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September 28, 2010 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7609 JOTF designs programs that create In addition to academic programs, fans of , and letting us say good- viable career paths for low-wage work- students also participate in service bye to him one last time at the 1999 All ers, helping them reach higher wage work to aid people in South Dakota Star Game in Boston when—on the jobs in industries that need more and around the world. Recent mission Fenway mound—he was surrounded by skilled workers. A good example of trip locations have included Tanzania the great players of the 20th century JOTF’s success is JumpStart, a pre-ap- and Mexico, where students served who were in awe of our own ‘Splendid prenticeship program created and man- those living in extreme poverty. Splinter.’ It was one final moment of aged by JOTF that trains 100 low-wage Through the Leadership and Public magic in a career—and life—seemingly Baltimore residents each year to be- Service Program, students have the op- ripped from a story-book. come licensed electricians, plumbers, portunity to study contemporary But it was that last home that or carpenters. JOTF also convenes pub- issues and perform public service remembers in the extraor- lic meetings on local and national top- through internship placements. Such dinary ‘‘Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,’’ an ics related to employment and the broad educational opportunities pro- essay that captures the greatness of workforce. These meetings attract em- vided by DWU help students explore far better than any of us ployers, policymakers, interested citi- citizenry locally and internationally. could—and still today, 50 years later, zens, and direct service providers. On Saturday, October 2, 2010, DWU speaks to the Red Sox , and JOTF’s research informs policymakers will celebrate its Blue and White Bash fans across the country. I ask and the public and encourages the de- at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Da- to have this essay printed in the velopment of programs based on best kota Wesleyan University has provided RECORD, and I thank the Senate for practices. It explores the impact of spe- our State quality education and a posi- taking time today to remember an cific policies and provides rec- tive social environment. DWU students American icon—Boston’s own Ted Wil- ommendations on how policies can bet- are well equipped to succeed in a com- liams. ter serve workers, families, employers, petitive world, delivering countless HUB FANS BID KID ADIEU and the State’s economy. benefits to organizations and commu- (By John Updike) JOTF is making a significant dif- nities close to home and around the , in Boston, is a lyric little ference in Maryland. I urge my col- globe. With alumni as accomplished as bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted leagues to join me today in congratu- former U.S. Senator George McGovern green and seems in curiously sharp focus, lating JOTF’s founding chair, Joanne and his wife Eleanor McGovern, DWU like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping- Nathans, whose gentle nature and type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and re- continues to live up to its mission of built in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston steely convictions have improved the being ‘‘a leading university that edu- lives of countless Baltimoreans and artifacts, a compromise between Man’s Eu- cates students to identify and develop clidean determinations and Nature’s beguil- their families. Please join me in send- their individual talents for successful ing irregularities. Its right field is one of the ing best wishes to JOTF on the occa- lives in service to God and the common deepest in the , while its sion of its 10th anniversary and in good.’’∑ left field is the shortest; the high left-field thanking JOTF for improving the lives wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from of Maryland job seekers, workers, and f home plate along the foul line, virtually their families.∑ REMEMBERING TED WILLIAMS thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters. ∑ On the afternoon of Wednesday, September f Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, baseball 28th, as I took a seat behind third base, a DAKOTA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY celebrates ‘‘walk off’’ home runs, the uniformed groundkeeper was treading the four baggers that bring a game to an ∑ Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, today top of this wall, picking -practice end. But 50 years ago today, the great- home runs of the screen, like a mush- I wish to celebrate the 125th anniver- est hitter who ever lived, No. 9, Ted room gatherer seen in Wordsworthian per- sary of the founding of Dakota Wes- Williams, the ultimate ‘‘walk off’’ spective on the verge of a cliff. The day was leyan University, DWU, in Mitchell, homer. After 21 seasons with our Red overcast, chill, and uninspirational. The Bos- SD. DWU has provided a well-rounded ton team was the worst in twenty-seven sea- education that emphasizes learning, Sox, ‘‘The Kid’’ homered deep into sons. A jangling medley of incompetent leadership, faith, and service to its stu- right field in his very last . At 