Red Sox sluggers have long been a subject of fascination-anyone within the orbit of Planet Manny knows that. Fifty years ago this week SI's cover featured the greatest Boston bopper of them all, an iconic image of Ted Williams shot by Hy Peskin. Four weeks shy of his 37th birthday, Williams spoke with SI's Joan Flynn Dreyspool about his boyhood, his theories on hitting, his early troubles with fans and his love of fishing. "Time has softened the sounds that come to him," Dreyspool wrote in the Aug. 1, 1955, issue. "Cheers, for one thing, have replaced the earlier boos. 'When I was 20 years old I hit more home runs than any other lefthanded hitter ever hit up there in Fenway Park,' Williams said. 'They had an extra long rightfield wall and all the lefthanded hitters used to sing the blues when they went there, but gee, I started hitting them out of there. So the next year, they brought in the fence 20 feet to help me more if they could. They figured, 'What the hell, we might as well help this kid.'"
This reminder is especially germane as we go through the Rafael Palmeiro steroid allegations. Even as I write this, one of the British news shows is doing a feature on Palmeiro's sin and baseball's problem. One of the questions that I would be asking were I an Oriole fan is what did the team know and when did they know it? Most of us felt that their start was somewhat chimerical and that they would not have the muscle to stay with the Sox and Yankees in the AL East, but if some of the guys on that team found out about it in the last few weeks, and if in any way it can be attributed to their swoon, that's yet another hidden cost that this scourge has brought the game. I have always advocated an "innocent until proven guilty" approach, which is why I think the speculation about certain players who have never been found guilty of anything is grossly unfair; at the same time, once a guy has been nailed, there should be nowhere to run.
No comments:
Post a Comment