My friend Mike, who is pushing eighty very hard, told me this story. "In the 1940s we lived in Sarasota, where the Red Sox held spring training. I had had rheumatic fever and my mother over-reacted and kept me in bed for years. Nevertheless, I was an altar boy and I also would get out of the house whenever I could to watch the Red Sox play — Johnny Pesky, Johnny Doerr, Rudy York, Vern Stephens, Dom DiMaggio, and of course Ted Williams. One day I talked to Ted Williams and asked him for an autograph. He said he would bring me a signed picture. He did, but I wasn't at home. Ted Williams came to my house and I wasn't there!! My mother said, 'a very tall man came by and gave me this for you. I told him you were at church.' I thought, how can I trust a religion that would let me be at church rather than at home when Ted Williams called. That's when I stopped believing." It's a great story and I've recorded it exactly as he told it.
Leave a Reply