42, youth and aging competence, the Red Sox dents since its founding 125 years ago. despite the toll of nagging injuries, were finishing in seventh place only because Graduates of the university have gone some of which dated back to his com- the Kansas City Athletics had locked them bat tours, Ted lofted the ball into the out of the cellar. They were scheduled to on to become great community and play the , a much nimbler professional leaders. Today, under the right field bleachers, not all that far from the spot where he hit the longest blend of May and December, who had been leadership of President Robert Duffett, dumped from pennant contention a week be- DWU strives to connect its proud herit- homerun in the history of Fenway fore by the insatiable Yankees. I, and 10,453 age with its promising future. Park at 502 feet. To this day the record others, had shown up primarily because this In 1883, a group of Methodist settlers stands and the seat in those bleachers was the Red Sox’s last home game of the sea- received a charter to found the Dakota is memorialized in red. This son, and therefore the last time in all eter- Wesleyan University. DWU serves as might not have been the longest but it nity that their regular , known to the headlines as TED, KID, SPLINTER, the university for the Dakotas Con- was a fitting farewell to the game he loved so much—and excelled at like no THUMPER, TW, and, most cloyingly, MIS- ference of the United Methodist TER WONDERFUL, would play in Boston. Church. Soon after the university other. He was bigger than life. ‘‘WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT TED? HUB opened, Dakota Wesleyan students We revered Ted Williams for many FANS ASK’’ ran the headline on a newspaper demonstrated their success through reasons—for what he did on the field, being read by a bulb-nosed cigar smoker a their excellent oratorical skills. They and off of it as well. It was not just his few rows away. Williams’ retirement had participated in the Intercollegiate Ora- lifelong commitment to the Jimmy been announced, doubted (he had been torical Contest and won 5 of its first 11 Fund, but the selfless way he twice threatening retirement for years), confirmed competitions. This is just one of many walked away from baseball and served by , the Red Sox owner, and at last widely accepted as the sad but probable examples of DWU students’ ability to his country in uniform in World War II and in Korea where he was wingman to truth. He was forty-two and had redeemed excel. his abysmal season of 1959 with a—consid- With a student body just larger than another icon, John Glenn. He was a two ering his advanced age—fine one. He had 750 people, the university offers a very time American League Most Valuable been giving away his gloves and bats and had personalized experience. The university Player, boasted a career batting aver- grudgingly consented to a sentimental cere- is composed of three colleges: the Col- age of .344, an on base percentage of mony today. This was not necessarily his lege of Arts and Humanities, the Col- .551, lead the league in batting six last game; the Red Sox were scheduled to lege of Healthcare, Fitness and times, and hammered 521 home runs. travel to New York and wind up the season Ted Williams was guts and grit per- with three games there. Sciences, and the College of Leadership I arrived early. The Orioles were hitting and Public Service. These colleges sonified—and all of was fungos on the field. The day before, they had allow for students to pursue an edu- grateful for the special way he wel- spitefully smothered the Red Sox, 17–4, and cation in both liberal arts and profes- comed us into his hearts in his final neither their faces nor their drab gray vis- sional programs. years, at last tipping his cap to the iting-team uniforms seemed very gracious. I

VerDate Mar 15 2010 22:05 Nov 24, 2010 Jkt 089060 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 4624 Sfmt 0634 E:\RECORD10\RECFILES\S28SE0.REC S28SE0 mmaher on DSK69SOYB1PROD with CONG-REC-ONLINE S7610 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE September 28, 2010 wondered who had invited them to the party. ways been Williams’ records first, the team By the time I went to college, near Boston, Between our heads and the lowering clouds a second, and the Sox non-winning record is the lesser stars Yawkey had assembled frenzied organ was thundering through, with proof enough of that. around Williams had faded, and his crafts- an appositeness perhaps accidental, ‘‘You There are answers to all this, of course. manship, his rigorous pride, had become maaaade me love you, I didn’t wanna do it, The fatal weakness of the great Sox slugging itself a kind of heroism. This brittle and I didn’t wanna do it . . .’’ teams was not-quite-good-enough pitching temperamental player developed an unex- The affair between Boston and Ted Wil- rather than Williams’ failure to hit a home pected quality of persistence. He was always liams has been no mere summer romance; it run every time he came to bat. Again, Wil- coming back—back from Korea, back from a has been a marriage, composed of spats, mu- liams’ depressing effect on his teammates broken collarbone, a shattered elbow, a tual disappointments, and, toward the end, a has never been proved. Despite ample - bruised heel, back from drastic bouts of flu mellowing hoard of shared memories. It falls ing to the contrary, most insisted that they and ptomaine poisoning. Hardly a season into three stages, which may be termed liked him. He has been generous with advice went by without some enfeebling mishap, yet Youth, Maturity, and Age; or Thesis, Antith- to any player who asked for it. In an increas- he always came back, and always looked like esis, and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles, and ingly combative baseball atmosphere, he himself. The delicate mechanism of timing Nestor. continued to duck docilely. With and power seemed locked, shockproof, in First, there was the by now legendary umpires he was gracious to a fault. This some case outside his body. In addition to in- epoch when the young bridegroom came out courtesy itself annoyed his critics, whom juries, there were a heavily publicized di- of the West, announced ‘‘All I want out of there was no pleasing. And against the ten vorce, and the usual storms with the press, life is that when I walk down the street folks crucial games (the seven World games and the Williams Shift—the maneuver, cus- will say ‘There goes the greatest hitter who with the St. Louis Cardinals, the 1948 playoff tom-built by , of the ever lived.’ ’’ The dowagers of local jour- with the , and the two- Indians, whereby three were con- nalism attempted to give elementary deport- game series with the Yankees at the end of centrated on the right side of the , ment lessons to this child who spake as a the 1949 season, winning either one of which where a left-handed like Williams god, and to their horror were themselves re- would have given the Red Sox the pennant) generally hits the ball. Williams could easily buked. Thus began the long exchange of that make up the Achilles’ heel of Williams’ have learned to punch singles through the backbiting, hat-flipping, booing, and spitting record, a mass of statistics can be set show- vacancy on his left and fattened his average that has distinguished Williams’ public rela- ing that day in and day out he was no slouch hugely. This was what , the Einstein tions. The spitting incidents of 1957 and 1958 in the clutch. The correspondence columns of of average, told him to do. But the game had and the similar dockside courtesies that Wil- the Boston papers now and then suffer a changed since Cobb; Williams believed that liams has now and then extended to the sharp flurry of arithmetic on this score; in- his value to the club and to the game was as grandstand should be judged against this deed, for Williams to have distributed all his a slugger, so he went on pulling the ball, try- background: the left-field stands at Fenway hits so they did nobody else any good would ing to blast it through three men, and paid for twenty years have held a large number of constitute a feat of placement unparalleled the price of perhaps fifteen points of lifetime customers who have bought their way in pri- in the annals of selfishness. average. Like Ruth before him, he bought marily for the privilege of showering abuse Whatever residue of truth remains of the the occasional home run at the cost of many on Williams. Greatness necessarily attracts Finnegan charge those of us who love Wil- directed singles—a calculated sacrifice cer- debunkers, but in Williams’ case the hos- liams must transmute as best we can, in our tainly not, in the case of a hitter as average- tility has been systematic and unappeasable. own personal crucibles. My personal memo- minded as Williams, entirely selfish. His basic offense against the fans has been to ries of Williams begin when I was a boy in After a prime so harassed and hobbled, Wil- wish that they weren’t there. Seeking a per- Pennsylvania, with two last-place teams in liams was granted by the relenting fates a fectionist’s vacuum, he has quixotically de- Philadelphia to keep me company. For me, golden twilight. He became at the end of his sired to sever the game from the ground of ‘‘W’ms, lf’’ was a figment of the box scores career perhaps the best old hitter of the cen- paid spectatorship and publicity that sup- who always seemed to be going 3-for-5. He ra- tury. The dividing line came between the ports it. Hence his refusal to tip his cap to diated, from afar, the hard blue glow of high 1956 and the 1957 seasons. In September of the crowd or turn the other cheek to news- purpose. I remember listening over the radio the first year, he and were men. It has been a costly theory—it has to the All-Star Game of 1946, in which Wil- contending for the batting championship. probably cost him, among other evidences of liams hit two singles and two home runs, the Both were hitting around .350, and there was good will, two Most Valuable Player awards, second one off a Rip Sewell ‘‘blooper’’ ; no one else near them. The season ended which are voted by reporters—but he has it was like hitting a balloon out of the park. with a three-game series between the Yan- held to it from his rookie year on. While his I remember watching one of his home runs kees and the Sox, and, living in New York critics, oral and literary, remained beyond from the bleachers of Shibe Park; it went then, I went up to the Stadium. Williams the reach of his discipline, the opposing over the ’s head and rose me- was slightly shy