PBS’ American Masters series is one of the treasures of American television. It has been going for more than 30 years (and has won 28 Emmys). There have been more than 250 American masters celebrated and studied through intimate documentaries, from Johnny Carson to Arthur Miller, Jimi Hendrix to Georgia O’Keefe, Julia Child to James Dean and Norman Rockwell to John Lennon, who was certainly a master and just as certainly not American.
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On Monday, July 23, for the first time, American Masters will feature a male athlete.
That seems odd, no? In three decades it has not found one male athlete worthy of being called an American Master? (To be fair, there have been two women athletes profiles: Billie Jean King and Althea Gibson). It seems absurdly overdue.
But say this: When the people behind the show finally picked an American Master male athlete, they picked the right one: You will love Nick Davis’ documentary: Ted Williams. “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.”
The quote-marks around “Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived” are important to Davis. The point of the documentary is not to say that Williams actually was the greatest hitter who ever lived (though, I think he probably was, and I suspect Nick might too). They represent the outsized ambitions of a poor kid from San Diego who longed for nothing less than to be the greatest hitter, the greatest fisherman, the greatest pilot who ever lived.
“Few men try for best ever,” Richard Ben Cramer famously began his Esquire story “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?” “and Ted Williams is one of those.”
Davis’ documentary is fantastic. It is both a reminder of what it is to be larger than life … and an intimate portrait of a baseball player driven by his demons.
“Before I started, all I knew about Ted Williams, really, is what everyone seems to know,” he says. “That he’s a jerk, right? That’s what everybody always says about Ted Williams. So for me, the idea was to get closer, to see what drove him. And when you get closer, you find that, yes, he was a jerk. But he also was immensely generous. And he really was the artist. For Ted Williams the art of it all, whether it was hitting or fishing, was everything.”
Davis found that fishing is such a fascinating insight into Williams because most people view fishing as an opportunity to get outside, enjoy the sun and fresh air, maybe talk with friends. This was not how Ted Williams fished, to say the least. And he had no patience whatsoever for any fishing companion who fished like that. It was creating the perfect bait (Williams’ daughter Claudia talks about the lengths her father would go, including surveying a fish’s stomach). It was the effort for the perfect cast. One of the great parts of the documentary is when Davis spoke to Wade Boggs, one of the great hitters of his time and now a devoted fisherman.
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“When someone swings at the first pitch,” Boggs says, “you know he doesn’t fish.”
Davis caught two amazing breaks during the filming of the documentary, two cool things that should make it even more joyous to watch. The first happened when he was looking for someone to play Ted Williams in the close-up recreations that he had in mind. His thought was that even though there was great footage of Williams, his hitting genius demanded an effort to get just a little bit closer. He intended to film a hitter with one of those incredible cameras that almost put you inside the swing. And he thought that he would ask the Dodgers’ Corey Seager.
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“My thought was Seager is the All-American hitter, right?” he says. “I mean, when you think of classic left-handed hitters, doesn’t Corey Seager come to mind?”
One problem: He went to watch Seager video and realized that, classic as it might be, Corey Seager’s swing looks absolutely nothing at all like that of Ted Williams. In truth, nobody looks like Williams, not even Williams disciples like Cincinnati’s Joey Votto. Ted Williams was a string bean, and his swing so recognizable, and Davis began to worry that no one would fit the bill.
And then he was told about a kid who was in Class AA who some were saying bore a resemblance to The Splendid Splinter. He was tall and lanky and when Davis first saw him swing a bat, he knew immediately: He was perfect.
One problem: What kid needs to have the burden of being compared to Ted Williams before he even gets to the big leagues? Davis was told he could use the kid, but he had to keep it a secret. He couldn’t put his name in the credits. He couldn’t tell anyone. Davis agreed.
And then comes the big finish: During spring training, this kid came to Astros camp. And even though nobody knew about the movie and nobody knew his role in it, everyone started calling the kid, “Ted.” It was that obvious.
“He’s going to go by ‘Ted’ from here on out,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “They got him a nice nameplate.”
The nice nameplate was a black marker that crossed out his real name, Kyle Tucker, and replaced it with, “TED.”
So, yeah, now Davis can tell everyone that it’s Kyle Tucker in the movie.
The second break is even more remarkable. Ted Williams is known for many things. He’s known for being the last .400 hitter. He’s known for being the only American Leaguer to win two Triple Crowns. He’s known for his extraordinary flying in the Korean War. He’s known for his revolutionary book, “The Science of Hitting,” which remains a bible for hitters today.
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And he’s known for the last swing — a home run in his last at-bat. It was the subject of John Updike’s classic story “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” Williams hit the home run and then refused to tip his cap to the crowd. That was Williams’ way. Teammates begged him to go out to just acknowledge the screaming fans. He would not. As Updike wrote, “Gods do not answer letters.”
Well, there’s a pretty famous surviving film of that shot, and that’s what Davis was going to use. He looked relentlessly for another, but there was no other. And then, just as he was getting to wrapping up the film, he got an email, completely out of the blue, from a guy who said something to the effect of, “Hey, I was an art student in Boston then, and I cut class that day and took some color film of that game. Would that be of interest?”
“Would that be of interest?” Davis says laughing. “Um, yeah.”
The footage is extraordinary. The thing about Ted Williams: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived,” is that, yes, it is impossible to sum up a life as big as his. Baseball star. War hero. Philanthropist. Master Fisherman. It was Ted Williams who, perhaps more than anyone, opened the door for Negro Leaguers to get into the Hall of Fame when he made sure during his own Hall of Fame acceptance speech to say that Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson belonged there with him. That was just a minor key in his life.
But Davis isn’t trying to sum up a life. He’s trying to get us just a bit closer to the artist. At one point, Claudia talks about her relationship with her father, which obviously wasn’t always easy. To get as close to perfection as Ted Williams got, there are prices to pay. The documentary is about the greatness and the price.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
