Ted Williams was hitting .3995 with one day left in the 1941 season, a meaningless doubleheader at Shibe Park against the Philadelphia A's. Connie Mack, the penurious owner/manager of the A's, had postponed Friday's game against Boston to create the Sunday doubleheader in hopes of drawing a decent crowd.
It came back to bite him in his skimpy assets because Williams hammered a long drive in the second game that shattered a loudspeaker. Mack had to replace it and the cost came out of the gate receipts, but that is getting ahead of the story.
They told Williams that the .3995 would be rounded off to .400. He was 23, skinny, with a sweet swing and a cowboy swagger.
"Joe Cronin was the manager," John Underwood recalled recently. "He asked Williams, the night before, if he wanted to sit out. Ted told him if he couldn't hit .400 all the way, he didn't deserve it."
Underwood is one of the few journalists Williams ever trusted. Hunted with him in Africa, fished with him in the sweetest spots for salmon, collaborated with him on some of the best baseball books ever written.
He has finished a "treatment" for a movie about Williams. Treatment - that's the prelude to a screenplay, once they find producers, actors and a director. It won't hurt that the Postal Service is putting Williams' portrait on a stamp, and it won't hurt that it has been 70 years since anyone has hit .400 in the big leagues.
Williams has already been in a movie, subliminally. "Robert Redford asked Ted to be a consultant on 'The Natural,' " Underwood said. "But it interfered with fishing season and he turned it down.
"Redford loved Ted. Which is why the guy in the movie wears 9, hits third in the lineup. When they call him up, he says he wants to be the greatest player that ever lived. Well, Ted used to say, when he walked down the street, he wanted people to say, 'There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived.' "
Maybe that bulb-shattering homer in "The Natural" is a reminder of Teddy Ballgame's double off the loudspeaker? Rambling ahead of the story again. That Saturday night, after dinner, Williams called Johnny Orlando, the Boston clubhouse guy, asked him to take a walk with him.
"Ted," Underwood explained, "throughout his baseball career, his friends were always the little guys; guys like Johnny Orlando. They walked about 10 miles that night, through the Philadelphia streets. Orlando stopped twice, in bars, for a scotch. Ted had two ice-cream cones.
"Before his first at-bat, the A's catcher [Frankie Hayes] told Ted they weren't gonna give him anything. Bill McGowan, the plate umpire, called time, bent over and dusted off the plate. Without looking up, he said, 'To hit .400 a batter has to be loose. He has got to be loose.' "
Single, homer, two more singles, 4-for-5 and comfortably over .400. Sit out the second game? Not a chance! Slammed that double off the loudspeaker, went 2-for-3. That's 6-for-8 for the day. Finished at .406. Celebrated with a milkshake.
Williams was not the MVP that season. Fella named Joe DiMaggio won it. Hit in 56 consecutive games. Williams was a big fan of DiMaggio. No one is sure how DiMaggio felt about Williams.
Nobody has hit .400 since, not George Brett, not Rod Carew, not Tony Gwynn. Williams came close, hitting .388 in 1957. He was 39 and he'd lost five seasons to military service. He kept saying that someone would do it, and he grumbled out loud when they interrupted his fishing season with phone calls when someone flirted with .400 in August. Inside, he glowed.
The last chapters were noisy, clumsy, chaotic. His son, John Henry, peddling memorabilia, some of which he might have signed himself. And then preserving his dad's head in that cryonic lab.
"None of that was Ted," Underwood said sadly, softly. "Ted wanted to be cremated. He wanted his ashes scattered over one of his fishing spots, mingled with the ashes of his dog, Slugger. That's what he wanted."
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