of the four hundred at-bats were accessible, and he spanked ticulously along a straight line and was still needed to qualify; the fear was expressed them to the tune of .406 in 1941. He slumped rising when it cleared the fence. The trajec- that the Yankee pitchers would walk him to to .356 in 1942 and went off to war. tory seemed qualitatively different from protect Mantle. Instead, they pitched to In 1946, Williams returned from three years anything anyone else might hit. For me, Wil- him—a wise decision. He looked terrible at as a Marine pilot to the second of his base- liams is the classic ballplayer of the game on the plate, tired and discouraged and uncon- ball avatars, that of Achilles, the hero of in- a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, vincing. He never looked very good to me in comparable prowess and beauty who never- when the only thing at stake is the tissue- the Stadium. (Last week, in Life, Williams, a theless was to be found sulking in his tent thin difference between a thing done well sportswriter himself now, wrote gloomily of while the Trojans (mostly Yankees) fought and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the Stadium, ‘‘There’s the bigness of it. through to the ships. Yawkey, a timber and the long season, of relentless and gradual There are those high stands and all those mining maharajah, had surrounded his cen- averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the ref- people smoking—and, of course, the shadows. tral jewel with many gems of slightly lesser erence point of most individual games is re- . . . It takes at least one series to get accus- water, such as , Dom DiMaggio, mote and statistical—always threatens its tomed to the Stadium and even then you’re , , and Johnny interest, which can be maintained not by the not sure.’’) The final outcome in 1956 was Pesky. Throughout the late forties, the Red occasional heroics that sportswriters feed Mantle .353, Williams .345. Sox were the best paper team in baseball, yet upon but by players who always care; who The next year, I moved from New York to they had little three-dimensional to show for care, that is to say, about themselves and New England, and it made all the difference. it, and if this was a tragedy, Williams was their art. Insofar as the clutch hitter is not For in September of 1957, in the same situa- Hamlet. A succinct review of the indict- a sportswriter’s myth, he is a vulgarity, like tion, the story was reversed. Mantle finally ment—and a fair sample of appreciative a writer who writes only for money. It may hit .365; it was the best season of his career. sports-page prose—appeared the very day of be that, compared to managers’ dreams such But Williams, though sick and old, had run Williams’ valedictory, in a column by Huck as Joe DiMaggio and the always helpful Stan away from him. A bout of flu had laid him Finnegan in the Boston American (no senti- Musial, Williams is an icy star. But of all low in September. He emerged from his cave mentalist, Huck): team sports, baseball, with its graceful in the Hotel Somerset haggard but irresist- Williams’ career, in contrast [to Babe intermittences of action, its immense and ible; he hit four successive pinch-hit home Ruth’s] has been a series of failures except tranquil field sparsely settled with poised runs. ‘‘I feel terrible,’’ he confessed, ‘‘but for his averages. He flopped in the only men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, every time I take a swing at the ball it goes he ever played in (1946) when he seems to me best suited to accommodate, out of the park.’’ He ended the season with batted only .200. He flopped in the playoff and be ornamented by, a loner. It is an essen- thirty-eight home runs and an average of game with Cleveland in 1948. He flopped in tially lonely game. No other player visible to .388, the highest in either league since his the final game of the 1949 season with the my generation has concentrated within him- own .406, and, coming from a decrepit man of pennant hinging on the outcome (Yanks 5, self so much of the sport’s poignance, has so thirty-nine, an even more supernal figure. Sox 3). He flopped in 1950 when he returned assiduously refined his natural skills, has so With eight or so of the ‘‘leg hits’’ that a to the lineup after a two-month absence and constantly brought to the plate that inten- younger man would have beaten out, it ruined the morale of a club that seemed pen- sity of competence that crowds the throat would have been .400. And the next year, Wil- nant-bound under Steve O’Neill. It has al- with joy. liams, who in 1949 and 1953 had lost batting

