Free Ted & Me by Dan Gutman Page A

we had been walking around ended at 6th Street, and we continued walking uptown on Walnut. At 9th Street Ted turned right, and after two short blocks we were on Chestnut Street again. We had made a big circle around the park. Ted turned to me.
    â€œI’ll sleep on it,” he said simply.
    â€œOkay.”
    He had stopped in front of a big building with a fancy front entrance. A sign above said BEN FRANKLIN HOTEL.
    â€œWhere are you going to sleep tonight, Junior?” Ted asked me.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou can bunk with me,” he said. “I have a feeling you might be my good-luck charm.”
    We went inside and rode the elevator up to his room. Ted took a blanket out of the closet and improvised a bed for me on the floor. He put on a pair of pajamas, then got down on the floor and did a bunch of fingertip push-ups. When he stopped, he told me he was trying to make his muscles as big as his teammate Jimmy Foxx’s.
    I don’t remember what happened after that because I fell asleep right away.
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    Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up. There was a noise. I looked around and saw Ted sitting in his pajamas at the little desk next to the bed. He was holding a bottle of alcohol.
    A lot of ballplayers had problems with booze, I knew. Especially back in the old days. But I had never heard anything about Ted Williams being a drinker. I could hardly believe he would be hitting the bottle before this game, of all games.
    â€œYou’re drinking booze ?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
    â€œBooze?” he said, and then he looked at the bottle and laughed. “I never touch the stuff. I’m not drinkin’ this !@#$%! I’m cleanin’ my bat with it!”
    I sat up and saw that he had a rag in his hand. He poured some of the alcohol on the rag and then wiped his bat with it. He told me he did it every night, because a bat will pick up dirt and moisture during a game, which can add an extra half ounce.
    â€œBesides,” he added, “I can’t sleep.”
    After he finished cleaning the bat, he took out a scale and weighed it to make sure it was perfect.
    It was hard to imagine what he was going through. To me, 400 was just a number. 400…406…399…who cares? When you get down to it, it doesn’t really mean anything.
    â€œHow important is it for you to hit .400?” I asked him.
    â€œI never wanted anything more,” he told me. “All I want out of life is that when I walk down the streetfolks will say, ‘There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.’”
    At some point I fell back asleep to the gentle background music of Ted Williams grinding his teeth in the dark.

10
The Kid
    â€œWAKE UP!”
    I woke up.
    Ted Williams was screaming at me. For a few seconds, I didn’t remember where I was or when it was. I thought that maybe I was late for school. But my mom never yelled at me like that. It was like a bomb had gone off.
    â€œWhat time is it?” I asked, bolting upright from my makeshift bed on the floor.
    â€œEight thirty!” he shouted. “What, are you gonna waste your life away? Let’s go get some grub.”
    The guy was amazing. He could go from being perfectly nice to a screaming maniac and then back again in an instant. It was as if he could turn it on and off like a light switch.
    I pulled on the same shirt I had been wearing the day before and went to the bathroom. There was sometoothpaste in there called Pepsodent, which I had never heard of. On the tube were the words “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”
    I used my finger as a toothbrush. The Pepsodent stuff didn’t taste bad. Then Ted and I went to a little coffee shop around the corner from the hotel.
    I decided not to ask him whether he was going to play or take the day off and finish the season at .3995535. I was afraid I had already said too much and that I had