Memories of Williams illustrate true legend Husson’s Winkin recalls times with baseball great

loading...

John Winkin spent many a Sunday afternoon sitting in Ted Williams’ room in Lakeville, Mass., watching baseball on television and discussing it.

Winkin worked at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp Inc. for 15 years and became a good friend of the Boston Red Sox legend and Hall-of-Famer, who died Friday at the age of 83.

“He was a keen observer of the game. The way he’d break down a game was unbelievable. He was baseball smart,” added Winkin, the Husson College vice president for sports leadership and assistant baseball coach.

“I got to know him real well,” said Winkin. “He was as dynamic a baseball person as I’ve ever known. I never heard a person so dynamic when it came to expressing his thoughts, particularly about hitting, as strongly as he did.

“He was a great teacher. I spent many, many hours alone with him and I never came away without something that was worthwhile,” added Winkin, who was the head baseball coach at Colby College and the University of Maine before coming to Husson.

Winkin and Williams would have long discussions about the game, sometimes while watching on Sunday afternoons, and those talks would occasionally turn into arguments.

“We had a great time. We’d argue all day. He loved an argument. But he never fortgot you,” Winkin said.

As a person, Winkin said Williams put a huge emphasis on trust.

“If he trusted you, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you. He was as kind, as sensitive and as thoughtful a man as you could find. But if he didn’t trust you, watch out. He could explode like lightning,” said Winkin, who incurred his wrath on one particular occasion.

“I had just been named president of the American Baseball Coaches Association and I asked him if he would speak at our convention in Chicago,” recalled Winkin. “He said he would under one condition: no bleep-bleep sportswriters. He said if a sportswriter showed up, he would never speak to me again.

“So he showed up and spoke with all of those coaches for two hours. He was unbelievable,” continued Winkin. “Then he said ‘Wink, it’s time to go catch the plane. As we started to walk out, a sportswriter showed up and asked him a question. Ted read me the riot act. He called me every name on the face of the earth.

“Then we got in the car to go to the airport and he turned to me and said, “Boy, what a great time I had [at the convention],” concluded Winkin.

Williams had an adversarial relationship with the media during his storied career in Boston.

But Dover-Foxcroft native Ralph Long, the former managing editor of the Boston Herald and a neighbor of Williams’ in Citrus Hills, Fla., said Williams’ “distaste for newspaper people was overplayed.

“There’s a lot of stuff that’s coming out now, and it’s just not true. I know it’s not true because I was there. I was in the business,” said Long. “When you’re a genius like he was, there’s always going to be a mythology revolving around your life. But he was salty,” Long added.

Winkin said Williams loved Maine and its people and that former Bangor Daily News outdoor columnist and sports editor Bud Leavitt had a lot to do with it.

Williams and Leavitt were close friends and fishing buddies who did a series of commercials together for John J. Nissen Baking Co.

“Bud had the knack for being able to surround Ted with people he felt he could trust. That’s one of the reasons he sent his son John Henry to the University of Maine,” added Winkin.

Len Harlow, the former University of Maine sports information director, grew up in Milton, Mass., and his father, Foster, used to take him to Red Sox games when The Splendid Splinter was patrolling left field.

“Millions of kids, including me, completely idolized him,” said Harlow. “The one thing that sticks out in my mind about how he played the game was how he disdained hitting the ball to left field when they put the Williams shift on.”

Harlow was referring to the shift teams would employ against the pull-hitting lefthanded-hitting slugger in which they would put three infielders on the right field side of second base.

“There would be nobody [except the third baseman] on the left side of the infield, but he would still try to hit the ball through the shift on the right side. And he did it very, very successfully.

“He could have bunted or just flicked the ball to left field and [for a hit]. But Ted was challenged by the shift. There was never a challenge he didn’t want to meet and handle. That followed him through life. He went into the war and became a pilot. That was one of the most hazardous wartime occupations you could have,” said Harlow.

Williams lost five and a half years of his baseball career while serving during World War II and the Korean War.

Harlow and Winkin consider him the best hitter they have ever seen.

“I’ve never seen anyone with quicker wrists, I’ve never seen a more focused eye and I’ve never seen anybody do with any kind of pitch what he could do with it,” said Winkin. “And he used his hips very well. He always got the barrel of the bat on the pitch. His philosophy was get a good pitch to hit and be quick with the bat.”

Harlow said his homers were memorable.

“He had this great uppercut swing and when he’d hit a homer, they would be these high, arcing drives. Today, people get those line drive homers around Pesky’s Pole in right. I never saw him hit one of those. His always wound up in the bullpen or the bleachers [in center or right field],” Harlow said.

Harlow added that “he always did well against real good pitchers. And it didn’t matter if it was a righthander or a lefthander. I never saw him bail out against a lefthander.”

Winkin said Williams once told him a story about one of the times he returned from the war.

“He said he couldn’t get the bat around the way he used to so, every night, he would swing a heavy bat. He would work and work and work to get [his bat speed] where he wanted it,” said Winkin.

He said Williams was a “fanatic” when it came to working hard to improve himself. He called him a “perfectionist.”

Winkin has implemented several of the techniques he learned from Williams into his coaching regimen.

Harlow said Williams received a “bad rap” as an outfielder.

“He played the left field wall at Fenway as well as anybody. He was a pretty decent outfielder,” Harlow added.

Winkin said Williams loved kids and did a lot of charity work behind the scenes that went unnoticed.

Former Colby College baseball coach Wally Covell, the Orono High football and Lawrence High of Fairfield baseball coach, named his daugther, Teddi, after Williams and will always remember taking his daughter to Fenway Park when Williams was managing the Washington Senators.

“We went down beside the field when the Senators were taking batting practice and Ted was behind the batting cage. We tried to get his attention and one of the assistants came over. My daughter said she was named after Ted and wanted to know if he could autograph her baseball. The guy goes over to Ted and then Ted came over and said, ‘I’ve had a lot of boys named after me but never a girl.’ He told her to come down on the field, he took her into the dugout and clubhouse and autographed her ball.”

Covell said he also worked at Williams’ baseball camp and, one time, Michael Yastrzemski was attending the camp. His father, Red Sox Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, came down to visit his son.

“Ted had this booming voice and you always knew when he was around. He asked Carl where he had been and Yaz said he had been fishing up in New Brunswick. Ted asked him if the water was high and Yaz said it was. Ted told Yaz he knew the water was high because ‘your pants were rolled up to your knees.”

One of Winkin’s favorite Williams stories occurred on the first day of Williams’ baseball camp one year.

“There was a chubby little kid there whose father was a friend of Williams’,” recalled Winkin. “Ted came out of the kitchen to address the 250 kids and he started talking about bunting.

“This little kid raised his hand and said ‘Mister Williams, my dad said you never bunted.’ Ted went on and began talking about bunting for a base hit and the kid raised his hand again and said ‘My father said you’ve never bunted for a base hit.’ Now Ted starts talking about hitting and running and the kid stuck up his arm and said ‘My dad said you’ve never had a hit and run [base hit].’ Ted raised his big arms and said ‘Shut up.’

“The next morning, he wanted to know where the kid was. He said he was going to go over to his station and teach him how to bunt,” recalled Winkin.

They all said if Williams was playing today, he would be one of the highest paid players in the game.

Winkin said the “unbelievably emotional tribute” paid to Williams at the Major League All-Star game in Boston in 1999 “indicated what he meant to baseball.

“This is the end of an era,” added Winkin.