quoted saying they were my fathers best friend, or a lifelong acquaintance, or a longtime girlfriend, and I have never even heard their names before. Some of the statements I have read are absolutely delusional, but still they have been presented as credible by many journalists and biographers. Its been very hard to believe and difficult to accept. I am the only person still living who can tell you what it was truly like within the walls of the Williams family.

This is not a report of he said/she saidthis is a story of the family who surrounded a great man, how he influenced us, and how we were ultimately molded by who he was. This book presents only the facts. All our actions and decisions have been reflections of the love, the hate, the joy, the pain, but most importantly the impenetrable bond and trust within our family. I am a product of two fantastic parents, and I am honored to embrace every part of my family.