My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams with John Underwood

My Turn At Bat: The Story of My Life by Ted Williams with John Underwood

I'm not an avid reader of non fiction but I absolutely loved this book. While a lot of non fiction tends to lose my interest as they tend to sound like textbooks going from one point or isolated story to another without any sense of narrative transition, this book has the tone of a conversation over drinks. Ted Williams was a far more interesting man than I would have thought before reading this book. Having grown up in Massachusetts and being born in 1977 I would always hear about how Ted Williams was the greatest batter to ever play for the Sox but had no idea of all the animosity between him the sports writers and the jerk big mouth fans. He clearly took all the crappy things people said about him to heart. Too bad too, as great as he was on the field and what he did in the service should have been more than enough for him to be beloved no matter how prickly his personality. Again having grown up in Mass I more than understand how big of an ignorant bunch of Aholes there are floating around so I'm unfortunately not surprised with how he was treated. I also love that he got mad about the personal attacks in the press, good for him for defending himself & holding a grudge when someone attacks him from the protection of the newsroom. I also love how he is both humble, cocky and self aware all at the same time it's refreshing to read about his brutally honest descriptions of fair & unfair situations. I also think that his descriptions of his love for milk shakes & fishing are down right endearing.

While it's hard to narrow them down, some of my favorite quotes coming out of the book are;

(Talking about how it's not as hard to hit 0.400 as people think) "Now it seems that Don Mattingly & Wade Boggs have a shot and I wish one of them would do it so people would quit bugging me about it and I can fish in peace."

"I know I am just one of a multitude of athletes who have gone to see kids in hospitals, to see sick kids. Peole in the public eye are always asked to do these things and they do them gladly. I don't think you should get a Silver Star for it. It's something you should do without having people rave over you."

2 great ones from his hall of fame induction speech;

"Ballplayers are not born great. They're not born great hitters or pitchers or managers, and luck isn't the big factor. No one has come up with a substitute for hard work. I've never met a great player who didn't have to work harder at learning to play ball than anything else he ever did."

and

"I hope that someday Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given the chance"

How great is that? Here is arguably one of the guys with the reputation for being one of the biggest aholes of the game and he's advocating how bullshit discrimination is at the HOF speech in July of 1966 because it's the right thing to do. I'm a fan of this guy.