The Kid: Ted Williams in San Diego
Ted Williams was a giant of a man, the likes of whom America may never see again. Enshrined in Cooperstown in 1966, in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Ted Williams was also the first living athlete to be honored with his own museum -- the Ted Williams Musem and Hitter's Hall of Fame."I wanted to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. A man has to have goals -- for a day, for a lifetime -- and that was mine, to have people say 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.' Certainly nobody ever worked harder at it. It was the center of my heart, hitting a baseball. Eddie Collins used to say I lived for my next at bat, and that's the way it was. If there was ever a man born to be a hitter it was me." - Ted Williams, MY TURN AT BATBorn to be a hitter? Williams recognized certain natural gifts, but he also always emphasized how hard he had worked at it, and bristled at suggestions that he was "a natural." "Practice, practice, practice" -- those were truly Ted's three watchwords. Ted Williams was much more than a hitter, though. He's also been inducted into not just one, but three fishing halls of game. He's been honored by the Marine Corps and the President of the United States for his military service in two wars, which included 39 combat missions over Korea. And for half a century he was the leading fundraiser in the struggle against cancer in children, through his stalwart support of Boston's Jimmy Fund.Inevitably, Williams biographies spend only a chapter or two on his early years. This book focuses entirely on the first twenty years of Ted's life -- the years before he joined the Boston Red Sox and broke onto the national scene by setting a rookie RBI record (145 runs batted in) that has never been  beaten. These are the eyars that forged the future baseball star, and the man who became a world class sport fisherman, and the man who flew wing for John Glenn in the F-9F Panther jet in numerous dive-bombing missions during the Korean War.