The Way I See It
TIME heals all wounds. With time, all is
forgiven for legendsTed Williams got his last hurrah Tuesday night at Fenway, just as Bill Russell got his on May 26 at the Fleet Center.
There were ovations - tremendously emotional ones - and a sense of awe that both of these men still walk in our midst.
I grew up not even an hour's drive north of where they spun their legends. So I took more than passing interest in the tributes.
But you know, I have to laugh a little at how media and fans could get so mushy over these two.
The fact is, they made themselves pretty unlikeable during their heydays.
Everyone back in the 1950s knew Williams caused a stir with Red Sox management by refusing to make the traditional gesture of tipping his hat to the crowd after a home run.
And he never hid his hostility towards the press. Boston reporters discovered how to push his buttons and they pushed them regularly. Williams responded regularly, and it wasn't pretty.
He was known to return obscene gestures to the stands in Fenway and would occasionally even try to line balls at fans he found especially annoying.
RUSSELL, of course, never signed autographs for his fans and could be an iceberg with the media. His philosophy about sharing himself with his public extended beyond retirement.
But the imperfections associated with Russell and Williams fade into their athletic greatness.
And that's as it should be.
If a player's character or personality off the field was inextricably linked to his place in sports history, Ty Cobb's legend wouldn't have endured. His racist philosophy would have ruled him out.
And you know O.J. Simpson's accomplishments would have been stricken.
But in our sports culture, we prefer to preserve the memory of the athlete as athlete. The sordid personal details can be found under a different heading.
Williams actually played one of his character flaws -- arrogance -- into greatness.
He was the last player to hit for the magic .400 over a full major league season.
And he did it in such defiant style that you had to LOVE his attitude.
IT was Sept. 28, 1941, and Williams had barely made it at .3996, which rounded off to .400.
He could have sat on that delicate percentage during Boston's season-ending doubleheader with the Philadelphia A's because the Sox were out of the pennant race.
But he went out and played both ends of the doubleheader, going 6-for-8, and raising his average to .406.
After the game he shouted to reporters: "Ain't I the best damn hitter you ever saw?"
Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell was at Fenway on Tuesday and he watched the greats of the game, past and present, fawn over Williams as though he were a living deity.
I liked how he described the transition from that moment to the All-Star Game itself:
"Williams' last act on the field was to fix American League starting pitcher Pedro Martinez with his gaze and give him the biggest grin you ever saw. It said, "You're a Red Sox.You have a job to do."
Martinez responded to the grin with some incredible pitching. He blew away my remark last week about how the big bats might make the Green Monster extinct.
There are times when a writer is glad someone proved him wrong. This was one of them.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.