1959 Ted Williams Fleer Cards

[D. Bergin]

I guess I'm asking why a player of Ted's caliber routinely missed 20-60+ games a year for big chunks of his career?

Even before he left for Korea, he only played in 89 games in 1950. He also missed a lot of games after he came back in '54 and '55 before your 1956-60 average kicks in.

Did he have chronic health issues that weren't quite as publicized as Mantle and his creaky knees? Did he come out of that plane crash as unscathed as some reports suggest, or were there lingering injuries as a result?

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Even before he left for Korea, he only played in 89 games in 1950. He also missed a lot of games after he came back in '54 and '55 before your 1956-60 average kicks in.

Dave

In 1950, Ted broke his left arm in the 1st inning of All-Star Game, when he slammed into the Comiskey Park scoreboard.

I remember this well....my parents bought our first TV in the Summer of 1950....just in time to watch the All Star game.



TED Z

[JollyElm]

As a native New Yorker (who came around a while after Ted retired), I always had a rhetorical 'hatred' for Ted Williams, and I laugh at that now. This inborn bias is hard to explain to other people who've never lived there, but the Mets, and to a lesser extent the Yanks, were everything to me, so their historical enemies were my enemies. And I always thought his nickname of 'The Splendid Splinter' referred to him being a jerk--like how a splinter in your finger annoys the living h_ll out of you.

With age comes wisdom, and many years ago it took my dad talking about Ted's service in the Korean conflict (my dad was a Korean war veteran, too) that really flipped a switch in me. I started looking beyond how NY hated Boston and all that junk, and realized what a tremendous player and human being this guy was. Yowza!

Thanks for your stories, Ted Z. Great stuff!