"Strike out the skinny bum. Send him back to Korea!"
These words, yelled by baseball fans during a game in Shibe Park, and referring to Ted Williams, first fired Ted Blood with the idea of writing a book about the Splendid Splinter and his long-time difficulties with sportswriters.
"The average fan, or man in the street, actually does not know how truly great the Splinter was or is," Mr. Blood writes, "both as a devastating hitter and as a fine fielder. They do not know a single fact about his charities, nor about his generous and unlimited help and advice to hundreds of young and old baseball players.
Actually the fans are not to blame for their cursing and booing of our skinny hero. The sportswriters, at least some of them around the East and especially a few around Boston and New York, are to blame. They have painted a black picture so well that many fans jeer and curse the Splinter because they really believe he is a prize jerk, a poor sport, a hothead, a selfish, conceited bore, a lousy outfielder, a true villain."
With a zealot's ardor and a veritable almanac of facts, Mr. Blood here refutes these canards. "A truly great sportsman," the author calls Williams, "the most deadly hitter of all time and one of the greatest fishermen in the whole wide world . . . a real, live heman, a gentleman."
The author extols the Splinter's charitable work, his kindness and consideration, his greatness as a baseball player and his record as a war hero. He also explodes such stories as that Williams was deliberately off in the Everglades, fishing, when his wife gave birth to a baby daughter.
This is a book that will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever thrilled to the cry: "Play ball!" and one that will arouse controversy in dugouts and bleachers and, in fact, wherever baseball players and fans gather. It will also show the would-be ballplayer how baseball "greats" are made.
