Spring Training, Ted Williams and Me

The Florida sun was bright and welcoming. The warmth emitted was pleasant, not the blistering heat and sapping humidity that summer would bring. It was spring training 1978, my only journey to the world of baseball when it doesn’t count, when it is completely innocent and renewing. Spring training was always a symbol, as much about a new year as a sporting event.

Spring training baseball was easy-going. It was a respite from the end of a long winter. It was less corporate and more relaxing. Fans came to the fake games to work on their tans, gossip about their favorite teams, to soak up the atmosphere of a sport unwinding from hibernation. And above all, to schmooze with the easily accessible players and to obtain autographs.

Spring training, like so many other things, has changed. Cities in Florida and Arizona have turned a once-casual relationship into entrepreneurship. Communities invest in fancy new stadiums in order to lure big-league teams to their towns so they can make money. Lord knows why, since nobody cares one way or another who wins and who loses, but exhibition games sell out in advance.

Players are as difficult to mingle with as they are during the World Series and while kids can still get signatures on baseball cards, program cards, and caps, it is much less of a leisurely pursuit than it used to be.

As a northerner, growing up in Boston, I was one of those fans who identified spring training with the long-anticipated change of seasons, the end of winter, the herald of a new Major League season. In the late 1970s, I lived in Florida for a couple of years and I managed that March of 1978 to make time to roam spring training camps and interview players as I went. I remember stops in St. Petersburg, Tampa, Lakeland, and Winter Haven, where the Red Sox then trained.

Seeing the Red Sox was a priority given my background. But the highlight of my visit to their camp came about accidentally. One day, I caught up to the great Ted Williams, my favorite player, and the last man to hit .400, as he began striding out of the ballpark. I cornered him for an interview and we talked hitting. Ted was not mobbed at the moment, although periodically another fan or two would intrude seeking an autograph. A friend and fellow journalist, though not a sportswriter, was with me, and every time Williams’ attention span flagged and he seemed determined to abandon us, my pal and I tag-teamed him with new questions focused on batting, his passion.

Ted kept edging toward the parking lot and my friend and I kept blindsiding him with fresh questions about hitting. We clued into the fact that Williams just couldn’t walk away when the topic of hitting was on the table, so I engaged him for longer than he probably wanted to be engaged and didn’t lose him until I ran out of questions. It was a treat shooting the breeze with one of the greatest ballplayers of all time.

I covered a fair amount of territory that spring, seeing the Red Sox, Tigers, Yankees, Cardinals and other teams. I remember a fun interview with Jim Kaat, the long-time pitcher, too. That remains my only spring training journey and the memories are warmer than the sun. I have interviewed thousands of athletes 0ver the years and many of the interviews have been funnier, more moving, or more introspective than the one conducted with Ted Williams.

But it was Ted Williams.

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