“Ted Williams endured a lonely, alienated boyhood in San Diego. His father was an increasingly infrequent visitor to the family home and his mother was obsessed with her service to the Salvation Army, even to the exclusion of her children.” – Michael O'Connor, Boston Herald

John Updike attended the final game played by Ted Williams in Boston's historic Fenway Park. The following is from a story John published about it in The New Yorker, Oct. 22, 1960. Special thanks to Beagle Assistant First Class Charlie Moger for bringing it to our attention.

“Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs–hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”