VerDate Mar 15 2010 22:05 Nov 24, 2010 Jkt 089060 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 4624 Sfmt 0634 E:\RECORD10\RECFILES\S28SE0.REC S28SE0 mmaher on DSK69SOYB1PROD with CONG-REC-ONLINE September 28, 2010 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7611 championships by decimal whiskers to sons for the four-plus seasons he lost to two cluster of men in overcoats were festering and , sneaked in wars, and add another season for the months like maggots. I could see a splinter of white behind his teammate and he lost to injuries, we get a man who in all uniform, and Williams’ head, held at a self- filched his sixth title, a bargain at .328. the power totals would be second, and not a deprecating and evasive tilt. Williams’ con- In 1959, it seemed all over. The dinosaur very distant second, to Ruth. And if we fur- versational stance is that of a six-foot-three- thrashed around in the .200 swamp for the ther allow that these years would have been inch man under a six-foot ceiling. He moved first half of the season, and was even not merely average but prime years, if we away to the patter of flash bulbs, and began benched (‘‘rested,’’ Mike Higgins allow for all the months when Williams was playing with a young Negro tactfully said). Old foes like the late Bill playing in sub-par condition, if we permit his named Willie Tasby. His arm, never very Cunningham began to offer batting tips. early and later years in baseball to be some powerful, had grown lax with the years, and Cunningham thought Williams was jiggling sort of index of what the middle years could his throwing motion was a kind of muscular his elbows; in truth, Williams’ neck was so have been, if we give him a right-field fence drawl. To catch the ball, he flicked his glove stiff he could hardly turn his head to look at that is not, like Fenway’s, one of the most hand onto his left shoulder (he batted left the . When he swung, it looked like a distant in the league, and if—the least excus- but threw right, as every schoolboy ought to Calder mobile with one thread cut; it re- able ‘‘if’’—we imagine him condescending to know) and let the ball plop into it comically. minded you that since 1953 Williams’ shoul- outsmart the Williams Shift, we can defen- This catch session with Tasby was the only ders had been wired together. A solicitous sibly assemble, like a colossus induced from time all afternoon I saw him grin. pall settled over the sports pages. In the two the sizable fragments that do remain, a sta- A tight little flock of human sparrows decades since Williams had come to Boston, tistical figure not incommensurate with his who, from the lambent and pampered pink of his status had imperceptibly shifted from grandiose ambition. From the statistics that their faces, could only have been Boston that of a naughty prodigy to that of a munic- are on the books, a good case can be made politicians moved toward the plate. The ipal monument. As his shadow in the record that in the combination of power and aver- loudspeakers mammothly coughed as some- books lengthened, the Red Sox teams around age Williams is first; nobody else ranks so one huffed on the microphone. The cere- him declined, and the entire American high in both categories. Finally, there is the monies began. , the Red Sox League seemed to be losing life and color to witness of the eyes; men whose memories go radio and television announcer, who sounds the National. The inconsistency of the new back to —another un- like everybody’s brother-in-law, delivered a superstars—Mantle, Colavito, and Kaline— lucky natural—rank him and Williams to- brief sermon, taking the two words ‘‘pride’’ served to make Williams appear all the more gether as the best-looking hitters they have and ‘‘champion’’ as his text. It began, singular. And off the field, his private phi- seen. It was for our last look that ten thou- ‘‘Twenty-one years ago, a skinny kid from lanthropy—in particular, his zealous chair- sand of us had come. San Diego, California . . .’’ and ended, ‘‘I manship of , a charity for Two girls, one of them with pert buckteeth don’t think we’ll ever see another like him.’’ children with cancer—gave him a civic pres- and eyes as black as vest buttons, the other Robert Tibolt, chairman of the board of the ence somewhat like that of Richard Cardinal with white skin and flesh-colored hair, like Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, pre- Cushing. In religion, Williams appears to be an underdeveloped photograph of a redhead, sented Williams with a big Paul Revere sil- a humanist, and a selective one at that, but came and sat on my right. On my other side ver bowl. Harry Carlson, a member of the he and the Cardinal, when their good works was one of those frowning, chestless young- sports committee of the Boston Chamber, intersect and they appear in the public eye old men who can frequently be seen, often gave him a plaque, whose inscription he did together, make a handsome and heartening wearing sailor hats, attending ball games not read in its entirety, out of deference to pair. alone. He did not once open his program but Williams’ distaste for this sort of fuss. Humiliated by his ’59 season, Williams de- instead tapped it, rolled up, on his knee as he Mayor Collins presented the Jimmy Fund termined, once more, to come back. I, as a gave the game his disconsolate attention. A with a thousand-dollar check. specimen Williams partisan, was both glad young lady, with freckles and a depressed, Then the occasion himself stooped to the and fearful. All baseball fans believe in mir- dainty nose that by an optical illusion microphone, and his voice sounded, after the acles; the question is, how many do you be- seemed to thrust her lips forward for a kiss, others, very Californian; it seemed to be lieve in? He looked like a ghost in spring sauntered down into the box seats and with coming, excellently amplified, from a great training. Manager Jurges warned us ahead of striking aplomb took a seat right behind the distance, adolescently young and as smooth time that if Williams didn’t come through he roof of the Oriole . She wore a blue as a butternut. His thanks for the gifts had would be benched, just like anybody else. As coat with a Northeastern University emblem not died from our ears before he glided, as if it turned out, it was Jurges who was sewed to it. The girls beside me took it into helplessly, into ‘‘In spite of all the terrible benched. Williams entered the 1960 season their heads that this was Williams’ daughter. things that have been said about me by the needing eight home runs to have a lifetime She looked too old to me, and why would she maestros of the keyboard up there . . .’’ He total of 500; after one time at bat in Wash- be sitting behind the visitors’ dugout? On glanced up at the press rows suspended above ington, he needed seven. For a stretch, he the other hand, from the way she sat there, home plate. (All the Boston reporters, inci- was hitting a home run every second game staring at the sky and French-inhaling, she dentally, reported the phrase as ‘‘knights of that he played. He passed ’s life- clearly was somebody. Other fans came and the keyboard,’’ but I heard it as ‘‘maestros’’ time total, then the number 500, then Mel eclipsed her from view. The crowd looked and prefer it that way.) The crowd tittered, Ott’s total, and finished with 521, thirteen less like a weekday ballpark crowd than like appalled. A frightful vision flashed upon me, behind Jimmy Foxx, who alone stands be- the folks you might find in Yellowstone Na- of the press gallery pelting Williams with tween Williams and ’s tional Park, or emerging from automobiles erasers, of Williams clambering up the foul unapproachable 714. The summer was a stat- at the top of scenic Mount Mansfield. There screen to slug journalists, of a riot, of Mayor istician’s picnic. His two-thousandth walk were a lot of competitively well-dressed cou- Collins being crushed. ‘‘. . . And they were came and went, his eighteen-hundredth run ples of tourist age, and not a few babes in terrible things,’’ Williams insisted, with batted in, his sixteenth All-Star Game. At arms. A row of five seats in front of me was level melancholy, into the mike. ‘‘I’d like to one point, he hit a home run off a pitcher, abruptly filled with a woman and four chil- forget them, but I can’t.’’ He paused, swal- Don Lee, off whose father, Thornton Lee, he dren, the youngest of them two years old, if lowed his memories, and went on, ‘‘I want to had hit a home run a generation before. The that. Someday, presumably, he could tell his say that my years in Boston have been the only comparable season for a forty-two-year- grandchildren that he saw Williams play. greatest thing in my life.’’ The crowd, like old man was Ty Cobb’s in 1928. Cobb batted Along with these tots and second- an immense sail going limp in a change of .323 and hit one homer. Williams batted .316 honeymooners, there were Harvard fresh- wind, sighed with relief. Taking all the parts but hit twenty-nine homers. men, giving off that peculiar nervous glow himself, Williams then acted out a vivacious In sum, though generally conceded to be created when a quantity of insouciance is little morality drama in which an imaginary the greatest hitter of his era, he did not es- saturated with insecurity; thick-necked tempter came to him at the beginning of his tablish himself as ‘‘the greatest hitter who Army officers with brass on their shoulders career and said, ‘‘Ted, you can play any- ever lived.’’ Cobb, for average, and Ruth, for and lead in their voices; pepperings of where you like.’’ Leaping nimbly into the power, remain supreme. Cobb, Rogers priests; perfumed bouquets of Roxbury Fa- role of his younger self (who in biographical Hornsby, Joe Jackson, and Lefty O’Doul, bian fans; shiny salesmen from Albany and actuality had yearned to be a Yankee), Wil- among players since 1900, have higher life- Fall River; and those gray, hoarse men— liams gallantly chose Boston over all the time averages than Williams’ .344. Unlike taxidrivers, slaughterers, and bartenders other cities, and told us that Tom Yawkey Foxx, Gehrig, , , who will continue to click through the turn- was the greatest owner in baseball and we and , Williams never came close stiles long after everyone else has deserted were the greatest fans. We applauded our- to matching Babe Ruth’s season home-run to television and tramporamas. Behind me, selves heartily. The came out and total of sixty. In the list of major-league bat- two young male voices blossomed, cracking a dusted the plate. The voice of doom an- ting records, not one is held by Williams. He joke about God’s five proofs that Thomas nounced over the loudspeakers that after is second in walks drawn, third in home Aquinas exists—typical Boston College lev- Williams’ retirement his uniform number, 9, runs, fifth in lifetime averages, sixth in runs ity. would be permanently retired—the first time batted in, eighth in runs scored and in total The was trundled away. The the Red Sox had so honored a player. We bases, fourteenth in doubles, and thirtieth in Orioles fluttered to the sidelines. Diagonally cheered. The national anthem was played. hits. But if we allow him merely average sea- across the field, by the Red Sox dugout, a We cheered. The game began.

