Rating: 
Summary: short but sweet
Review: This is an update and extension of a magazine article by sportswriter Cramer in 1986, who also wrote an acclaimed biography of a very different sports figure, Joe Dimaggio. It comprises a number of interviews Cramer had with Williams at that time,a nd then updates it with his decline through illness until his recent death. I admit to a not-uncommon trait, for those may age, of holding Ted Williams up as one of my boyhood heroes: to see him up at bat in those late 40's-early 50's was nothing short of beautiful. In this book, he is shown as a cantankerous retiree, uncompromising in his earned egoism, unfussy demand for privacy, crusty narrowmindedness, complete dedication to baseball and sport fishing and the seeking of perfection in both those. And his failure as a family man, in his marriages and his fatherings. But in this latter trait, he mellowed and made up for alot of his past mistakes, which he understood and, if not admitted, tried to make a second effort. And, ironically, his life becomes one of the touching love stories with his last companion, a woman who fell in love with him immediately,w aited through his three failed marriages, and then had sense enough not to marry him herself but to live with him until her own death, loving him with that open-eyed strength that makes a true match. Cramer also loves this larger-than-life figure, but in that same open-eyed way that makes a fine essay.
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