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This Week
MAGAZINE
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ONE OF THE GREATEST? Future tans would never know it if Ted had quit when he wanted to
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The Fan
Ted
Here's one of baseball's best inside
stories. When this great star decided
to retire, managers, players,
sportswriters couldn't stop him.
But read how one fan did it!
By LESLIE LIEBER
Boston
Four years ago, in the spring of '54, Ted Williams
publicly announced he was quitting baseball at the end
of that season. There were good reasons. He was nearly
36. He had just come home from Korea. In fact, serv
ice in two wars, plus injuries, had already sliced five
years of baseball out of his great career. Now the idea
of struggling to keep his waistline down and his batting
average up just didn't have the old appeal for the great
Red Sox slugger.
His mood wasn't helped by the fact that 15 minutes
after reporting fot spring training at Sarasota, Fla., he
fell and broke his collarbone. He missed the first 3b
games of the season, didn't rack up enough official
times-at-bat to qualify for the American League batting
championship even though his average led the league.
How It Happened
For a man who had already made up his mind to quit,
this was certainly the last straw. It was the end. But
then something happened that made it a beginning.
Here for the first time is the story. It's one Ted had
told no one until he revealed it to me after a recent
Red Sox game.
The story began one morning late in the '54 season.
Ted was standing in the busy rotunda of the Baltimore
Union Station. The Red Sox had finished a series with
the Orioles the day before. Williams had ambled over
to the station to catch a train for Washington.'intending
to arrive there in time to indulge in his habit of an after
noon nap prior to a night game.
While waiting for the train to rumble in from Phila
delphia he stood alone in a corner of the depot, his
head, as usual, buried behind a newspaper. (Some peo
ple think he does this in an effort to hide from fans.
But Ted claims he keeps his vision sharp by forcing him
self to read a newspaper held only six inches away.)
A short, stocky man with a serious glint in his eyes
broke out of the criss-crossing crowds. He carried a
bulging briefcase and barged right up to Williams.
"Excuse me, Ted," he said. "But I've been bothered
by all that talk about your quilting baseball. You were
kidding, weren't you?"
Williams looked up: "Why should I kid about a
thing like that?" He went back to his paper.
Who Kept
Tod chat with hi
one-man cheering
action, Ed Mifflin
Williams From Quitting
But the stranger didn't go away. "Look here, Ted,"
he said. "You're crazy if you think you're going to quit
baseball now. You're not! You can't!"
Ted looked up in surprise.
"What do you mean, I can't? That's my business,"
he snapped.
"It's a lot more than just your business," said the
stranger. "You're not just an independent operator.
You're public domain. You owe it to baseball, if not
to yourself, to reach certain milestones before you quit.
Do you know how close you are to having 2,000 hits,
400 homers, 1,500 runs-batted-in, 1,500 runs scored?
None or the really great players stopped when they had
any of those goals in sight. Do you realize you have
1,400 RBl's and only twelve men in history have gone
over 1,500?
"In my book you're one of the finest hitters the game
has ever known. But if you quit now the record books
will never show how great you were. Did you ever stop
to consider how you're going to stack up in baseball
history if you call it a day without trying for 4,000 total
bases? Joe DiMaggio didn't make it. But you can."
This stranger was about a foot shorter than Ted, but
he lectured the slugger as though Ted were a schoolboy.
"Well now listen here, 1 . . . er," Williams spluttered.
"What do you actually know about your lifetime
records, Ted?" the stranger demanded.
Ted calmed down and told him he was pretty well
versed in the number of home runs he had hit and his
batting average for each year.
The stranger shook his head impatiently. "Just as I
thought. You really have no idea where you stand.
Why, there are sixteen offensive departments in which
you're approaching milestones and all you've kept
track of is home runs. Do you know how many hits
you've racked up?"
"No," said Williams.
"You've got 1 ,930 in all, including yesterday. It won't
take much to reach 2,000. And in home runs you're not
even among the first ten in lifetime totals. But if you
stick around ..." ,
Statistical Sermon
Ted began to wake up. Here were things he had never
known about himself. Never had statistics sounded so
much like a sermon.
"Who are you, anyway?" Williams finally asked.
"I'm a helluva fan of yours," was all he could get in
answer before the train roared in.
Ted jumped aboard and the stranger ran alongside,
yelling something about breaking one of Jimmy Foxx's
records.
"Get in touch with me!" Williams yelled and he
meant it.
Some days later, in New York, there was a knock on
his hotel-room door. "Who is it?" Ted shouted.
"It's your statistics friend from the Baltimore rail
road station. I'm here with more figures," came the
answer.
That evening this remarkable fan and the Boston
slugger had dinner together. Ted learned a great deal
about himself and something about his friend.
His name was Ed Mifflin. He and his baseball files
hailed from Swarthmore, Pa. He was sales manager
of a cotton-felt upholstery firm, the Fibre Processing
Corporation in Wilmington, Del. As Williams dug
into his steak, Ed rummaged deep in his briefcase and
presented evidence that for Ted to retire would be
practically treason.
"Before our meal was over," Ted told me, "Ed Mifflin
had given me a reason for playing baseball. By showing
me how close I was to bettering my lifetime records,
Mifflin had set up goals that made sense to me. He
had given me a baseball blueprint for my whole remain
ing career."
But that was only the opening gun in Ed Mifflin s
campaign, Not long after that, a hotel clerk in Detroit,
where the Red Sox were playing the Tigers, handed
Williams a telegram.
"Two singles today will put you only 300 total bases
short of Joe DiMaggio." Signed Ed Mifflin, it was the
first of scores of telegrams and postcards from the
Swarthmore statistics headquarters that were to remind
Williams in days and years Continued on page 25
j iiy ssis&A
TED HITS: Another pitch gee en a lino .
to right Held. Williamt takes off for ftrat
Morvift E. Nwmon
and grin. That tingle mad Ed Mifflin smile, tool
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THIS WEEK Mogailm jvly 13, l5t