Ted Williams played baseball to support his ‘fishing habit’

Everyone knows that Ted Williams, who played his entire career with the Boston Red Sox, is enshrined in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

But who knew that the same Ted Williams is a dual-sport hall of famer? He is also a member of the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mo. 

Only two other athletes have accomplished the “double hall of fame feat,” according to Jim Weathersby of Atlanta, a sports trivia expert. 

(Football hall of fame running back Jim Brown, now 86, is also a lacrosse hall-of-famer. Cal Hubbard went into the football hall of fame as an offensive lineman…and into the baseball hall of fame as an umpire.) 

Ted Williams never had much to say to sportswriters, but when he did, it was “good copy.” He professed: “The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely.” 

But he studied the game and practiced hard, because he “found that you don’t need to wear a necktie if you can hit.” 

Williams despised neckties and said he never learned how to tie one. “I kept a couple of phony-baloney clip-on ties in the drawer just in case, but the worst thing I can think of is to have to put on a coat and tie every day and go to work.” 

“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed 3 times out of 10 and be considered a good performer,” Williams said. 

Imagine someone upping that to 4 out of 10. That would make that baseball player a .400 hitter, almost unheard of. 

Williams hit better than .400 three times in his career, but the most memorable was in his third season as a pro – in 1941 – when the 22-year-old phenom posted a .406 batting average for the complete season. No one has registered a .400 average since, an 81-year drought. 

Williams was always cheering the younger players on, saying: “I hope somebody hits .400 soon. Then people can start pestering him with questions about the last guy to hit .400.” 

Williams is the only person to have hit a major league grand slam homerun and to have caught a major-league “grander,” which, of course, is a fish that weighed in at more than 1,000 pounds. 

Indeed, Williams caught a 1,235-pound black marlin in 1954 off the coast of Cabo Blanco, Peru.

 

He said later than one black marlin is enough for any man, but “you can never catch-and-release enough tarpon, bonefish and Atlantic salmon,” because they were the most challenging to catch. And fun. 

While still an active player, Williams made it a custom to beeline it by airplane to Bangor, Maine, as soon as the baseball season ended. He would then drive about five hours to the village of Blackville on the South Miramichi River in New Brunswick, Canada, and fish for Atlantic salmon. 

Roy Curtis, who was a local Miramichi fishing guide, said Williams was “the best dang fisherman I ever saw in 40 years of working the river.” 

“I ain’t seen none better,” Curtis said. “He done it all. He could tie the best flies, rig ‘em just right, cast to the toughest spots. He could cover more water than anybody. He knew exactly how to play a fish.” 

“And persistent? Oh, my. He’d stay out there all day, any kind of weather. Stay and stay.”