Richard Nixon revered baseball great Ted Williams. Williams backed Nixon to the hilt. And for a time, both were on top of the world
, a history of Washington baseball, from which some of this story is based, and head of the Sports Business Practice at the Dewey Square Group, a public affairs firm in Washington.
After having dropped the first ball, President Nixon throws out a second and then a third ball from the presidential suite—with a typo in the presidential seal—at the newly-named RFK Stadium to open the 1969 baseball season. | Getty Images/Bettman in Southern California in the 1910s, and both served in the Navy during World War II. Williams, who also fought in the Korean War, had a distinguished record as a fighter pilot, while Nixon served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific.By 1960, Williams was playing in his final season of a Hall-of-Fame career with the Boston Red Sox, while Nixon was seeking to springboard from the vice presidency to the presidency.
Williams returned the favor that year by campaigning for Nixon—to the consternation of the ballplayer’s home-state senator, John F. Kennedy, the Democratic presidential candidate, who had unsuccessfully wooed the slugger. As Ben Bradlee Jr. recounted in his biography of Williams, “The Kid,” JFK spotted Williams on Oct. 18, in the final weeks of the campaign, less than a month after his last game.
The next year, President Kennedy sent several messages to Williams inviting him to a gathering on Cape Cod, which Williams ignored, according to Leigh Montville’s book, “Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero.” When a friend pressed him for a response, Williams said, “Tell ’em I’m a Nixon fan.”
After initially rebuffing Short, Williams eventually said yes, signing a five-year deal at $65,000 a year , plus a deferred option to buy 10 percent of the team. The new manager would have nowhere to go but up: The Senators in 1968 had the worst record in baseball. “Despite what you’ve heard, I’m not a hard guy to get along with. That was a very, very small segment I had trouble with.” Williams, now 50 years old, added, “I hope I’ve matured a little more.”
“I’ve been on his side ever since I first met him when he was the vice president,” Williams said. “He showed me a genuineness that you rarely see in a politician. What’s a politician? A double-talking, bull throwing … I couldn’t even begin to tell you.” The Senators came back to win the second game of the series, and before the third game, Williams barked at outfielder Brant Alyea: “Stop swinging like an old woman if you want to make some money in this business.” Alyea hit a two-run homer in his first at-bat, helping the Senators to a 9-6 victory. Despite their rough opening-day loss, Washington had taken two of three from the Yankees.
Meanwhile, Williams was working his managerial magic, especially with the team’s hitters. Although offense was up across baseball, Williams’ effect went beyond that. The team’s batting average jumped 27 points, to .251, among the best in the league. Shortstop Yet, it was Nixon, not Williams, who would be the center of attention as baseball staged several events in Washington around the Midsummer Classic to mark the centennial of pro baseball. That week, Nixon hosted a White House reception with 400 baseball VIPs, including Hall-of-Famers, All-Stars and sportswriters, and made this startling comment: “I just want you to know that I like the job I have, but if I had to live my life over again, I would have liked to have ended up as a sportswriter.
“Not since Calvin Coolidge have we had a more awkward uncoordinated locker-room character in the White House than Richard Nixon,” Reston wrote, “but he buddies up to Ted Williams of the Washington Senators, and never misses an opportunity to demonstrate he is a ‘real American,’ following all the batting averages and passing averages in the land. This is not a wholly cynical or political exercise. He is genuinely interested in sports. Games fascinate and divert him from his problems.
Williams, top, reflects to the press on his rookie year as manager of the Washington Senators after the closing game of the season Oct. 2, 1969, while Nixon, bottom, is pictured that same year calling on a reporter during a televised news conference in the White House on Mar. 14. | AP Photos “He expected hitters to be like him,” recalled Epstein. “When he couldn’t get through to players, it dampened his enthusiasm.”
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