Going Fishing with The
Kid
Continued from previous page
So now, with the sun just rising on our second day and
Trainor busily lathering up with his World War II
marooned-aviator's suntan lotion, we were heading back out
to Buchanan. ''Bet you $100 I get one today,'' said The
Kid. Over the roar of his 100
horses he and Jack began a discussion on the amount of drag
necessary for tarpon. They differed sharply. Jack likes a
heavier drag. About seven pounds. Ted said that heavy a
drag will pop your line when you get a real hot fish, and
he brought up my miss as
an example. The argument carried us to Buchanan
Bank.
Brothers got us situated, and in the quiet moments as we
waited, the sun getting higher, The Kid opened up for
discussion one subject after another, sampling them as if
they were unlabeled canned goods, each offering something
worth considering. There
is a difference between knowing and knowing it all. Williams
has a keen, honest intellectual curiosity. The things he
knows and feels sure of he is adamant on (baseball, the
size of a hook, the value of his time); the things he does
not know, he wants to
know. He wants to know what you think, right now, here in
the car, in the living room, in the boat. From Charley he
wanted to know about cameras, and he demonstrated an
exceptional knowledge himself by the questions he asked.
Listen, Edwin, tell me
about this Frazier guy. Is he much of a fighter? Is Shoemaker
better than Hartack? Why is that? What do you think about
Vietnam? Why did SPORTS ILLUSTRATED pick Jim Ryun as its
Sportsman of the Year? What's he got that Frank Robinson
doesn't
have?
| |
Williams spends many of his nonfishing hours in a shop separated from the main house, where he keeps his tackle and lure-making equipment.
(Charles Trainor)
| He carted out some of his stronger thoughts about baseball,
his game; how it would better serve a faster generation to
limit the season to 140 games and play seven-inning second
games in doubleheaders. He said too much leisure was
keeping talented kids
off the diamond. He said he still felt it took more
individual talent than any other sport, more individual
work, the work of a loner. He said Joe McCarthy was the
only real manager he ever played for, that the others were
just guys in the dugout. He
said he would be less than honest if he expressed surprise over
being elected to the Hall of Fame. ''I felt I had the
record for it, but''—a big grin—''I thought a
couple of the knights of the keyboard might try to keep me
dangling
awhile.''
It was just after 11 o'clock when the tarpon hit. Actually,
it hit The Kid's second cast; it passed by his first,
spooking slightly, and he had to put the second one out 80
feet. The tarpon jumped, exposing its great body, the
scales jingling like
castanets. It was obviously bigger than the one he had lost the
day before. Swiftly Williams joined the battle, planting
the hook with those three quick bursts. He moved with the
action, leaning, sitting down, knees bent, knees straight,
talking, checking
the drag, getting Jack to maneuver the boat. A mixture of
suntan oil and sweat got into his eyes, and he wiped at it
with his left hand. We were a quarter of a mile from the
spot where the tarpon hit when he got it up to the boat and
then had to
frantically pass the rod under the boat and grab it on the other side
as the tarpon desperately maneuvered. ''I hope it isn't
this tough in the tournament,'' said Jack. ''It will be,''
said The Kid, holding
firm.
The nose of the tarpon thudded into the stern of the boat,
and it moved off; Jack wanted to gaff it. ''I'll tell you
when I'm ready, Bush,'' The Kid said. ''I'm going to put
him right there at the side. I'll tell you right where
he'll be. Don't try to
do anything unless he's ready.'' He yelled to Billy Grace in
the other boat, where Trainor was clicking off pictures.
''Get closer, Billy, bring it closer so he can get this.
I'll lead him right up now''—Jack had the gaff
poised—''don't scare him,
don't scare him. All right, c'mon up, Billy, dammit. All
right,'' and the gaff was home. They hoisted the fish up in
the air. ''Ninety-five pounds,'' said Brothers. It had
taken 35 minutes. ''The guide's dream,'' said Jack
Brothers. ''All you do is pole the
boat and gaff the fish when he says gaff
it.''
''Here, look at this,'' said Ted, displaying the broken
head of the red-and- yellow bucktail lure that he took from
the fish's mouth. ''Isn't that something? He split it in
half.'' They lowered the stricken tarpon into the water,
and Jack began to work
it around, washing water through the gills, and gradually it
began to revive. ''He's going to make it,'' said Ted.
''He's all right, he'll make it. He'll make it unless some
shark comes along and bites his
tail.
''All right,'' he said.
''Lunchtime.''
