Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

Ted Williams, circa 1955 

Photograph from Getty

It was 57 years ago today that the great--though enigmatic--Ted Williams took his final swing on a baseball field.  It was only fitting that he would put the finishing touches on his playing resumé in the form of his 521st career home run.

John Updike's brilliant piece, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, chronicled the events of that day, and first appeared in the October 22, 1960 issue of The New Yorker. It is one of the great pieces of long-form sportswriting ever produced.

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

Read the whole piece here. It's long, but it's worth it.