{"id":3280,"date":"2005-06-29T16:12:26","date_gmt":"2005-06-29T20:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3280"},"modified":"2024-10-27T17:01:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T21:01:38","slug":"ted-being-asked-to-sign-a-ball-he-had-struck-out-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3280","title":{"rendered":"“Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by David Halberstam:<\/p>\n

When [Ted] was generous there was no one more generous, and when he was petulant there was no one more petulant, and sometimes he was both within a few seconds. Once in the mid-1950s, Pedro Ramos, then a young pitcher with Washington, struck Ted out, which was a very big moment for Ramos. He rolled the ball into the dugout to save, and later, after the game, the Cuban right-hander ventured into the Boston dugout with the ball and asked Ted to sign it. Mel Parnell was watching and had expected an immediate explosion, Ted being asked to sign a ball he had struck out on, and he was not disappointed. Soon there was a rising bellow of blasphemy from Williams, and then he had looked over and seen Ramos, a kid of 20 or 21, terribly close to tears now. Suddenly Ted had softened and said, “Oh, all right, give me the goddamn ball,” and had signed it. Then about two weeks later he had come up against Ramos again and hit a tremendous home run, and as he rounded first he had slowed down just a bit and yelled to Ramos, “I’ll sign that son of a bitch too if you can ever find it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n