The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams

[YankeeFan]

Heard an interview with Ben Bradlee Jr. yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air. He was discussing his new book The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams.

Such an interesting and complicated guy. (Much like his peer, Joe DiMaggio.) So much to admire about him, and so much to not like too.

Full audio and transcript of the interview is here: http://n.pr/1dPJVXj

Book excerpt here: http://n.pr/1eVGcop

 

[Dick Whitman]

What is different about this book as compared to Leigh Montville's exhaustive bio from five or six years ago?

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Based on the excerpts published in the Globe, Bradlee had more cooperation from Ted's kids than Leigh did. Whether that makes his account better or worse I don't know. But really, this book falls into the ever popular "Here's a present you kids can get Granddad" genre.

 

[Dick Whitman]

800-plus pages on a baseball player. That would take quite a commitment.

 

[Steak Snabler]

Yeah, I questioned why we needed another Mickey Mantle book until I read Jane Leavy's "The Last Boy," which was freakin' awesome.

 

[buckweaver]

What is different about this book as compared to Leigh Montville's exhaustive bio from five or six years ago?

That's what I'm wondering.

The NPR interview sure didn't make me want to rush out and read this book. How much damn time are we going to spend on cryogenics again?

 

[Starman]

Haven't read the book of course, but at this point the whole cryogenics deal is just a bizarre little footnote to an estate squabble between stepsiblings.

At this point what difference does it really make if Ted Williams' body, or any part of it, is rotting in a coffin six feet under, is granules of dissolved ash at the bottom of the ocean, or frozen in a freezer?

In some ways the whole cryogenics thing is the complete rejection of faith-based concepts of the afterlife, but what's more far-fetched, to believe in a supreme being who will someday reunite your body and soul and restore it to life, or to believe that over a span of hundreds (or thousands) of years, your frozen corpse pieces will be maintained in a facility which never ever loses power, never goes bankrupt, never gets hit by an earthquake, never gets sold off to some company hundreds of years from now who never heard of you and certainly never saw any of the money you or your heirs paid to be frozen?

Right now I would put money on the premise that the ultimate fate of Ted Williams' head will be to be fed into an incinerator along with a bunch of other thawed-out bodies nobody in the year 2213 wants to fool around with.

 

[Boom_70]

One of the requirements of new health care plan is covering reattachment.

 

[H.L. Mencken]

The excerpt in The Globe about Ted and how he ushered in a new era of media (in a way) is worth reading.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/2013/12/01/feud-with-sportswriters-helped-ted-williams-hit-harder/6354oT35Slld0eybr2QfpJ/story.html

 

[YankeeFan]

Talk about a different world, huh:

Between 1939 and 1960, the years spanning Ted’s career with the Red Sox, Boston had eight major newspapers, or nine if one counted both the morning and evening editions of The Boston Globe, which had separate staffs and circulations. The morning papers were the Post, the Herald, the Record, the Daily Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. The evening journals were the American, the Transcript, the Traveler, and the Evening Globe. The Post and the Record dominated the city in 1940 with circulations of 369,000 and 329,000 respectively.

In the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, major league baseball was by far the dominant sport in the country, and would often take up a third of the front page of newspapers in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. To be a baseball writer assigned to cover one of the big league teams was a highly prized assignment.

The writers wore suits. On long road trips, they’d play poker on the trains with the players and among themselves. Some great yarns came out of those trips, but in the fraternal milieu, it was understood that the stories would stay in-house, never to turn up in print.

On average, the writers were a generation-or-more older than the players they covered. Before World War II, the vast majority had not gone to college, and in the ’40s, their salaries ranged between $5,000 and $7,000 a year. But you couldn’t beat the perks. In what seems a quaint anachronism today, it was common practice at least into the ’60s for the ball clubs to pay all the expenses of the writers when the teams traveled. The reporters would stay at the best hotels, order from room service, and eat at fine restaurants. Moreover, they spent six weeks in Florida for Spring Training on the teams’ tab as well. In return for such largesse, the clubs of course expected, even demanded, favorable coverage, and they received it. On the rare occasions they did not, the teams would not hesitate to assert their economic leverage over the papers.

 

[Double J]

The Globe had separate staffs and circulations for its morning and evening editions? That blows me away.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

That lasted until the mid-'70s.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Talk about a different world, huh:

Between 1939 and 1960, the years spanning Ted’s career with the Red Sox, Boston had eight major newspapers, or nine if one counted both the morning and evening editions of The Boston Globe, which had separate staffs and circulations. The morning papers were the Post, the Herald, the Record, the Daily Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. The evening journals were the American, the Transcript, the Traveler, and the Evening Globe. The Post and the Record dominated the city in 1940 with circulations of 369,000 and 329,000 respectively.

In the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, major league baseball was by far the dominant sport in the country, and would often take up a third of the front page of newspapers in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. To be a baseball writer assigned to cover one of the big league teams was a highly prized assignment.

The writers wore suits. On long road trips, they’d play poker on the trains with the players and among themselves. Some great yarns came out of those trips, but in the fraternal milieu, it was understood that the stories would stay in-house, never to turn up in print.

On average, the writers were a generation-or-more older than the players they covered. Before World War II, the vast majority had not gone to college, and in the ’40s, their salaries ranged between $5,000 and $7,000 a year. But you couldn’t beat the perks. In what seems a quaint anachronism today, it was common practice at least into the ’60s for the ball clubs to pay all the expenses of the writers when the teams traveled. The reporters would stay at the best hotels, order from room service, and eat at fine restaurants. Moreover, they spent six weeks in Florida for Spring Training on the teams’ tab as well. In return for such largesse, the clubs of course expected, even demanded, favorable coverage, and they received it. On the rare occasions they did not, the teams would not hesitate to assert their economic leverage over the papers.

We will have to keep this handy when someone here lectures everyone on the ethical lapses being committed all over the place now that wouldn't fly in the good old days when journalism was perfect.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Talk about a different world, huh:

The writers wore suits.

No doubt.

 

[YankeeFan]

We will have to keep this handy when someone here lectures everyone on the ethical lapses being committed all over the place now that wouldn't fly in the good old days when journalism was perfect.

Yes. I thought the same thing.

 

[Dick Whitman]

We will have to keep this handy when someone here lectures everyone on the ethical lapses being committed all over the place now that wouldn't fly in the good old days when journalism was perfect.

Yes. I thought the same thing.

Those lectures are at about 1,000 times the frequency and intensity on team message boards, particularly college team message boards. I should have kept a file of some of the posts comparing me unfavorably to Grantland Rice/Red Smith/the Cheerleader in Residence at my own paper for decades (god rest his soul).