VerDate Mar 15 2010 22:05 Nov 24, 2010 Jkt 089060 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 4624 Sfmt 0634 E:\RECORD10\RECFILES\S28SE0.REC S28SE0 mmaher on DSK69SOYB1PROD with CONG-REC-ONLINE S7612 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE September 28, 2010 Williams was third in the , so having a familiar Leonardo appear in a shuf- cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted he came up in the bottom of the first , fle of Saturday Evening Post covers. This ‘‘We want Ted’’ for minutes after he hid in and Steve Barber, a young pitcher who was man, you realized—and here, perhaps, was the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise not yet born when Williams began playing the difference, greater than the difference in for some seconds passed beyond excitement for the Red Sox, offered him four pitches, at gifts—really intended to hit the ball. In the into a kind of immense open anguish, a wail- all of which he disdained to swing, since third inning, he hoisted a high fly to deep ing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is none of them were within the . center. In the fifth, we thought he had it; he nontransferable. The papers said that the This demonstrated simultaneously that Wil- smacked the ball hard and high into the other players, and even the umpires on the liams’ eyes were razor-sharp and that Bar- heart of his power zone, but the deep right field, begged him to come out and acknowl- ber’s control wasn’t. Shortly, the bases were field in Fenway and the heavy air and a cas- edge us in some way, but he never had and full, with Williams on second. ‘‘Oh, I hope he ual east wind defeated him. The ball died. Al did not now. Gods do not answer letters. gets held up at third! That would be wonder- Pilarcik leaned his back against the big Every true story has an anticlimax. The ful,’’ the girl beside me moaned, and, sure ‘‘380’’ painted on the right-field wall and men on the field refused to disappear, as enough, the man at bat walked and Williams caught it. On another day, in another park, would have seemed decent, in the smoke of was delivered into our foreground. He struck it would have been gone. (After the game, Williams’ miracle. Fisher continued to pitch, the pose of Donatello’s David, the third-base Williams said, ‘‘I didn’t think I could hit one and escaped further harm. At the end of the bag being Goliath’s head. Fiddling with his any harder than that. The conditions weren’t inning, Higgins sent Williams out to his cap, swapping small talk with the Oriole good.’’) leftfield position, then instantly replaced (who seemed delighted to The afternoon grew so glowering that in him with Carrol Hardy, so we had a long last have him drop in), swinging his arms with a the sixth inning the arc lights were turned look at Williams as he ran out there and sort of prancing nervousness, he looked on—always a wan sight in the daytime, like then back, his uniform jogging, his eyes fine—flexible, hard, and not unbecomingly the burning headlights of a funeral proces- steadfast on the ground. It was nice, and we substantial through the middle. The long sion. Aided by the gloom, Fisher was slicing were grateful, but it left a funny taste. neck, the small head, the knickers whose through the Sox rookies, and Williams did One of the scholasticists behind me said, cuffs were worn down near his ankles—all not come to bat in the seventh. He was sec- ‘‘Let’s go. We’ve seen everything. I don’t these points, often observed by caricaturists, ond up in the eighth. This was almost cer- want to spoil it.’’ This seemed a sound aes- were visible in the flesh. tainly his last time to come to the plate in thetic decision. Williams’ last word had been One of the collegiate voices behind me Fenway Park, and instead of merely cheer- so exquisitely chosen, such a perfect fusion said, ‘‘He looks old, doesn’t he, old; big deep ing, as we had at his three previous appear- of expectation, intention, and execution, wrinkles in his face . . .’’ ances, we stood, all of us—stood and ap- that already it felt a little unreal in my ‘‘Yeah,’’ the other voice said, ‘‘but he looks plauded. Have you ever heard applause in a head, and I wanted to get out before the cas- like an old hawk, doesn’t he?’’ ballpark? Just applause—no calling, no whis- tle collapsed. But the game, though played With each pitch, Williams danced down the tling, just an ocean of handclaps, minute by clumsy midgets under the feeble glow of baseline, waving his arms and stirring dust, after minute, burst after burst, crowding and the arc lights, began to tug at my attention, ponderous but menacing, like an attacking running together in continuous succession and I loitered in the runway until it was goose. It occurred to about a dozen humor- like the pushes of surf at the edge of the over. Williams’ homer had, quite inciden- ists at once to shout ‘‘Steal home! Go, go!’’ sand. It was a sombre and considered tumult. tally, made the score 4–3. In the bottom of Williams’ speed afoot was never legendary. There was not a boo in it. It seemed to renew the ninth inning, with one out, Marlin Lou Clinton, a young Sox outfielder, hit a itself out of a shifting set of memories as the Coughtry, the second-base juggler, singled. fairly deep fly to center field. Williams kid, the Marine, the veteran of feuds and , pinchhitting, doubled off the left- tagged up and ran home. As he slid across failures and injuries, the friend of children, field wall, Coughtry advancing to third. the plate, the ball, thrown with unusual heft and the enduring old pro evolved down the walked, to load the bases. by Jackie Brandt, the Oriole center fielder, bright tunnel of twenty-one summers toward Willie Tasby hit a -play ball to the hit him on the back. this moment. At last, the umpire signalled third baseman, but in making the pivot ‘‘Boy, he was really loafing, wasn’t he?’’ for Fisher to pitch; with the other players, throw Billy Klaus, an ex-Red Sox , one of the boys behind me said. he had been frozen in position. Only Williams reverted to form and threw the ball past the ‘‘It’s cold,’’ the other explained. ‘‘He had moved during the ovation, switching his first baseman and into the Red Sox dugout. doesn’t play well when it’s cold. He likes hat impatiently, ignoring everything except The Sox won, 5–4. On the car radio as I drove heat. He’s a hedonist.’’ his cherished task. Fisher wound up, and the home I heard that Williams had decided not The run that Williams scored was the sec- applause sank into a hush. to accompany the team to New York. So he ond and last of the inning. Gus Triandos, of Understand that we were a crowd of ration- knew how to do even that, the hardest thing. the Orioles, quickly evened the score by al people. We knew that a home run cannot Quit.∑ plunking a home run over the handy left- be produced at will; the right pitch must be field wall. Williams, who had had this wall at perfectly met and luck must ride with the f his back for twenty years, played the ball ball. Three before, we had seen a FLIGHT NETWORK flawlessly. He didn’t budge. He just stood brave effort fail. The air was soggy; the sea- ∑ there, in the center of the little patch of son was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish grass that his patient footsteps had worn always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of to take a moment to honor an excep- brown, and, limp with lack of interest, our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible tional program in Alabama. watched the ball pass overhead. It was not a hope, and this was one of the times, which For many young men and women, very interesting game. Mike Higgins, the you now and then find in sports, when a den- their experiences during World War II Red Sox manager, with nothing to lose, had sity of expectation hangs in the air and were a profound time in their lives. restricted his major-league players to the plucks an event out of the future. This Nation owes a debt of gratitude left-field line—along with Williams, Frank Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide for the sacrifices of those Americans Malzone, a first-rate third baseman, played with the first pitch. He put the second one the game—and had peopled the rest of the over, and Williams swung mightily and who left their families and lives behind terrain with unpredictable youngsters fresh, missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that clas- to go ‘‘fight the good fight’’. or not so fresh, off the farms. Other than sic swing, so long and smooth and quick, ex- The Honor Flight Network was estab- Williams’ recurrent appearances at the posed, naked in its failure. Fisher threw the lished to honor the remaining WWII plate, the maladresse of the Sox infield was third time, Williams swung again, and there veterans and provide them a trip to the the sole focus of suspense; the second base- it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line WWII Memorial in Washington, DC man turned every grounder into a juggling into the vast volume of air over center field. which was built in their honor. act, while the did a breathtaking From my angle, behind third base, the ball The Honor Flight Tennessee Valley impersonation of an open window. With this seemed less an object in flight than the tip of program, which also serves northern sort of assistance, the Orioles wheedled their a towering, motionless construct, like the Alabama, began in the summer of 2006 way into a 4–2 lead. They had early replaced Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It Barber with another young pitcher, Jack was in the books while it was still in the sky. and flew 14 WWII veterans on their Fisher. Fortunately (as it turned out), Fish- Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the first flight on April 4, 2007. Their final er is no cutie; he is willing to burn the ball grass; the ball descended beyond his mission was on September 11th, 2010. In through the strike zone, and inning after in- reach and struck in the crotch where the this time, Honor Flight Tennessee Val- ning this tactic punctured Higgins’ string of met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, ley has flown over 1,300 WWII veterans test balloons. as far as I could see, vanished. to Washington, DC. This could not Whenever Williams appeared at the plate— Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams have been accomplished without the pounding the dirt from his cleats, gouging a ran around the square of bases at the center pit in the batter’s box with his left foot, of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he al- leadership and outstanding efforts of wringing resin out of the bat handle with his ways ran out home runs—hurriedly, the president and founder of Honor vehement grip, switching the stick at the unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a Flight Tennessee Valley, Joe Fitz- pitcher with an electric ferocity—it was like storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his gerald. His organizational skills and

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