The Kid's house is easy to find once you have found it the
first time, which we had the day before. There are a couple
of faded signs, one tacked to a telephone pole, that mark
the intersection—Madero and List roads—near
his home, but they are not
to be taken seriously. If you ask a native where Ted Williams
lives, he will tell you by landmarks instead of street
names. He has five acres. The two-story, two-bedroom white
stucco house is backed up to a small lagoon, where he has a
dock. Coconut trees
hang over the water. One day when I was there he was
sitting with a friend, watching out the rear window through
binoculars as a white crane dived for fish in the lagoon;
he marveled at the skill with which the bird made its
kill.
The front of the house is camouflaged by a grove of rubber
trees and gumbo- limbos and lignum vitaes and sea grapes,
all tucked in by a high chain-link fence, with a NO
TRESPASSING sign for emphasis and a burglar alarm for
protection. Separated from the
main house is a small shed where he keeps his large supply
of fishing equipment and tools and where he devotes hours
to tinkering around and making lures. He holds one up,
fresh off the workbench: ''Now, that is a well-tied
fly.''
WILLIAMS is in small script on the front screen door, but
except for in the den upstairs, there is little on display
to associate the name with baseball. The book of
photographs in the living room is mostly of fishing
triumphs; there are mounted fish
on the walls and two beautiful salmon flies suspended in
glass on top of the TV set. On the cypress-paneled den
walls there are pictures that go back. There is a skinny
kid with curly hair and a smile, standing at the train
station in Boston in a
double-breasted suit and brown- and-white wingtip shoes. There is
an autographed picture of Cardinal Cushing. There is one of
The Kid and Casey Stengel at Cooperstown, and one of The
Kid swinging a bat. There are some of his prize catches: a
1,235-pound marlin
he got in Peru; a 500-pound thresher shark in New Zealand.
There is a picture of the 20-pound salmon he got the day
after he beat out teammate Pete Runnels for the American
League batting championship on the last day of the 1958
season, when he had to
travel all night to make it to the Miramichi before the
fishing season
closed.
All through the house, the prevalent face is that of his
daughter and only child, Barbara, called Bobbie Jo. In the
pattern of the compulsive snapshot photographer, they show
her metamorphosis from stringy-cute, when they were fishing
buddies, to
rounded-winsome, when she made him a grandfather. She is
everywhere—under glass on tabletops, on walls,
standing partially upright on bureaus. He had wanted a
boy.
There is a large collection of books, but no trophies. He
says his trophies are up north. He reminds himself that he
will have to get them down here one day. He reads a lot,
and he will not leave a page unturned if it pertains to
something he is
interested in or would like to absorb. He has, for example, a
library of how-to books on golf. He says he prefers
Middlecoff's to Hogan's among the better ones, because
Hogan's is too technical. Williams says that his practical
application, however, was rotten.
''Jeez, I sliced everything, you know? I had no control
over my long shots.'' His golf was a series of broken club
heads and bent shafts. He has developed a theory on that,
too. Like Ty Cobb, he was a natural righthander who just
happened to pick up a
bat one day and started batting lefthanded. As a result his
real power hand, his right, was always farther away from
the ball at contact. He believes this diminished power and
direction. He believes he would have been an even better
hitter had he started
righthanded. And that he might have been able to hit a golf
ball
straight.
His celebrated appetite for privacy has not been diminished
by the years. His phone is unlisted. It is not even
printed on the receiver. When it gets to be too well-known,
he changes it. To get in touch with him requires liaison
with his secretary.
Then he calls you. And when he says he will call at 7:30, he
calls at 7:30, on the dot. Presumably, close friends and
fishing guides are the only ones who know how to make
direct contact, and Conchs don't snitch. In turn he seeks
out their company. Often
in the mornings, at daybreak, he materializes at Islamorada
Tackle and Marine, where the guides congregate, and he
hangs around ribbing and needling. He has been especially
close to Albright. He was visiting Albright when word came
that he had been called
back into the service for the Korean War in 1952, and when
an AP guy came around to seek him out, The Kid jumped into
one of Albright's closets. Albright invited the reporter
in, and deliberately small-talked for an hour as Williams
silently melted in
the
closet.
Once or twice a week he forgoes the pleasure of his own
cooking to patronize a Cuban-style restaurant called Manny
and Isa's, just on the other side of the Over-Sea Highway
on the crusty little road that used to be the highway. He
prefers it there,
because recognition is less likely and he can wear his fishing
uniform, and because the food is excellent. Manny was the
cook at the more fashionable Green Turtle Inn before he
struck out on his own with black- eyed Isa, his wife, who
knows how to make a Key
lime pie. Isa is Ted's pet. He does not spare her the
needle.
