The Mexican heritage of Ted Williams was a well-kept secret. Credit: Topps
Ask a baseball historian to name the best Latino baseball player of all time.
Answers would range from Roberto Clemente, the first Latino inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, to Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Tony Pérez, Roberto Alomar, and Pedro Martínez.
But the best answer would truly be surprising.
How about Ted Williams, baseball’s last .400 hitter?
The long-time Boston Red Sox star was born and raised in San Diego but had Mexican heritage that he kept quiet until long after his retirement as a player in 1960.
His mother was May Venzor, the daughter of Mexican parents who had moved to El Paso just before she was born.
“If I had my mother’s name,” Williams once said, “there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, with the prejudices people had in Southern California.”
Williams himself made efforts to counter such bigotry.
He wrote a letter to Jackie Robinson after the infielder broke the color barrier with the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers. He befriended Larry Doby, the first African-American to advance directly from the Negro Leagues to the majors without stopping in the minors. And he welcomed Pumpsie Green when the Red Sox reluctantly became the last big-league team to integrate in 1959 – 12 years after Robinson integrated the game in the National League.
Williams even urged the Hall of Fame to consider Negro Leagues stars – which it eventually did – when he made his own Induction Day speech in 1966.
When somebody suggested he remove that section of his talk, the outspoken outfielder refused. “No one tells Ted Williams what to do,” his daughter Claudia explained.
The rookie Ted Williams in Sarasota spring training camp in 1939. Credit: Wikipedia
Williams, who broke into the big leagues in 1939, hit .344 with 521 home runs but would have approached 700 had he not served in both World War 2 and the Korean Conflict. An All-Star 19 times, he won six batting titles, two Triple Crowns, and a pair of MVP awards.
The only thing missing from his resume was a world championship, though he had his chance with the 1946 Red Sox.
Though he often feuded with the writers who covered the Red Sox, Williams mellowed so much later in life that the writers voted him American League Manager of the Year for his work with the second-edition Washington Senators in 1969.
Off the field, he raised millions for cancer research through The Jimmy Fund and was such a successful fisherman that he made the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame.
Williams won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed by fellow fishing enthusiast George H.W. Bush, in 1991.
He was named to the All-Century Team selected by fan vote before the 1999 All-Star Game at Fenway Park.
Williams was the first in the line of three Red Sox left-fielders who spent their entire careers in Boston and later made the Hall of Fame. The others were Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice.
