Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero

In the winter, I do more than mourn the loss of baseball by complaining about football and finishing up my season on The Show.  I take some time to improve my mind and further my knowledge about baseball.  This off-season I read a number of different baseball books and I that I absolutely devoured was Ted Williams: Biography of an American Hero by Leigh Montville.

Montville writes of Williams as an amazing ballplayer and a truly extraordinary individual.  If you only know of him as a Red Sox batting champ, this book explores all of the facets of his life.  Starting with his childhood in San Diego, Williams began playing ball for the Pacific Coast League and the San Diego Padres.  He started playing for the Sox in 1939 and in 1941 became the last man to hit for .400, batting .406 for the season.  But in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy and became a pilot in the Marine Corps.  He would be recalled in 1952 during the Korean War, in which he flew combat missions and was John Glenn's wingman.  The Korean War took five years off his playing career, but in 1957, Williams again led the league in batting.  He would retire in 1960, hitting a dramatic home run in his last at-bat.  

Williams' incredible baseball career and military service would normally be enough to fill any biography, but Montville devotes entire chapters to Williams' love of fishing.  He approached fishing with the same determination and through examination as he did hitting a baseball.  Williams went from baseball to fishing to baseball back to fishing.  It was his yearly routine and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for both sports.

Ted Williams was a man amongst men, but he was a still a man, with flaws like any other.  He had a terrible temper, spoke in prolific profanity and though he was a generous man, he had a rocky relationship with the Boston fans.  Williams constantly spurned the media who would rake him over the coals in the papers, turning the crowds against him.  He had a distant relationship with his children, though he tried to reconcile that later in life, when he brought his son John Henry back into his life.  Montville writes about the multiple marriages, clashes with reporters and difficulties in knowing Ted Williams just as he writes of Williams' constant support of the Jimmy Fund, continued study of the science of hitting and eagerness to talk to almost anyone about baseball, fishing and eventually life.  

Ted Williams truly lived the life of an American hero with his passionate play of our nation's past time and his brave service in two wars.  Montville's book is a excellent read of a great ballplayer and an accomplished man.