Editing Ted Williams (section)

===Relationship with Boston media and fans===
[[File:Ted Williams BBall Digest May 1949 raw.jpg|thumb|Williams in 1949]]

Williams was on uncomfortable terms with the [[Boston]] newspapers for nearly twenty years, as he felt they liked to discuss his personal life as much as his baseball performance. He maintained a career-long feud with ''[[Sport (US magazine)|Sport]]'' due to a 1948 feature article in which the reporter included a quote from Williams' mother. Insecure about his upbringing, and stubborn because of immense confidence in his own talent, Williams made up his mind that the "knights of the keyboard", as he derisively labeled the press, were against him. After having hit for the league's Triple Crown in 1947, Williams narrowly lost the MVP award in a vote where one Midwestern newspaper writer left Williams entirely off his ten-player ballot.<ref name=1947ballot>{{cite news |last1=Stout |first1=Glenn |title=The Case of the 1947 MVP Ballot |url=https://glennstout.com/the-case-of-the-1947-mvp-ballot/ |work=[[The Sporting News]] |date=December 20, 1993}}</ref>

During his career, some sportswriters also criticized aspects of Williams' baseball performance, including what they viewed as his lackadaisical fielding and lack of clutch hitting. Williams pushed back, saying: "They're always saying that I don't hit in the clutches. Well, there are a lot [of games] when I do."<ref>{{cite magazine |last= |date=August 20, 1956 |title=Ted Williams Defies His Critics |url=https://vault.si.com/vault/1956/08/20/ted-williams-defies-his-critics |magazine=[[Sports Illustrated]]}}</ref> He also asserted that it made no sense crashing into an outfield wall to try to make a difficult catch because of the risk of injury or being out of position to make the play after missing the ball.<ref>[[#Bradlee|Bradlee]], p. 13.</ref>

Williams treated most of the press accordingly, as he described in his 1969 memoir ''My Turn at Bat''. Williams also had an uneasy relationship with the Boston fans, though he could be very cordial one-to-one. He felt at times a good deal of gratitude for their passion and their knowledge of the game. On the other hand, Williams was temperamental, high-strung, and at times tactless. In his biography, Ronald Reis relates how Williams committed two fielding miscues in a doubleheader in 1950 and was roundly booed by Boston fans. He bowed three times to various sections of Fenway Park and made an obscene gesture. When he came to bat he spat in the direction of fans near the dugout. The incident caused an avalanche of negative media reaction, and inspired sportswriter Austen Lake's famous comment that when Williams' name was announced the sound was like "autumn wind moaning through an apple orchard."<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Sport: Sorry, Fellows! |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,812513,00.html |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=May 22, 1950}}</ref>

Another incident occurred in 1958 in a game against the Washington Senators. Williams struck out, and as he stepped from the batter's box swung his bat violently in anger. The bat slipped from his hands, was launched into the stands and struck a 60-year-old woman who turned out to be the housekeeper of the Red Sox general manager Joe Cronin. While the incident was an accident and Williams apologized to the woman personally, to all appearances it seemed at the time that Williams had hurled the bat in a fit of temper.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hurwitz |first1=Hy |date=September 22, 1958 |title=Ted Williams' bat hits woman in stands |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/1958/09/22/ted-williams-bat-hits-woman-stands/xDgSaHRhJOI4aL7IrwuVUM/story.html |work=[[The Boston Globe]]}}</ref>

Williams gave generously to those in need. He was especially linked with [[the Jimmy Fund]] of the [[Dana–Farber Cancer Institute]], which provides support for children's cancer research and treatment. Williams used his celebrity to virtually launch the fund, which raised more than $750&nbsp;million between 1948 and 2010. Throughout his career, Williams made countless bedside visits to children being treated for cancer, which Williams insisted go unreported. Often parents of sick children would learn at check-out time that "Mr. Williams has taken care of your bill". The Fund recently stated that "Williams would travel everywhere and anywhere, no strings or paychecks attached, to support the cause... His name is synonymous with our battle against all forms of cancer."<ref name="autogenerated2">{{cite web |title=Ted Williams advanced cancer research |url=https://www.jimmyfund.org/about-us/boston-red-sox/ted-williams/ |website=[[The Jimmy Fund]]}}</ref>

Williams demanded loyalty from those around him. He could not forgive the fickle nature of the fans—booing a player for booting a ground ball, and then turning around and roaring approval of the same player for hitting a home run. Despite the cheers and adulation of most of his fans, the occasional boos directed at him in Fenway Park led Williams to stop tipping his cap in acknowledgment after a home run.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Whitley |first1=David |title=Pure Hitter: Ted Williams |url=https://www.espn.com/classic/000706tedwilliams.html |website=[[ESPN Classic]]}}</ref>

Williams maintained this policy up to and including his swan song in 1960. After hitting a home run at Fenway Park, which would be his last career at-bat, Williams characteristically refused either to tip his cap as he circled the bases or to respond to prolonged cheers of "We want Ted!" from the crowd by making an appearance from the dugout. The Boston manager [[Pinky Higgins]] sent Williams to his fielding position in left field to start the ninth inning, but then immediately recalled him for his back-up [[Carroll Hardy]], thus allowing Williams to receive one last ovation as he jogged onto then off the field, and he did so without reacting to the crowd. Williams' aloof attitude led the writer John Updike to observe wryly that "Gods do not answer letters."<ref name=updike/>

Williams' final home run did not take place during the final game of the 1960 season, but rather in the Red Sox's last home game that year. The Red Sox played three more games, but they were on the road in New York City and Williams did not appear in any of them, as it became clear that Williams' final home at-bat would be the last one of his career.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Krell |first1=David |title=September 28, 1960: Ted Williams bids adieu to Boston fans with 521st home run |url=https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-28-1960-ted-williams-bids-adieu-to-boston-fans-with-521st-home-run/ |website=[[Society for American Baseball Research]]}}</ref>

In 1991, on Ted Williams Day at Fenway Park, Williams pulled a Red Sox cap from out of his jacket and tipped it to the crowd. This was the first time that he had done so since his earliest days as a player.<ref>{{cite news |title=Williams Honored in Boston and Finally Tips His Cap to Fans |url=https://www.deseret.com/1991/5/13/18920433/williams-honored-in-boston-and-finally-tips-his-cap-to-fans |work=[[Deseret News]] |date=May 13, 1991}}</ref>

Williams once had a friendship with Ty Cobb, with whom he often had discussions about baseball. He often touted [[Rogers Hornsby]] as being the greatest right-handed hitter of all time. In [[Al Stump]]'s now discredited biography about Cobb, he claimed that this assertion actually led to a split in the relationship between Cobb and Williams. Once during one of their yearly debate sessions on the greatest hitters of all time, Williams asserted that Hornsby was one of the greatest of all time. Cobb apparently had strong feelings about Hornsby and he threw a fit, expelling Williams from his hotel room. However, this story was later refuted by Williams himself.<ref>{{cite web |last=King |first=Gilbert |title=The Knife in Ty Cobb's Back|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-knife-in-ty-cobbs-back-65618032/ |magazine=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]] |date=August 20, 2011}}</ref>