Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero [Paperback]

What Richard Cramer did for a biography on Joe DiMaggio, Leigh Montville has done for a biography on Ted Williams. The book is nearly 500 pages long, and I remained riveted to it until I finished it in a few days. All facets of Ted's personality, warts and all, are included in providing us with information on Ted's dysfunctional family, his love of fishing on the Florida Keys and the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, his initial success in managing the Washington Senators, his hair trigger temper that produced a string of profanities, his difficulties with his marriage partners, and his experiences in World War II and the Korean War. In regard to baseball his obsession with hitting led to his goal of being known as the greatest hitter that ever lived. Ted paid the price to reach his goal in studying hitting as no other hitter has ever done before. He enjoyed picking the brain of Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby who told Williams the secret in hitting is getting a good ball to hit. By this he meant getting ahead in the count (2-0 or 3-1) so the pitcher was put in a situation where he would throw the pitch you, the batter, would be looking for to hit. The book is full of anecdotes of Williams's teammates and opponents from his playing days. It also includes the controversial freezing of Williams's body by son John Henry and sister Claudia while Williams's first child, Bobby-Jo opposed it. Whether Ted, himself, approved of this is left open to question. To me, an interesting story is told by one of his nurses, Virginia Hiley-Self, a Christian, said that Ted Williams accepted the fact that God forgives and provides eternal life. "He prayed," Hiley-Self says. "He knew that Christ was his savior." I have read other biographies of "Teddy Ballgame", but this effort by Leigh Montville stands above the others. Williams's last few years were marred by poor health, but he lived a full life serving his country in two wars, carving out a Hall of Fame baseball career, and fishing for game fish on the Florida Keys and for salmon on the Miramichi River. His was a life fully lived and Leigh Montville has done a wonderful job in presenting all sides of the personality of Ted Williams. To me, this rates as the top baseball book of the year, and maybe even the top biography of anyone for the year.

Leigh Montville's biography of Ted Williams is exhaustive in its analysis of one of baseball's greatest hitters. At times childish and self-absorbed, but always focused upon his art, Ted Williams emerges as a troubled genius in this wonderful book. Some of the anecdotes about Williams' intensity evoke a character who loves a few things in life to obsessive delight while ignoring almost everyone and everything else. An absolute master in the science of hitting a baseball, Williams loves his talent and nourishes it in a way that illuminates how beautiful, powerful, and fragile is the human desire to achieve greatness. A must for baseball fans.

Donald Gallinger is the author ofThe Master Planets

There's no part of Leigh Montville's biography of Ted Williams that is not excellent. In a baseball literature field typically dominated by vapid autobiographies (speaking of which, I just finished Don Zimmer's second book), few third-person bios merit repeat readings. In the last 30 years, books about Babe Ruth, Mo Berg and Sandy Koufax probably own the top of the field. Of course, each of those books used wildly differing approaches. Robert Creamer took an almost mythical approach to The Babe ("The Legend Comes To Life"), and hurries through his final, post-baseball years in literally a dozen pages. Nicholas Dawidoff's take on Moe Berg, on the other hand, uses baseball almost as prelude to the heart of the book, Berg's bizarre late-life wanderings.

The strength of Montville's meticulously written book is that any random chapter is equally fascinating, whether it's about baseball, World War II or Korea, Williams' active role as a Sears spokesman and board member, his fishing life, or his prolonged demise. The baseball chapters are refreshingly free of prolonged statistical parsing. The accuracy of many anecdotes is left up to the reader; the book, as fits a popular biography, is not footnoted, and it seems as if Montville relies heavily on probably embellished stories from Williams' acquaintances and their children. This provides the same mythical air as in Creamer's book (and the Babe himself makes a ghostly cameo here as well).

For my money, though, the creepiest, and therefore most memorable, part of the book is the final three chapters, covering Williams' troubled final eight years. This equals the closing chapters of the Mo Berg book. Montville, whose writing occasionally verged on the florid or melodramatic, has a clear intent here -- in an almost literary device, he introduces John-Henry Williams to the story by way of voiceover. John-Henry did not provide an interview for the book, and was dead by the time it hit the stores. His lone representation comes from his lawyers, who spend more time assailing his betrayed half-sister Bobbie-Jo Ferrell than in justifying (or even explaining) his unusual actions. Therefore, you can't walk away from this book with any ounce of sympathy for John-Henry. I tried to feel sorry for him at the end, truth be told. Almost did, but not quite.

Ted Williams' head in a freezer. There's more to the story than just that -- Montville spends most of three chapters covering the extended decline and fall of John-Henry's media empire, and sometimes seems to go out of his way to find people to declare John-Henry a creep even based on limited interaction from two decades ago. However, Montville allows another creepy, ghoulish episode -- one of Ted's nurses declaring that she delivered him to Jesus and saved his soul, even while Ted was near to death and, based on other evidence in the book, long past his final moments of lucidity -- without the critical comment it so richly deserved. John-Henry was not the only one trying to write himself into the Williams legacy.

While the last three chapters are dark, "Death of a Salesman" dark, the epilogue, a selection of Williams anecdotes, will definitely bring a smile. Now out on the market is a book and audio CD from John Underwood, who co-wrote Williams' own books. That becomes a must-own item, but Montville himself writes so clearly that you can practically hear Williams' booming laugh rising from the page.

An astonishing read.