Mulligan
turned out to be a skinny left-hander who came at a batter with
a variety of motions – sidearm, three-quarters, cross fire. Just
the kind of pitcher Ted liked to take a long look at. (“The first
time at bat is always the toughest against any pitcher. Seeing
what his deliver is, how fast he I, how his ball moves. Awww,
he throws a sinker on me. Awww, he’s a little faster than I thought
he was. Any you lose a time at bat.”)
His first time up, Mulligan got two strikes on him and then came
at him with something new, a big overhand curve that broke right
over the plate. Ted was walking out of the batter’s box before
the strike was even called. It was only the twenty-sixth time
he had struck out all year. The next time up, he hit a ground
ball to deep second base, and Bill Grieve, umpiring at first,
called him safe. It was Ted’s fifth infield hit of the year. It
was also a gift. The umpires were rooting for him.
On his last time at bat, he drove a patented Williams sinking
line drive down the first base line, but Mickey Vernon, in his
rookie year, was there to field it on a short hop behind first
base. (When Vernon joined the Red Sox fifteen years later, one
of the first things he said was how happy he was that he no longer
had to face those sinking line drives that would “hit the ground
in front of you and explode in your face.”) Ted was down to .401
(actually .4009).
The unforgiving mathematics of .400 was beginning to close in
on him. With one fewer time at bat, he would have needed four
hits in twelve times at bat in Philadelphia to finish at an even
.400. That last time at bat in Washington was making it necessary
for him to have a fifth hit in those same twelve times at bat.
And he had two days off to think about it.
On Friday, Joe Cronin had coach Tom Daly take Ted out to the A’s
Shibe Park, along with Frank Shellenback, who had become the Red
Sox pitching coach, for some extra batting practice. Cronin not
only wanted to give Ted a chance to loosen up and get his timing
back; he wanted him to be doing something to keep his mind off
the coming games.
And the triple crown was disappearing as well. DiMaggio, who had
knocked in four runs in Philadelphia, to catch Keller, knocked
in another run on Friday, to take the lead for good. He was going
to be topping off his season with a two-run double on Saturday.
That same Saturday, Ted faced rookie knuckleballer named Roger
Wolff, the first of three rookie pitchers Connie Mack was ready
to throw at him. Ted walked the first time up, but it was apparent
that he was having trouble trying to gauge Wolff’s pitches. The
second time up, he doubled to deep right center. He was up to
.402. But then there was a fly to right (.401) and a foul out
to first, and he was down to .4004.
He was due to be the fifth batter in the ninth. The first two
batters went out, but the two hitters in front of him both singled,
and he was up again. He slashed a wicked drive that went just
foul, then chased a low knuckleball and struck out. His twenty-seventh
strikeout of the year had dropped him to .39955.
All to the good, as it developed. All to make what Ted did in
that final Sunday doubleheader in Philadelphia a feat to resound
in the annals of baseball history.
“After the [Saturday] game, I walked through the streets of Philadelphia
with Johnny Orlando. Johnny was my closest confidant on the ball
club. He knew all my personal problems. He was my close friend,
and he’d always give me something extra. ‘Don’t worry, everything
is going to be all right.’ We kept walking and walking, talking
about the game and this and this, but underlying it all we were
thinking about the next day. I remember I got in about ten-thirty
that night.” It was not unusual for Ted to walk the streets after
a ball game; it was almost a part of his training routine. Usually,
however, his companion was Bobby Doerr. The way Orlando always
told the story, he ducked into a couple of bars along the way,
to beat the Philadelphia curfew, and Ted stopped off in a couple
of drugstores to down a malted. For Ted, who was almost always
in bed by ten o’clock, it was an unusually late hour. Even then,
he found Cronin sitting in the lobby on his return and spent another
half hour or so talking to him. (“It was the first time it worried
me whether I was going to hit .400 or not, because the papers
were writing it up.”)
The kid who had run out to the backyard with a bat after reading
about Bill Terry’s .401 was going to get his chance, eleven years
later, to do what he had so clearly visualized doing night after
night after night.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to say that Ted was thinking back
on that unhappy twelve-year-old boy who had started it all by
swinging a bat under the light of the moon in a cluttered backyard?
Wouldn’t it warm the cockles of the heart to be able to say that
he was promising that little boy to come through fro him? Nice,
but not very accurate. “No, I didn’t think of those nights in
the backyard or of being the first one since Terry,” Ted says.
“I didn’t even realize the astronomical height it was. What I
was thinking was, I’ve been there all year, and I want to remain
there. Now it’s the last day and, jeez, I’m under .400.”
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