Ted Williams Field

Editor’s Note: This is an article that appeared earlier in “The Red Sox Journal.”

 

According to my best calculations, it’s approximately 2,580 miles as the crow flies from home plate at San Diego’s North Park playground to home plate at Fenway Park. Drive your old Mustang and we’re talking 3,000 miles plus. Literally and figuratively it represents the long road Ted Williams traveled from being a lanky, skinny kid in what was then small-city San Diego to his Hall of Fame career in the Hub.

Your reporter has also traveled the same road in his life — only in reverse. A native New Englander, I almost made it to home plate at Fenway the same age as Ted. Unable to hit a good curveball (come to think of it, good fastballs gave me problems, too), I had to settle for staring at the Fenway light towers from my Boston University dormitory room by winter and cheering from the bleacher seats by summer.

And while I never planned or even thought about it, those weird and unexpected twists and turns that life takes now find me, nearly 20 years later, with a wife and 2 kids living a few blocks west of home plate at the North Park playground.

When my son got so he could throw those rolled up socks around the living room pretty well, we decided it was time to hit the big time with a real ball and glove. And where else to go but the North Park playground. Now understand Southern California is not New England. meaning tradition is not our forte.

Advertisements saying things like “proudly serving San Diegans for over 8 years” don’t leave us with bemused smirks. And if you ever want to get something named after yourself, your best bet is to be a 16th century explorer or an 18th century missionary. So it didn’t seem all that unusual to the California way of life that the playground would have nothing indicating that Ted Williams had learned to play ball here. And the only ones who seemed to be aware that Ted had grown up here were the old timers and the small remnant of snow-fearing Red Sox fans.

Still, throwing that ball around with my young son, one could almost see the footprints in the sand and imagine the skinny kid working at developing that perfect swing, swatting line drives into the fading sunset. Sure — why not — was there really anything to keep this from being called Ted Williams Field? I mean it was our neighborhood field and we were now the neighborhood.

A proposal to name the field Ted Williams Field was put before the North Park Recreation Council in mid-1990. The proposal passed and began to move its way up the Parks and Recreation bureaucracy in mid-1990. By early 1991 the proposal was before the City Council where it received final approval. The Parks and Recreation staff members working at the North Park playground had been supportive of the idea all along, and when final approval was given they decided to make the ballfield dedication the highlight of the North Park Family Day at the playground on July 6, 1991.

It was intended to be just a little neighborhood thing, but in the 2 weeks before the dedication, other parts of the city began talking about it. San Diego Union TV critic Don Freeman abandoned the world of show business for a day to devote his entire column to previewing the event. It was confirmed that the Union’s leading sports columnist, Barry Lorge would be covering the event. And the City Council had managed to contact Ted and extend a formal invitation to attend. Unfortunately he already had plans for that weekend with an old fighter pilot buddy named George Bush at the All-Star Game in Toronto, but the word was that he would be forwarding a letter.

The big day arrived. After introductory remarks by the proposal’s originators and City Councilman John Hartley, it was time for the three guest speakers. First up was Wilbert Wiley, probably Ted’s closest friend during most of his years at the playground. Ted relates in My Turn at Bat how he and Wilbert would call out what type of pitch they were going to throw to each other. One day Ted told Wilbert to just throw whatever he wanted without first announcing it. He relates how pleased he was that he was still able to hit the ball so well, and describes it as one of those key days in his life that you always remember.

Next came former American League umpire Ed Runge. A born storyteller, he managed, between jokes, to tell how Ted was the greatest that he ever saw. Finally came Bob Breitbard, Ted’s high school friend and now director of the Hall of Champions (basically a San Diego all sports Hall of Fame). Bob brought along a number of items from the Hall of Champions collection including the bat Ted used for a good part of the 1941 season when he hit .406. Then he said that Ted’s letter had arrived by express mail, and read it to the crowd:

“I’m sorry I’m not there with you today, because there is no place on earth besides Fenway Park, that I remember more than the North Park playground. I spent the first 18 years of my life there only a block and a half from my house.”

Ted spends a few paragraphs reminiscing about some of the people and events of San Diego baseball at that time. He then concludes:

“I sincerely want to thank everyone who had anything to do with those days. I can’t think of a nicer or more everlasting memory than to have played in that playground as a kid, and then, nearly 60 years later, to have the same playground named after me.”

The signs proclaiming Ted Williams Field were hung up around the diamond with a plaque to follow. The San Diego Union carried Barry Lorges’s column of the event on the front page of the Sunday sports section the next day.

Besides the satisfaction of seeing the park named for Ted, the events surrounding the ball park dedication provided me with a few answers to things I had wondered about. First, the impression is given in some quarters that Ted Williams was happy to leave San Diego and never turned back once he left. The truth is that Ted has maintained friendships with a number of boyhood friends over the years and has visited San Diego off and on throughout his adult life, the most recent being the 50th reunion of high school graduation.

Second, I had wondered if there was any indication when Ted was a boy that he would turn into the great player that he was; any indication that he was to be the anointed one. While obviously a good player. apparently nothing stood out that marked Ted above the other good players around the neighborhoods at that time. As one old friend put it, “He was good all right, but it wasn’t until about 15 that he started shooting ahead of the rest of us. After that, there was just no stopping him.”

Then there was Ted’s sayonara song to the North Park playground. It was the winter of 1938, the last winter Ted would spend in San Diego. He had just finished a strong year with the Red Sox farm team in Minneapolis, and would soon be leaving for spring training. Within a year he would be a household name. But for now he was hanging out with his buddies in his last few months of relative anonymity, hunting, fishing and playing some baseball. In one makeshift game at the playground that winter (for all I know, possibly the last game he ever played there), Ted lit into a pitch and said to his mates “keep an eye on that one”.

The ball went over the backstop in deepest center field and into Oregon Street. The backstop is about 400 feet from home plate (392 feet by my tape measure), and 15 feet high. It was the type of poke that would not be unusual for Ted in the future, but for then it was the final affirmation that all those hours of practice in the playground had paid off as he was about to embark on his big league career.

You may feel you’re the greatest Red Sox fan around, but can you really say you’ve done it all until you make the pilgrimage to San Diego, go to the North Park playground, stand at home plate at Ted Williams Field, stare intently west into right field and the setting California sun and let these words echo through your mind:

“I wanted to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. A man has to have goals — for a day, for a lifetime — and that was mine, to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.’ Certainly nobody ever worked harder at it. It was the center of my heart, hitting a baseball. They used to say I lived for the next turn at bat, and that’s the way it was. I felt in my heart that nobody in this game ever devoted more concentration in the batter’s box than me, a guy who practiced until the blisters bled and loved doing it.”

The North Park playground is about 3 miles northeast of downtown San Diego at 4044 Idaho St. If you get to North Park, just look for the big green water tower. Ted Williams Field is one block directly to the south.