'Veal,'' he says loudly, and patrons at other tables look
up knowingly. ''People tell me there are a lot of
restaurants on the Keys selling veal and saying it's turtle
steak. This tastes like veal to me, Isa.'' ''Oh, no, Ted,''
says Isa with a Spanish
accent, pouting and shaking her finger at him. She runs off
to the kitchen and returns with a great slab of meat, which
is unmistakably turtle. ''You see?'' says Isa. ''Well, I
don't know,'' says Ted, making that wry face. ''Oh, Ted,
you are fooling me,''
says Isa, jabbing him on the
shoulder.
It was here, at Manny and Isa's, that we went for lunch:
Cuban sandwiches all around, recommended strongly by The
Kid. ''How about a beer?'' he said. ''A beer's good with
Cuban sandwiches.'' Drinking beer is one of his more recent
diversions. When he
was younger he traveled strictly on nonalcohol. He still
bridles when downwind from a cigarette smoker. "What are you, a chain smoker?" he said to Pope, making him change seats. "Damn." At the table
I asked if, in view of the obvious effort he puts into
fishing, he got as much satisfaction from it as baseball
gave him. He said no, that
to become a success at baseball required more hours of
practice, more competition, more everything, so he could
not say that. But he said he had concluded that the two
most enjoyable fish to fish for in the world were the
tarpon and the Atlantic salmon.
He crossed his legs, pushing back his chair, and launched
into a
soliloquy.
''The tarpon is dynamic, eager, tackle-busting—well,
he's just a sensational, lively, spectacular fish. He jumps
better than any of them. He'll take any kind of lure,
artificial or live. He requires you to have the ability to
handle tackle, probably
more than any fish I know of. First place, you're playing the
fish with basically freshwater equipment, which means you
don't have the best drags or the fastest retrieves, and
you're also using fairly light line. As a result, your
knots have to be right—I want to show you that 100% knot, I can show you real
quick, before you leave I want to show it to you—and
everything has to be right. They don't know a whole lot
about its life cycle, and you can't eat it, but it has more
attributes as far as the
gameness of the fish itself is
concerned.
''Now, now, the Atlantic salmon. They are caught in
beautiful streams. They are wonderful eating. Extremely
game. They jump. They're sometimes so hard to catch, you
think they're smart, then the next time they're easy.
Sometimes you cast for two hours
in the same arc, here, then here, here, and all the time
you're seeing fish, but you think you're never going to get
one, and then you change the angle a foot and it drifts
right over him and, boom, you've got one. On the average, I
would say it takes 400
casts per salmon, 400 to 600 casts per salmon. But on every
cast you have the expectation that it's going to
happen.
''Gee, it's a romantic fish. The life cycle is so damn
romantic. They know specifically that certain salmon will
be hatched in this area, will stay in the river for three
years, go out, nobody really knows where, except to sea,
and that they grow an
awful lot at sea, and then two of them, male and female, come
back as adults to the exact same area to spawn. Two of
them, five years later, coming back upstream out of maybe
10,000 eggs. I guess if I had to spend the rest of my life
fishing for just one
fish, it would have to be the Atlantic
salmon.''
The next week, with Albright as his guide, The Kid won the
Gold Cup tarpon tournament for the second time. He won it
on the last day of the tournament. On the morning of that
day he was in 11th place. By midafternoon he had caught
five
tarpon.
Before the tournament the betting got lively, and the two
of them, Jimmie and The Kid, wound up with $1,100 riding on
the outcome. Every time Jimmie would venture into a group
of anglers and guides, Ted would say, ''I don't know what
you have in mind,
Bush, but you better bring your checkbook Friday night when
this is
over.''
When the bets were collected, he gave the entire $1,100 to
Albright, plus an extra $200 he claimed he won. Jimmie
doubts it. He also gave Jimmie the gold tiepin with the
leaping tarpon that goes to the winner. The Kid does not
wear ties. He has a couple
of clip-ons he calls ''phony-baloney ties,'' but they stay
in the drawer. Jimmie compared it to the time in 1946 when
The Kid played in his only World Series. He gave his Series
check to the Boston clubhouse
boy.
Jimmie said that every morning before they went out during
the week of the tournament, Ted stopped to feed the little
black cat. ''The cat was so determined,'' said Albright.
''He just kept hanging in there. And Ted hates cats, you
know.''
Historical Photo Gallery | Sports Illustrated Covers Gallery
Flashback 1967: Going Fishing with The Kid
Flashback 1996: Rounding Third
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