The Return of No. 9

On a chill, leaden afternoon nine years ago, Ted Williams came to bat for the last time in the final Boston Red Sox home game. As he had done so often in 19 storied seasons, Williams stroked a towering home run. Preferring to leave baseball as he had played it--with unsurpassed style--he retired on the spot.

Last week Williams, 50, returned to Boston's Fenway Park as the rookie manager of the Washington Senators. It was in that ballpark that he became known as Terrible Ted, throwing bats, spitting in derision, cursing unfriendly sportswriters and refusing to tip his hat to the crowd. It was there, too, that he became the Splendid Splinter, forging a formidable lifetime batting average of .344 and hitting 521 home runs. Thus, as the familiar, slouching figure with the big No. 9 on his back stepped onto the field last week, the crowd of 28,972 gave him a long standing ovation. Williams gave the Boston fans little else to cheer about. His charges bunched together twelve hits and defeated the Red Sox 9-7. Afterward, he could only say: "It's great to be back."

A Whole New Ball Game. Actually, he never left. One of the game's greatest technicians, he relived baseball with all the ardor of a stuffed-chair general hashing over the old battles. Even on those long, languid afternoons of bonefishing off the Florida Keys, Williams would start lecturing on the finer points of hitting, and would get so excited that he would jump up and start rocking his hips--and the boat--as he leaned into an imaginary fastball.

Now that Williams is back in uniform, nothing has changed. He is still holding classes on the dynamics of the knuckleball--only now he is getting paid $65,000 a season for it. No tutor ever had more enraptured pupils, or ones so in need of help. The team he inherited finished dead last in the American League last year. So Williams told them to forget the past, which was easy, considering that the Senators have not won a pennant in 36 years. He urged them to take up the team's new battle cry: "It's a whole new ball game in '69!"

Well, sort of. What Williams' tutelage comes down to is a brushup on the basics, a touch of inspiration and lots of positive thinking. "Nobody knows that little game between the pitcher and the batter better than I do," he says. At practice sessions, he stations himself behind the batting cage, shouting for Catcher Paul Casanova to choke up on the bat, commanding Shortstop Eddie Brinkman to "swing at strikes, dammit, strikes. Wait for the good pitch. And listen, the base on balls is a hell of a play." For the pitchers, there are lessons on what makes a curve ball curve. Camilo Pascual has it down pat. "Thee speening of thee ball," he says on cue, "creates a deferential of pressure."

Booming and Banging. The only pressure the Senators are feeling these days is trying to live up to the handy die-turns of "No. 9," as they reverently refer to Williams. Brinkman, who hit a pathetic .187 last year, keeps reminding himself to "meet the ball, meet the ball." In the season's opener he did, getting two hits. "I think that's significant as hell," says Williams. "Why? Because Brinkman thinks it is, that's why." "No. 9 told me to get more hip in my swing," says Casanova, recalling the game in which he swiveled into a pitch and belted a home run. "I ran the bases, and each step I asked myself if this really was happening."

All the Senators talk that way; but if they sound like little-leaguers, they are playing like big-leaguers for a change. Last week, though they were hardly a pennant threat, they were holding their own in the tough Eastern division. No one is prouder of the new Senators than Williams. "They're picking and packing and booming and banging. They look great." So does Williams. He is making believers out of all the cynics who predicted that he would be back bonefishing by midseason. "I'm not going to quit and neither are my 25 ballplayers," he says. "I forgot how enthusiastic I could get about this game." If the game that was once known as America's national pastime needs anything it is that sort of enthusiasm.

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