Until baseball begins again

We won’t be done with the All-Star break until tomorrow, so if your baseball Jones gets too strong, watch HBO’s documentary about the Splendid Splinter in Ted Williams: There Goes the Greatest Hitter That Ever Lived. The special premiers tonight at 9:30 p.m. EST. Here’s a review from Newsday.

You can read Williams’ ESPN obituary here.

In this clip, we have Robert Redford giving some personal insight into his hero. I wonder: was it intentional that they chose to feature a segment with the actor who played Roy Hobbs — ‘The best there ever was” — from The Natural?

However, and at the risk of being a spoilsport, we might have a Rob Neyer moment here.

Redford claims to have been in New York where he attended a Yankees-Red Sox game. He mentions that Maris and Mantle were in the lineup, but not Williams. He doesn’t give a date, but it had to have been 1960 — Williams’ last year — since Maris came over to the Yankees in a trade from Kansas City in December 1959.

According to Retrosheet.org, Williams appeared in the June 3 game as a pinch hitter in the eighth inning; he flied out to right. He started the first game of a June 5 doubleheader and hit a homer. Williams didn’t appear in another game at Yankee Stadium until September 5, starting the first game of a doubleheader (0-3) and appearing in the nightcap as a pinch hitter, when he received an intentional walk. He started the next day and hit another homer run before leaving the game for a pinch runner in the seventh.

That’s it. Redford’s magical memory? Unless I misread the information (always a possibility), it never happened.

Oh, and by the way, Redford said he was 19 at the time. According to IMDB.com, he was born in August, 1936, so he would have been 23 or 24 in 1960. So, at the suggestion of a colleague at work (undoubtedly a Redford fan), I checked the games of 1954-55 (when he was 19, but obviously with no Maris on the Yankees). Result: In the two years Williams made two pinch hit appearances against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium; he walked both times.

---

Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2009 New Jersey Jewish News

Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue theme by Nathan Rice