Until the word got around about the fishing, it was mostly inhabited by a tribe of big-hearted, hard-headed, industrious white natives called Conchs who years ago had infiltrated from the Bahamas after first having fled the American Revolution as supporters of the Crown. Islamorada is the jewel inset of a two-mile key called Upper Matecumbe, 68 miles south of Miami and 82 miles north of Key West. It's time to start thinking about fishing. "No sense letting it go to waste," said The Kid. He laid the platter of bacon down on the concrete floor of the porte cochere and the cat went to it hungrily. He opened the screen door and fended off the cat gently with his foot. I've thrown things at him-for crissakes, I've done everything but drown him." He began to gather up the leftover bacon. The little cat was now mewing in earnest at the back door. Today Grace would meet us at the fishing spot. Williams had known Brothers a long time but had not fished with him prior to the day before, when we had also chartered young Billy Grace's boat. Brothers has been an Islamoradafishing guide for 15 years. But he also likes to patronize the guides and has firm friendships with many of them, and there were too many of us for one boat. More often than not Williamsfishes alone he just gets into his custom-made 17½-foot open boat with its 100 horses and goes out and finds his own. Pour yourself some coffee."īrothers said Ted would be pleased to know he had already eaten and was ready to go, but he took a cup anyway. "We're trying to make history and you're sleeping. "Where the hell you been, Bush?" said Williams to Brothers. Jack Brothers arrived almost simultaneously with a little black cat that began to mew at the back door in response to the aroma of Williams' cooking. I think, I know I can tell you the exact pitch and pitcher I hit every one of my first 250 home runs off of." You sure as hell ought to be able to remember what you learn. I bet if you checked you'd find the guys who swing at that first strike hit about. I'm talking about the first strike in a ball game. You see them all the time, hopping after that first pitch. "So many of them get up there just to swing. Listen, you know I have a lot of respect for hitters like Mays and Kaline and Clemente, and I like some of these young kids-Rico Petrocelli of our club and that kid in Houston-Staub-I'm impressed with him. "I try not to knock anybody," he said, "but some of these guys just aren't hitting what they should be. Boy, I thought Cobb was an old crab, and here I am getting older, and I find I'm more critical." He did that little thing with his mouth and eyes, denoting scandalous behavior. "I remember when Cobb criticized me for not trying to punch the ball to left field away from Boudreau's shift. Isn't that something? Isn't that funny? A grandfather." He said he could tell he must be getting old by the way he was getting so critical of young hitters. "Hell, it's been almost seven years," he said to Pope. If, however, he ever had the egotist's inability to laugh at himself he surely does not have it now. Getting the most sometimes means to ignite his famously combustible temper, to engage his iridescent vocabulary.
He has an almost limitless enthusiasm for spontaneity, for getting the most out of a moment. Pope told of his son's sacrilege anyway, risking it, and Williams laughed the loudest.
It is a pleasing way of taking the edge off the first person singular. Occasionally in conversation he still refers to himself as The Kid. His own particular preference for a nickname was always The Kid.
The Splendid Splinter, to be sure, because there was more to him than attenuation. Eventually, when he had been exposed to major league regimens, he got up to 200 pounds, but it was still appropriate to call him The Splinter.
#MY TALKING HANK YAWN PROFESSIONAL#
In 1938, when he was 19 years old and a pitcher-outfielder in San Diego, just starting as a professional ballplayer, he was 6'3" and weighed 168 pounds. He wore Sears, Roebuck tennis shoes without socks, and his copper-brown calves stuck out prominently from the tails of the Bermudas. He had on the red Bermuda shorts I have come to think of as his home uniform in Islamorada, and a faded red shirt that had a few character holes in it. "I do not make pies," he said, raising his eyebrows and the side of his mouth. "I do a pretty fair job with them," he said. The Kid said his cooking would not win prizes, but as a man alone after two aborted marriages he knew some of the mysteries of steaks, chops, broiled chicken and roast beef.