TedWilliams - Blog Posts

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

The Splendid Splinter

‘The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams,’ by Ben Bradlee Jr.

Charles McGrath in the New York Times Sunday Book Review calls “The Kid” “a hard-to-put-down account of a fascinating American life.” More from The Times: “The people at the Alcor cryonics facility, in Scottsdale, Ariz., would have us believe that Ted Williams really is immortal. They have his body there, the head severed from the rest, flash-frozen in a giant thermos-like tank and awaiting only the scientific advancement that will allow him to be thawed, resuscitated and rejuvenated.”

First of three articles by The Boston Globe adapted from “The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams,” by Ben Bradlee, Jr. to be published Tuesday by Little, Brown and Company.

Startling details about Ted Williams’s life unearthed

A monumental new biography reveals more about the Red Sox legend’s last hours, and his son’s bizarre hope that Teddy Ballgame would one day live again.

(PHOTO: John-Henry Williams, shown with his father in 1982, arranged for Ted to be frozen and then stored in a large “Dewar” by Alcor Life Extension. Boston Globe File 1982.)

Love this. How can you not?

"Not Jefferson, Wilson, Churchill, not even FDR, but Herbert, by God, Hoover. …To me, that’s a real man." – Ted Williams on his political views, as quoted in Ben Bradlee, Jr.’s biography of the baseball great, "The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams", to be released on Tuesday, Dec. 3 by LittleBrown. 

(PHOTO: Ted Williams and Ted Kennedy. Ted Williams Family Enterprises Ltd, Inc.)

Ben Bradlee, Jr. on his biography of Ted Williams. “The Kid” will be released by Little, Brown on Tuesday, Dec. 3

Ted always had his trademark yelps

An exclusive excerpt from Ben Bradlee, Jr.’s “The Kid”: Ted’s booming voice could be heard above any din. And he used it to good effect as a boy, often to shout out an odd greeting cry—“TA-TA-WEEDO”—when he saw a friend, say 100 feet away. No one knew what this meant—it was just a colorful eccentricity. A variation that Ted liked to use in his junior high school Metal Shop class was: “POW-HO-WE-HAH! My muscles are bulging!” according to friend Jerry Allen. “Everyone laughed at that and thought it was funny,” Allen says.

Such yelps were precursors to another odd scream Ted would use when he reached the minor leagues, and into his first year with the Red Sox in 1939, before his early ebullience started to fade. To amuse himself during bouts of boredom in the field as he waited to bat again, when a fly ball was hit his way, Ted would slap his behind and yell, “Hi-ho Silver!” as he took off to run for it. 

Ted: “Let’s malt up”

An exclusive excerpt of Ben Bradlee, Jr.’s “The Kid”:   Growing up, Ted liked to hang out at the Majestic Malt Shop, not far from his house, where you could buy 10-inch-high malts for a quarter. Or at Doc Powelson’s drug store across from Hoover High School, often mixing the malts with eggs in his perpetual quest to gain weight. (“Let’s malt up,” Ted would say to his friends.)

There was time for mischief, though nothing too serious. Once, Ted and his brother climbed a nearby water tower, got stuck, and the fire department was called to get them down. On Halloween, Ted would join his pals in greasing the trolley tracks to play havoc with the streetcars. One year, the group pilfered some fruit from downtown storefronts with the intention of using it to raise hell that night. The police caught them. Most were apologetic and let go, but Ted was a smart aleck, so he was hauled in to the station. The cops ended up playing pinochle with him and driving him home at midnight, charmed. But beyond such childish pranks, Williams was straight as an arrow—never smoked a cigarette as a kid, always in bed by 10:00. 

(PHOTO: Danny Williams, Ted’s brother, at work on his truck. May Williams Collection)