Ted Williams played with ‘Cloudbuster Nine’ in Chapel Hill

Major League Baseball’s greatest hitter of all time was a Marine Corps’ fighter pilot who was trained at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during World War II.

His name was Theodore Samuel Williams, and it’s a fascinating story about an all-star baseball player who also earned military hall-of-fame credentials as an aviator.

Writing for Military History magazine in 2021, John Miles, a retired Marine colonel, said Ted Williams’ stellar professional career was interrupted when he chose to perform his patriotic duty. 

Ted Williams was born in San Diego in 1918 and made his big-league debut at age 20 with the Boston Red Sox in 1939. He hit .327. Though no “Rookie of the Year Award” existed at that time, “baseball legend Babe Ruth proclaimed Williams the unofficial holder of the title,” Miles said. 

In 1941, Williams recorded an incredible .406 batting average. He was the last player in baseball history – 80+ years now – to hit .400. 

In 1942, Williams won the American League Triple Crown, having the highest batting average, most home runs and the most runs batted in (RBI). 

Clearly, he was at the top of his game…but World War II had grabbed the headlines. After the 1942 season, Williams enlisted for military duty with the intention of becoming a fighter pilot. 

After completing six months of ground school training at Amherst (Mass.) College, Williams was assigned in May 1943 to the Eastern Seaboard Navy Pre-Flight School at UNC-CH. 

Officers and cadets played baseball for fun at Emerson Field in the center of campus. 

“The Chapel Hill Cloudbusters was one of the best baseball teams you’ve never heard of,” wrote UNC senior Jack Frederick, who was assistant sports editor at The Daily Tar Heel student newspaper in 2018. 

One of Frederick’s primary sources was Anne R. Keene, author of the 2018 novel, “The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II.” Keene’s father, Jim Raugh, was the bat boy for the Cloudbusters. 

When the Cloudbusters played other military teams, thousands of spectators would fill the stands, and Williams did his best to ensure they “got their money’s worth.” 

One of the fans was Charles Linwood Sparrow of Pittsboro, who is now 93. He was there for a game against the Airmen of Naval Station Norfolk (Va.). 

“You put the ball across the plate,” Williams told the visiting team’s pitcher, “and I’m going to put it up on top of that building over yonder.” 

With a 2-0 count, the next pitch was a fastball right down the middle. “Ted Williams hit that thing a country mile,” Sparrow said. 

Frederick wrote: “The ball clanked off the shingles of the roof of Lenoir Hall, the cafeteria where Williams and 1,875 cadets would eat dinner later that night.” 

Williams completed aviator training at Floridian Naval Air Stations in Jacksonville and Pensacola, receiving his pilot’s wings and commission as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in May 1944. 

John Miles said: “Williams qualified to fly the Vought F4U Corsair. His command of the gull-winged fighter was such that he became a flight instructor at Pensacola.” 

“In 1945, Williams was sent to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to await combat assignment in the Pacific, but the war ended before he could deploy,” Miles said. 

Williams was discharged in January 1946, and he returned to Boston to patrol Fenway Park’s left field, proud to be a veteran of the Marine Corps.