Ted Williams: After Stroke, A New Vision -- He Wants To Get Around On Own So He Can Enjoy Baseball, Fishing

HERNANDO, Fla. - No longer needed, the empty blue wheelchair was in a far corner. But near the fireplace a big black metallic treadmill stood like a sentry in the middle of the living room.

"I did close to half a mile on it this morning," said the thin 75-year-old with closely cut gray-streaked hair.

In a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, white socks and tennis shoes, Ted Williams clutched an aluminum walker as he moved through his spacious dusty-pink stucco home beyond the wrought-iron number 9 on the driveway gate.

On the walls were dozens of framed photos and paintings and prints, almost all of salmon, marlin and tarpon. His baseball trophies and mementos were in his darkened den.

"The photos with Jim Thorpe and Ty Cobb are his favorites," his 25-year-old son, John-Henry, had said.

But in the fisherman's living room, the only connection to his .344 career average with the Boston Red Sox were three shiny American League baseballs. None were autographed, perhaps because he can't sign his name now.

Golden years?

"Supposed to be the golden years," he said. "You wonder."

He's always sounded as if he were plugged into a public-address system. And his voice was firm, almost as vibrant as ever. But his sight and his body were not.

On Feb. 19, only 10 days after the Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame opened here, he had taken a shower, put on shorts and was walking around his big bed when a blip of a blood clot from his heart brushed the back of his brain.

"My legs gave way," he recalled. "There was no pain, but I had no strength. I couldn't get enough push from my legs to get up."

He had suffered a stroke in December 1991, and another smaller stroke several months later. But he knew this stroke was harsher. He couldn't see.

"Not many people noticed anything after the first stroke," his 25-year-old son said. "When we went somewhere together, I stayed close to his right side."

This time his left side and his left visual field were affected more severely than the right side and right visual field had been. He was able to move his left arm and leg, but they felt heavy. He soon regained some vision but when a red balloon was floated toward him, he would lose sight of it.

Since returning home, he has attended a nearby rehab center three times a week. His weight has dropped to about 212 pounds. His doctors describe his current condition as "good" but his eyes no longer resemble an eagle's.

"I can see straight ahead all right," he said, "but my peripheral vision isn't there."

On the sidewalk now outside the small Grand Slam office where his baseball cards and memorabilia are marketed, he picked up the walker to show he wasn't completely dependent on it. But as he neared the office door, his nurse, George Carter, a retired Rhode Island policeman, realized that he wasn't aware of it.

"Big right," Carter said.

Lifting the walker easily and turning it quickly, the man once known as Teddy Ballgame clumped through the door. Inside, along with the baseball photos on the walls, were souvenir bats and several autographed baseballs, including one "to my idol" signed by Mickey Mantle.

"I can see," he said, "but I see about a third as much light as I used to see."

Hard to handle

The word "stroke" and its effect on his vision seem so contrary to what Ted Williams has always meant to baseball. Despite missing virtually five seasons because of Navy and Marine duty as a pilot, the 6-foot-3 left-handed-hitting slugger crashed 521 home runs with arguably the purest batting stroke of all.

He had the body and the brain but as much as anything he had the eyes to time a speeding, spinning baseball.

"I had 20-15 vision. I couldn't read the label on a revolving phonograph record like some people said, but I had great depth perception. I could match up stuff," he said, then he laughed. "In a duck blind, I could pick out ducks before anybody else did."

The straight-ahead sight in his right eye was recently found to be 20-25; his left eye, struck by a walnut as a teenager, has deteriorated to 20-80. Because his strokes and his visual problems developed from an irregular heart beat, he recently had electric shock treatment to stimulate his heart and his sight.

"When those volts hit me," he said, "everything got 30 percent brighter."

As a rookie in 1939 with 31 homers and 145 runs batted in, he told anybody who would listen that his goal was for people to say, "There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived." In the shadows of his mind after his recent stroke, he still was.

"I've got to tell you this," he said. "I was in the hospital, the tubes in me, in a bed that's too short.

"I'm half asleep. I dream I'm in spring training working with the young Red Sox hitters like I did for years. But somehow Randy Johnson is out there on the mound, the big left-hander with Seattle that the guy on the Phillies bailed out on in the All-Star Game last year. John Kruk wanted no part of that big left-hander.

"Now with Johnson out there, all the Red Sox kids are saying, `Why don't you go up there and take a few cuts?"

"I tell them, `I haven't hit in years and I just had a stroke and I can't see too well,' but they keep teasing me and I say, `Yeah, I'll do it.' But as I'm walking to home plate, I'm thinking, `I'm not going to try to pull this guy because he can really throw.' The first pitch, he laid one right in there. I pushed at it. Line drive through the box for a base hit."

He laughed, loud and long. Another hit for "the greatest hitter who ever lived." Another perfect stroke despite a stroke.

He was talking baseball now, bemoaning that only Braves, White Sox and Cubs games are available to him on cable television here on Florida's northern gulf coast, that he needs a satellite dish so he can see the Red Sox, Yankees and other teams.

"Losing Frank Viola, that hurt the Red Sox big," he said. "He balanced their pitching staff."

As the last of the .400 hitters, having batted .406 in 1941, he was aware that Paul O'Neill, the Yankee outfielder, was red-hot.

"I always liked O'Neill," he said. "That park is made to order for him."

Asked if he had seen much of Michael Jordan, baseball's most celebrated minor-league outfielder, he said, "I've seen enough of him to know that if he had played baseball all along instead of basketball, he'd be a player. The thing is, in baseball, tennis and golf, you have to learn how to play the game. Baseball is really an individual game, the hitter against the pitcher."

He was sprawled on a couch now.

"I see a ton of talent out there, a ton," he said. "Pitching, hitting, fielding. But they don't know how to get the most out of it. They don't know how to play the game."

He also didn't understand baseball's latest trend: batters charging the mound after being hit by a pitch.

"I never saw Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg or Stan Musial charge the mound," he said. "If I thought a guy was throwing at me, I just got more aggressive. I remember when I was a rookie, I heard guys say, `Don't throw at Jimmie Foxx, he'll gear up.' "

Thousands of well-wishers

Over the last few months, he received more than 1,100 get-well cards and letters as well as visits or calls from many of his Red Sox teammates and opponents.

In other years, he appeared at baseball's annual Hall of Fame induction weekend at Cooperstown, N.Y. But he may not be able this year to travel for the July 31 ceremonies.

Even more importantly for him, how soon would he be able to do any serious fishing?

"Not this year," he said. "I've got to be faithful to my therapy."

Ted Williams has always had goals: to be the best hitter who ever lived, then to be the best fly fisherman who ever lived. And now, as he grasped his walker for the return ride back to his home high on a grassy hill, he was asked if he had a new goal.

"I just hope I can get back to where I'm able to enjoy life instead of being guided around."