The Best

For four years, National League batsmen had been trying to fathom Rip Sewell's pet pitch. Rip called it an ephus ball after an old crap-shooting phrase, ephusiphus-ophus; sportswriters called it a blooper. Whatever its name, it was lobbed up to the plate, fat and inviting, with lots of backspin--and, if hit, usually popped up high in the air to the second-baseman.

Just before last week's all-star game at Boston, Sewell promised the American League's Ted Williams a chance at one. It came in the eighth inning, with two on. It floated up, as advertised. Lanky Williams stepped into it, put his powerful wrists into the swing at the right moment, just like a golfer. The ball sailed 380 leet into the right field bull pen for a home run, his second of the afternoon. It was the first time anybody had ever smacked Rip's ephus ball for a homer.

That blow did almost as much for Ted Williams' reputation as the 23 homers he had walloped for the Red Sox. Almost everybody forgot the sad all-star performance of the National Leaguers (who got whitewashed 12-0). Visiting sportswriters who knew the prewar Williams as a sulky swatter whose hitting was good and ballpark behavior was bad wrote glowing stories acclaiming him for what he was: the best hitter in baseball.

Friendless Fielder. He was still as fresh and almost as free with the profanity as ever. All the "mean things" the writers used to say about him had been true. As a gangling rookie with the San Diego Padres back in 1936, he was perhaps the worst outfielder ever to wear a glove. When the fans got mad at him for letting a grounder roll between his legs, he spent the rest of the afternoon talking back to the bleachers --and missing more flies.

But every time a rival pitcher thought he had at last found Williams' batting weakness, he was quickly disillusioned. Williams just didn't have oae. He moved up to Minneapolis, went hitless for three games, then stomped into the dressing room, ripped up all the towels and uniforms he could find.

The moment he hit the big leagues, his Red Sox teammates labeled him "meat-head." He promptly missed a fly ball, got even by throwing it into the stands. In 1940, Williams announced that he would rather be a fireman than a big-leaguer. That prompted the artful Jimmy Dykes of the White Sox to distribute papier-mache fire helmets to his players whenever Williams came to bat. The only thing anyone liked about him was his hitting--a terrific .406 in 1941. Then he joined the Navy, eventually became a Marine flyer.

Jeers to Cheers. When ex-Marine Ted Williams showed up at spring-training camp last February, somebody dared him to walk up to the plate in his street clothes like a stranger and demand a chance at bat. Said he with great dignity: "No. They'd say I was screwy again." His teammates found themselves liking him for the first time. Either it was the Marines or his bride.

Whatever it was, it began to show up as soon as the season opened. Williams worked with the rest of the team instead of in grouchy solitude, and the Red Sox all but sewed up the American League pennant in the first six weeks. When he ignored the jeers of the fans, they gradually turned to cheers. But he still had enough of his prewar aloofness not to tip his hat to the customers, sometimes hung around the locker-room for three hours after the game to avoid hero-worshippers. Williams had only one trouble: he seemed to get musclebound against the second-place New York Yankees. He had yet to make a hit this year in Yankee Stadium.

After watching Williams hit Rip Sewell's ephus ball last week, Manager Steve O'Neill of the Detroit Tigers said flatly: "I call him the best hitter the game has seen. That means he's superior to Ty Cobb." At week's end, the new Ted Williams looked it, hitting three homers and bringing in eight runs in one game against the Cleveland Indians.

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