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Ted Williams documentary being co-produced by Big Papi Productions

By Bobby Mueller

BOSTON, MA - OCTOBER 09: A red seat marking the spot where Ted Williams hit the longest home run in Fenway Park history is seen as rain falls after game three of the American League Divison Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians was postponed due to weather at Fenway Park on October 9, 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
BOSTON, MA - OCTOBER 09: A red seat marking the spot where Ted Williams hit the longest home run in Fenway Park history is seen as rain falls after game three of the American League Divison Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians was postponed due to weather at Fenway Park on October 9, 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /
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Ted Williams will be the first baseball player ever featured on the PBS documentary series American Masters when it premieres in the summer of 2018.

Ted Williams, one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, will be featured on the award-winning American Masters documentary series next summer. Another iconic Red Sox player, David Ortiz, will be part of the production of the series. Big Papi Productions is teaming up with Major League Baseball, Albert M. Tapper and Nick Davis productions to create the documentary of Williams.

The American Masters series has featured many famous Americans since it’s inception in 1986, including Marilyn Monroe, Louis Armstrong, J.D. Salinger, and Johnny Carson. Ted Williams is the first baseball player to be honored by the series. Williams has an incredible story, from a difficult childhood in San Diego to his time as one of the best players in baseball to his years fighting for our country in two different wars, to his post-baseball life as an avid fisherman.

The documentary will cover the breadth of Williams’ impressive life. As a baseball player, Williams is well known for being the last player to hit .400 in a season, which he did when he hit .406 in 1941. He was singularly focused on hitting and once said his main goal in life is to walk down the street and have people say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived!” (profanity omitted).

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Statistically, only two players in baseball history have a higher ranking in the offensive metric FanGraphs uses for Wins Above Replacement (WAR)—Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds. Baseball-Reference has him sixth all-time in Offensive WAR, behind Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron.

The American Masters documentary will focus more on the philosophy of Williams’ hitting method than the statistics he put up and will include an interview with Wade Boggs, who won five batting titles with the Red Sox. Boggs has said he read the Williams book, “The Science of Hitting” while in high school, although he’s known as a Charlie Lau/Walt Hriniak style of hitter. Williams despised the teaching of Lau and Hriniak, but when Williams, Boggs, and Don Mattingly sat down together with Sports Illustrated in 1986, they hashed out their differences in an compelling interview.

As great as he was as a hitter, Williams was also an accomplished pilot and fisherman He missed three seasons in the prime of his career to fight in World War II, then parts of two other seasons to fight in Korea. He was an skillful naval aviator who fought 39 successful combat missions in Korea and was known for his success as John Glenn’s wingman. He is now in the aviation Hall of Fame.

After his playing career ended, Williams managed baseball for a few years, along with being an avid sport fisherman. He took fishing as seriously as he took most things in his life. For Williams, it was never good enough to do something casually. He always wanted to be the best and his skills as a fisherman landed him in the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame.

The documentary will cover all of this and more. The involvement of Big Papi Productions means David Ortiz will support the project by helping publicize it and enlisting potential narrators. He joined the Red Sox the year after Williams died, so the two great Red Sox hitters never met. For that reason, Ortiz likely won’t appear on camera speaking about Williams, but he feels a kinship with Williams as the two Red Sox players who have hit the most home runs in team history. He told the director, Nick Davis, “Ted is the only guy in Red Sox history to hit more home runs for the team than me, so of course I have to be involved.”

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It’s interesting that Ortiz is a part of this Williams project because the two players had very different personalities. Williams was a terrific player, but he had no use for the media and didn’t have the relationship with Red Sox fans that Ortiz has enjoyed. Ortiz was a key member of the Red Sox team that broke “the curse of the Bambino” by winning the 2004 World Series and he will always be loved by Red Sox fans for his clutch hits and big smile.

In contrast, Williams had an often-contentious relationship with the media and fans. Despite hitting .406 in 1941, he finished second to Joe DiMaggio in the AL MVP voting. His Red Sox teams never won a World Series. He also famously refused to tip his cap to the fans when he hit a home run into the Fenway seats in the last at-bat of his career. As John Updike wrote in The New Yorker, “The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”

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