Faithful
By Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King
403 pages, Scribner
$26.00
Two for Fenway
Following a season of euphoria in Red Sox Nation, it seems appropriate to examine Ted Williams, a biography by Leigh Montville and Faithful, by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King. Many consider Williams to be the greatest of all Boston baseball players, although ironically his teams never won a World Series. Faithful chronicles the 2004 season when, as everyone north of the equator knows, the Red Sox not only beat the Yankees for the pennant, but also won the World Series for the first time since 1918.
Montville has written an absorbing book about a complex individual. Ted Williams was a man of extremes. One moment he was a bully, the next minute he could be the sweetest guy in the world. It is a book that goes well beyond sports reporting as we learn what kind of a man he was off the baseball field. In his page of acknowledgments, Montville tells us that he talked to more than 400 people who knew Williams. As he says, “I learned about fishing, flying, fame, human nature, medical science [and] the art of hitting a baseball.”
O’Nan and King’s book is a day-to-day account of the triumphant Red Sox season, beginning with spring training and extending through the four-game sweep of St. Louis in the Series. Hard-core Sox fans will love the detailed dugout chatter between the two men as their team’s fortunes ebb and flow during the course of the 2004 season. A warning: this is not a book for the casual fan. The untutored need to get used to references to players by their first names (Pedro, Nomar, Trot, Pokey) and nicknames (Wake, Youk, Tek, Dauber) as well as the frequent use of baseball slang “you guys suck!” “The Curse” and of course, “Who’s your Daddy?”
I must admit that, as a longtime Phillies fan, parts of Faithful were painful to read. After all, the Red Sox were led by an ex-Phillie manager, Terry Francona, and everyone knows the contributions of former Phillie Curt Schilling and his bloody sock. Early in the book there is even a snide reference to “Philadelphia blowing up the Vet and Eagles fans hoping it would change their luck.” But I am not a jealous man and will give the Red Sox their due, even though Faithful is probably 200 pages longer than it needs to be.
But I digress. Ted Williams led a neglected childhood. Perhaps because he was so ignored as a child, Williams was constantly befriending strangers and helping those less fortunate than himself. As a wealthy athlete he frequently lent his Florida house to friends. He visited children in hospitals and, on occasion, quietly paid their bills. He funded business deals for friends and he helped kids from his neighborhood. In fact, most of the people he hung out with were not from the world of baseball. To them, he was most assuredly “An American Hero.”
Lovers of baseball will not be disappointed with Ted Williams. Montville chronicles Williams’s life from his days as a high school phenom in California to his career in the major leagues. “He arrived [in 1938] a tall bundle of fidgets and bluster, fingernails bitten down to nothing, a motor mouth covering his own insecurities.” Montville devotes chapters to 1941, the year Williams hit .406, and to the five years (WW11 and Korea) he lost to military service. Throughout the book, he describes Williams’s frequently turbulent relationship with the Boston baseball writers. Ted Williams won two MVP awards, though Montville suggests it is likely that he would have won several more had he maintained a more civil relationship with the press.
Ted Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. Today, if you asked someone about Ted Williams, the answer might be that he was a great baseball player who, as an old man, was exploited by his greedy son John Henry. In this era of free-agency, Williams would be considered an anachronism. He played for one team his entire career. I wonder what they will write about Pedro in 2044.
A retired baseball coach, Harry Gratwick spends summers on Vinalhaven.