George Lindsey saw it before anyone else.
It was evident in the keen eyes of Ted Williams , a lanky young left-hander who spent hours at a time slugging raggedy old baseballs around North Park sandlots in San Diego, honing a swing many would later call the greatest of all-time.
He saw it in the way Williams gripped his lucky piece of lumber, stepped into the left-handed batter’s box, bent slightly at the waist, and stared ferociously back at the pitcher before sending the first strike he saw screaming over the fence and through their neighbor’s kitchen window.
The San Diego native knew Williams would fullfill his childhood dream and one day be mentioned in the same sentence as Ruth and Gehrig.
It was only a matter of time.
“He was something special,” said Lindsey, whose voice begins to quiver slightly when he speaks of Williams , who died at the age of 83 on July 5. “I absolutely knew he would become the world’s champion that he was. There was no doubt that we’d be mentioning him in the same breath as the Babe. You could see it the first time you saw him hit.”
Lindsey, who moved from San Diego in 1941, and Williams were classmates in the sixth grade at Jefferson Grammar School, where they idolized players like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and shared dreams of making it to “The Show” and getting paid a couple thousand to play the game they loved.
Today, Lindsey is 81, but the retired singer and radio broadcaster recalls Williams ‘ childhood days like they were etched in his memory last October.
“He was always the first one picked when we chose sides” for youth baseball games, Lindsey said. “I was usually the last one picked, but boy was I happy just to be playing in the game with him.”
Few had the privilege of seeing Williams play as a kid. Lindsey, however, watched from the days when he ruled the playgrounds to when the legendary slugger sent fans to their feet with one swing of the bat and later brought them to tears when he died last week.
“It felt like a member of my family had gone when he passed,” said Lindsey, who followed Williams ‘ Major League career through news reports and occasionally on the radio.
“I imagine a whole lot of people felt like they lost a member of their family that day.”
Lindsey’s fondest memories of “The Kid” were when he was just that.
Even as a kid, Williams was the same perfectionist who worked tirelessly at his craft and had no tolerance for those less dedicated. Not even the girls could sidetrack the handsome slugger from getting in his hacks.
“He was a good-looking guy and all the girls liked him, but that never distracted him,” Lindsey said. “Like everyone else, the girls were in awe of him and their jaws used to drop when they saw him hit the ball. He was someone they all wanted to know, but he was totally dedicated to the game.”
Williams never bragged about the girls or the scouts who flocked to the ballpark; instead he told stories about getting to school early so he could be the first one to get into the closet where the “good” bats and balls were stored.
“They call it dedication. It was the most fun I ever had in my life, to be able to hit a baseball,” Williams once said. “I thought it was the greatest feeling, the greatest sound, and all the rest of it. That’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I did all the time.”
Williams ‘ rise from the sandlots of San Diego came at a time when the nation was sliding through depression.
The Hoover High phenom went on to sign with the Pacific Coast League Padres as a 17-year-old in the summer of 1936, before he had even graduated from high school.
He made his professional baseball debut with the minor league Padres later that summer. Two and a half seasons later he made it to “The Show” — Lindsey’s term for the Major Leagues — and left North Park a legend.
Williams went on to lead the American League in home runs four times, RBIs four times and runs scored six times for the Boston Red Sox.
By the time he retired in 1960 after ripping his 521st career home run, he had tallied 2,654 hits — despite losing more than 4 and a half prime seasons to military service — two Triple Crowns and 18 All-Star Game selections; plus baseball’s last .400 season when he hit .406 in 1941.
Twenty years later, Lindsey wrote Williams a letter commending the slugger on his accomplishments and saluting him for his service in World War II.
Williams replied with an autographed photo that Lindsey still cherishes today. He has since replicated the photo and passed them on to his children and grandchildren to accompany all of his stories about the “Splendid Splinter” as a sprouting slugger.
Stories like the one about Lindsey and Williams colliding in the outfield when he was attempting to track down a fly ball.
“There was one playground where you could play two different baseball games (simultaneously) back-to-back,” Lindsey recalls. “We were both playing left field and weren’t looking on a play when we clunked heads. It hurt like hell … he’s got a very hard head.”
The hard-headed Williams also had plenty of stories to share when he returned to San Diego, where three youth parks are named after him.
“I remember the first home run I ever hit at North Park Playground — I thought I was Babe Ruth,” Williams said in an interview with The Associated Press in February 1996, when the San Diego Hall of Champions honored him as its Star of the Half Century.
“That’s all I could think about was Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth. And it was just a little pop shot, maybe 280 feet over the shortest part of the fence. But it went over the fence.
“And to think, I was born in a place I could play it 12 months of the year. The playground two blocks away, and they even had lights sometimes in the ’30s in some of those little ballparks.
“I was sure lucky.”
So was Lindsey, who watched as Williams evolved into a slugger that rivals Ruth as the greatest hitter in baseball history and stands as one of the most dominant sports figures of the 20th century — a Hall of Famer, a decorated Marine fighter pilot, a legendary outdoorsman, a champion of charity and a personality that became larger than life itself.
Lindsey saw all of that, and he’s still here to tell tales to his kids.
Stories about “The Kid” who grew up to hit a baseball so hard he claimed he smelled the seams burning.
A kid whose legacy will outlive the modern game’s evolution because of storytellers like Lindsey.
“I’ve had a great life and I can say I watched the greatest of player of all time play,” Lindsey said. “You don’t get much luckier than that.”
