Ted Williams Dies At 83

I don’t really know anything about baseball. But driving home over the weekend, I heard on NPR that Ted Williams died. It was pretty incredible to hear his accomplishments, both on and off the field. His era was truly a very different time from now.

Prior to this weekend, what I knew about Ted Williams was "Masterful," by William Matthews:

They say you can’t think and hit at the same time,
but they’re wrong: you think with your body, and the whole

wave of impact surges patiently through you
into your wrists, into your bat, and meets the ball

as if this exact and violent tryst had been a fevered
secret for a week. The wrists “break,” as the batting

coaches like to say, but what they do is give away
their power, spend themselves, and the ball benefits.

When Ted Williams took–we should say “gave”–
batting practice, he’d stand in and chant to himself

“My name is Ted Fucking Ballgame and I’m the best
fucking hitter in baseball,” and he was, jubilantly

grim, lining them out pitch after pitch, crouching
and uncoiling from the sweet ferocity of excellence.