A few weeks ago, I DVR’d the Ted Williams documentary that aired on HBO. After finally getting a chance to check it out, I need to vent on one issue.
First off, the movie is a great watch for baseball fans. In fact, it could have been a miniseries, as there are too many interesting aspects of Mr. Williams’s life (tough childhood, multiple marriages, relationships with his children, fighter pilot, obsession with hitting, etc.) to cover in a two hour film (it actually inspired me to check out the 500 page Leigh Montville biography of Mr. Williams). And yet, with all of these angles to cover, the film decided to spend time rehashing the “Ted was a selfish player…only cared about his numbers…DiMaggio was a winner” story line. Courtesy of Dan Shaughnessy (actual quote…I had it on DVR):
All the stuff that he was great was individual stuff–hitting .400*, triple crowns, even his great moments like All-Star games…and thats not the reputation you want to have. You don’t want to be known as a great guy in All-Star games. You want to be great in the World Series.
Seriously, I have to respond to this? Well, I’m not even going to talk about sample size, I just can’t do it.
First of all, the Leigh Montville book and the HBO documentary both make the case that players actually cared a lot about All-Star games in the 1940′s/50′s, only slightly less than they cared about the World Series. So performing well in All-Star games actually seems like it meant a lot more to players and fans than it does today.
Second of all, Ted Williams had a career OPS of 1.1116 (OPS+ 191) in 7706 regular season at bats. And this doesn’t account for the fact that he missed his age 24, 25, 26 seasons for WWII, and the vast majority of his age 33 and 34 seasons for the Korean War. Because he had a lousy seven games in his only post-season experience**, he never helped the Red Sox at all.
Finally, the criticism of Mr. Williams caring a lot about his career statistics at the end of his playing career seems to be true. But the Red Sox, from 1954-1960 (Mr. Williams post-Korea career), finished a combined ten games under .500, and a combined 147 games out of first place. A competitive athlete has got to have goals to stay motivated in a situation like that, no?
It’s hard for me to tell if Williams reputation would have been better or worse with the 24/7 sports news cycle that we have today. His spitting/swearing at fans, staying in a different hotel at the end of his career, avoiding/cursing the media would have definitely gotten him the Bonds treatment, and possibly made the internet explode. But he also would have had a PR savvy agent, and his fighting in two wars, charity work, playing through injuries, etc. would have earned him the Eckstein treatment. Which angle would the current sports climate have adopted?
*One thing I didn’t realize until the Montville book was that in the 1941 season, in which Mr. Williams hit .406, sacrifice flies were counted as outs against your batting average. Had the current scoring system applied, the .406 would have actually been .420.
**Another thing from the Montville book–the Red Sox scheduled an exhibition series between the end of the regular season and the World Series to make sure their players “didn’t get rusty.” Williams was hit by a pitch on his elbow, causing him to miss most of this exhibition series, and play through the pain in the World Series.
Tags: all-star games, biography, dan shaughnessy, documentary, HBO, Joe DiMaggio, korean war, leigh montville, OPS, ted williams, triple crown, WWII
(4.88 out of 5)
Also worth mentioning from the “no players have good nicknames anymore” category is that Williams had one of the best. “The Splendid Splinter” is one of my faves! Sports media today would’ve just stopped at T-Will and called it a day.