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About
the late Ted Williams
and some of today's all-stars
By Jerry Queen
Special to GwinnettForum.com
(Editor's note: Mr. Queen, formerly of Lawrenceville,
coached championship baseball teams at Marist School in Atlanta.--eeb)
LAFAYETTE, LA., July 9, 2002 - - The most amazing thing to me was
how Ted Williams approached the game! He took a batting average
into the last day of the season of .39955. For the record books
that would have been rounded up to .400.
That last day Boston had a doubleheader (unheard of today in the
major leagues ). Usually a player hitting somewhere in the first
five spots in the lineup gets four trips to the plate in a game.
Anything less than three hits that day, Ted does not
retain the .400 batting average for the record books.
He got six! He could have opted out of the lineup but he never
seemed to take the easy way out. His "respect" for the
"game" was obvious to the baseball world. In his last
at bat his bat-ball-contact was enough to lift the ball out of the
park. To me this was the baseball gods paying back that "respect."
In my office there are pictures of four baseball players, Ted Williams
is one of those. He is there, not only for being the best hitter
I personally witnessed but also for his desire and his approach
to life.
My dad, an ex-catcher and a very good hitter, died three years
ago. We would often talk about baseball the last two years of his
life. Ted Williams was the player he most revered. Today, dad and
Ted can share some of their stories with each other.
It will be a tragedy of major proportions if the players go out
on strike the same year Ted Williams died. Remember he gave four
years of his life to the service of this country. Some of today's
players won't even give three days to the All-Star game. (Read the
off-the-record comments by some of the 2002 "All-Star"
candidates.)
Major league baseball, by any other name, is still a little boy's
game yet played by older boys. Most of these players grow to become
men, and a few, even heroes. The business of baseball should not
be sustained to create millionaires but to extend opportunities
for all players to become these men and heroes to the youth who
remain the backbone and blood of the great institution, baseball
May the other team always have to bat last.
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Number
2.26, July 9, 2002
