I Will Not Allow 1937 To Contradict Me

Last week I wrote about my feelings: The feelings that overwhelmed me as the Padres made good on their promise to build through the draft by signing the vast majority of their 2011 draft choices. My thoughts were all over the board but I'd like to ask for permission to quote myself on this glorious Friday morning? Are we cool? Cool:

 The Padres are not the farm system for the Boston Red Sox.

Nor are they the farm system for the rest of MLB. For that to be the truth then the Padres would have needed to develop an awful lot of players over the last 10 years for it to be a valid argument. They have not. Jake Peavy is not a good example. Jake Peavy was a catastrophic injury away from sinking the organization.

 I stand by that statement. Because I wrote it. And most importantly, I felt it. Feelings count just as much as an 0 for 1 with three walks.*


Having conveyed that sentiment such a short time ago, I could not help but chuckle as I read through David Halberstam's The Teammates last night. One of Halberstam's last books before his untimely death in 2007 tells the tale of four close friends named Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johny Pesky, and Dom DiMaggio; teammates with the Boston Red Sox.

Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams were very close friends, perhaps destined to be so, as Doerr was a patient and kind man who understood Williams, but most importantly, he could deal with Williams' uneven temperament. Bobby Doerr recounts to David Halberstam how Ted Williams almost didn't become his teammate with the Red Sox:

It was Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey who almost blew it. That year's baseball winter meetings were held in December in Chicago, where Collins [Red Sox GM] and Lane [The PCL San Diego Padres owner] were supposed to meet to finalize a deal. But suddenly Yawkey balked. He had lately been paying a lot of money for aging stars like Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove, and it was all short-range, so they decided to go another route: to build up their farm system. To Yawkey, who had had a number of drinks that day, the Williams deal suddenly seemed to smack of the old way (paying big money for a star), now officially known as the wrong way. For whatever reason -- perhaps it was the cloud of alcohol -- it was hard for the owner to understand that this was not the same kind of deal, that this was paying far less money, only $25,000 plus a couple of prospects, for what was obviously an immensely talented kid. They were using the Padres as a de facto farm club, and Williams was not a player on his way down, but a wunderkind on his way up-- a kid with a stroke like Joe Dimaggio's.

The Red Sox went on to sign Ted Williams by the deadline imposed by San Diego Padres owner Bill Lane that evening at the winter meetings. Had the deadline not been met the Chicago Cubs were next in line to purchase the services of the young San Diegan, Williams.

All very interesting but it was the reference to the Padres as the de facto farm club for the Red Sox that brought a grin to my face. There was a time and place where this was indeed the truth.

But so we're clear, allow me to reiterate... it is not here... nor is it now.

Enjoy your Friday.


* Write that one down.

San Diego's Splendid Splinter

The final ball Ted Williams ever hit is denoted by that red seat...way out in RF. I've been to Fenway to see it, twice. Those years also happen to be years that the Sox won the WS so if some wealthy New Englander is seeing the connection I will gladly accept transport and accommodation this season to act as a talisman.

One of the earliest books I recall reading multiple times and referencing ad infinitum was Ted Williams' The Science of Hitting. During that period of time I played a game at his high school, Hoover, and the field named in his honor. I now live a long and lazy fly ball from Ted Williams Parkway. In the way of sports history, San Diego's is brief and fairly uneventful....but we do have Ted Williams..... a San Diego Padre way back in 1937.

I mention this because I just saw his documentary on HBO. It was well done and I enjoyed the prominent roles that both Jerry Coleman and Tony Gwynn played in helping to recount Teddy Ballgame's story. As an admirer of baseball history I also loved looking at the pursuit of numbers, the statistics. Ted Williams' career numbers are other worldly and absolutely sick.......even though he lost nearly 5 whole years of his prime serving in World War II and Korea. It's obscene to extrapolate what his final line would have looked like had he arrived on the scene just a decade later.

Despite the career numbers and the distinguished military record I somehow get the feeling that Ted Williams might be the sort of player that I can't stand in today's game.......surly, cocky and uncharacteristically absent when the stage is the biggest. As I consider The Splendid Splinter's flaws and attempt to compare him to some of the malcontents of recent memory, I quickly snap to, and consider a couple of remarkable anecdotes set forth about the baseball player......which ultimately lead to understanding of the man:

• On the final day of 1941 Ted Williams, with a double header scheduled, sat on a .3996 batting average, good enough for a rounded-up and official average of .400. That was not good enough for Ted Williams as sitting was unthinkable---"If I can't hit .400 all the way, I don't deserve it." Ted Williams played that double header, went 6 for 8 to finish at .406, and became the last man to surpass the mythical barrier. Wow, nearly 70 years ago. Here's another Williams quote that would seem at odds with today's MLB player: "If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400."

• I believe it was his last season when he visited with his GM and received his contract for $135, 000. He refused this amount claiming that his performance from the previous season didn't warrant such a figure........he instead took $90,000.

Those two points say a lot about the man. Enough for me to reconsider and say that there's no way I'd compare him to some of the fellas that embarrass the game regularly today.

San Diego bore the greatest hitter who ever lived.....so we've got that going for us.....which is nice.

For John Updike's classic, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu [Baseball Almanac]