Ted Williams Has His Day, in His Town

Curious youngsters, adoring old-timers, college students and housewives--baseball fans of both genders from different generations, with cameras and autograph books, hurried through the parking lot and into the football stadium at Mt. Carmel High to see him, hear him and cheer him.

Ted Williams, baseball Hall of Famer and decorated fighter pilot, one of few figures in American sports who could truly be considered a hero, was being honored.

Sunday was proclaimed Ted Williams Day here, in honor of the San Diego native who played 19 years for the Boston Red Sox, played in 18 all-star games, batted .344 lifetime, hit 521 home runs, who missed five seasons to fight in two wars, who is considered by many the best hitter to play the game.

Almost 22 years after Williams homered in his last major-league at-bat at Fenway Park, he received another standing ovation from an estimated 3,000 people in Sundevil Stadium.

They came in station wagons, sports cars and vans, on motorcycles, bicycles and skateboards. Some walked with canes. Others were in wheelchairs. Some were wrapped in blankets in their mothers’ arms. Most of them had arrived via California 56, which Sunday was rededicated as Ted Williams Parkway.

Among the unexpected to greet him at 11 a.m. was an old teammate, Hall of Fame second baseman Bobby Doerr.

“I’ve seen everything else great with Ted, I didn’t want to miss this,” said Doerr, watching as an immaculate brown 1940 Ford Deluxe convertible circled the cinder track.

Williams could have bought the car off the assembly line in Detroit after what he did in 1939, his rookie season: .327 average, 31 homers and a career-high 145 runs batted in.

Out stepped the big left-handed hitter who once possessed a powerful, compact swing (slight upper-cut), still standing tall, bigger than life, in slacks and a tan safari jacket.

“Every place he goes . . . it was the same way then as it is now,” said Doerr, who played with Williams both in Boston and San Diego, with the old Coast League Padres. “He’s a legend, and he’s one of our great people.”

Williams will be 74 on Aug. 30. But baseball’s last .400 hitter still looks strong enough to pull a line drive into the right-field corner.

Doerr, four months and 23 days older, was with Williams when he took his first swings in professional baseball at Lane Field in 1936, just days after “The Splendid Splinter,” as they would later call him, graduated from Hoover High.

“It was in June; he come in for a tryout,” Doerr said. “We’re standing right next to each other. He’s a big 6-foot-3, and about 147 pounds. (Frank) Shellenback, who was pitching batting practice, said, ‘Let the kid get in and hit a few.’

“So all the old players, a bunch of ex-major leaguers, said, ‘Ah, jeez. This guy’s going to take all our hitting time now.’ As I remember, he must have hit two balls out of the ballpark. We didn’t have a guy who could hit the fence, for crying out loud.

“One guy on the other side of the batting cage said, ‘Jeez, this kid’ll be signed before the week’s out.’ I wished I could remember who that was that said that . . .”

Fifty-six years later, California 56 has been renamed because of his legacy. Supporters of this project felt it was high time. San Diego had not even named a street for him.

The biggest backers of Ted Williams Parkway--among them Penasquitos Planning Board chairman Kevin McNamara, state assembly members Mike Gotch and Deirdre Alpert, city councilman Ron Roberts, Padre play-by-play announcer Jerry Coleman, Padre Bruce Hurst and Bob Breitbard, Williams’ former classmate and founder of the San Diego Hall of Champions, took turns at the podium, offering praise and stories.

Coleman related two poignant memoirs, one of how Williams the pilot survived an emergency landing after his plane caught fire during a mission in Korea in 1953. He was able to land despite having no wheels or flaps. He hit the ground and skidded 5,000 yards, but walked away from his battered and burning fighter.

Then Coleman revealed how Williams crashed into the concrete mortar wall at Comiskey Park in the 1950 All-Star game, breaking his arm. He came up to bat the next inning and got a base hit.

“As far as I’m concerned, they can name San Diego after him,” said Coleman, a former Marine pilot himself who played second base for the New York Yankees during Williams’ era. “That’s what I think of him.”

When Williams finally took his turn to speak, he revealed his enduring love for this city.

“I don’t deserve to have my name on a highway,” he said, surveying the landscape around the school. “I used to hunt quail out here . . . But I want to thank all the people responsible.

“I might have one regret in my life . . . that I didn’t come back and make forever my home San Diego. But my victory was in the East. Before I knew it, I was located there. And I’d have to say there was one very strong reason why I went to Florida. I do love to fish. And I’d have to say the fishing is better than out here in California.

“Things change. Just like I look at my old pictures and I see a big change in me. I’m very proud that I’ve been recognized like this, especially in a place I love really more than any place else.”

“I don’t know what else I can say, except I’m very proud, very humble to think that an old kid from San Diego, who wanted to play baseball more than anything else in the world, could have all the good fortune that has been thrown in my direction.

“I get a little embarrassed when they say, ‘Oh, the greatest hitter that ever lived.’ Because I have to think of Cobb and Gehrig and Ruth and all those other guys who hit .340 or .350. But I hope that I truly belong in the ranks of those gentlemen and the DiMaggios and the Greenbergs . . . If so, I will die a happy man.”