Adam Lazarus: The Wingmen
Adam Lazarus: The Wingmen
By Scott Bolohan
Baseball history is full of remarkable stories, and that Ted Williams, arguably the best hitter of all time, interrupted his career twice to fight in wars only grows more incredible as the years go on. But Adam Lazarus’ new book, The Wingmen, manages to make the story even better. In Korea, Ted Williams flew combat missions with future astronaut and senator, John Glenn. Based on their public personas, the two would have seemingly little in common. But they formed a deep, lifelong friendship.
The book goes beyond the typical stories and reveals surprising sides of both men, debunking their mythical statures and humanizing them, shedding light on the formative war years of these two giants of the 20th century.
Where did this book idea come from?
I just saw this photo that I’ve seen many times since on the internet.
Is it the one where they’re sitting at a conference table with coffee?
Yeah. I saw that several years ago, and I was just so interested in it. As you can imagine, I’ve been a baseball history fan since I was a little kid. I knew about John Glenn from The Right Stuff and all the other things that he had done. I just was amazed by the photo I wanted to know more about it. I Googled it and they served together. When John Glenn died, people wrote about how Ted Williams was his wingman and I started reading a little bit more about it. I had Ted Williams’ autobiography since I was a kid and he mentioned flying with Glenn in Korea and I thought this was really interesting. The more I went through newspaper articles and then picked up another biography on Ted Williams, I saw that it was not just like they spent a day together in Korea, they were in the same small squadron. They flew missions together. And then years later, they spent a lot of time together. So I thought it was just a great idea for a book.
Was there anything that you were surprised to find during the research?
John Glenn was a boy scout in everybody’s mind. If you watch The Right Stuff, everybody talks about him as Mr. Integrity and he was, don’t get me wrong. Of all the people I’ve ever researched, he probably was the closest to his public image as people remember him. I did really enjoy reading about and talking to people who flew with him in the Korean War who are in their late 90s now. He did not make a lot of friends within his squadron because he was very aggressive as a pilot and took a lot of chances during combat missions. It turned a lot of people off, whether or not they thought he was arrogant or that he didn’t care about his fellow pilots. It wasn’t that, I don’t think. I think it was a he was trying to win the war all by himself. It was really interesting to hear people say these negative things about John Glenn. But he was also a great match for Ted Williams, because of all the people who flew with him, Ted Williams seemed to have loved to fly with John Glenn. He couldn’t fly with him enough. All these other people couldn’t stand flying with him. It says a lot about both guys.
They almost seem like complete opposites. Ted had a gruff personality and he was a big star at the time. John Glenn was an unknown military guy, and as you said, squeaky clean. What did they see in each other?
I think it started because they served together. I didn’t serve in the military. I never fought in the war. John Glenn even basically said, ‘When you fly in combat with a person, there’s a bond that you can’t even describe. So I think that’s the starting point for their friendship because they had each other’s lives in their hands. Glenn was there to look out for Williams, and Williams was there to look out for Glenn. Anyone who flew together probably had a special connection based on that. John Glenn said many times that he had a tremendous amount of respect for Ted Williams, because of the celebrity he was and what he had given up—$100,000 a year contract, biggest athlete in probably all of America, endorsements—and he did his job. He wasn’t happy about coming over to Korea and fighting, but when he was there, he did his job. I think John Glenn had tremendous respect for Ted Williams for that, not for the .406 or the Triple Crowns or anything like that, but because he served his country when he was asked. On the flip side, anyone who knew John Glenn, especially in that Marine Corps/fighter pilot community, even guys who didn’t like flying with him because he put their lives at risk, had an amazing amount of respect for his abilities and his integrity. But they had more in common than you would think. Yes, they were completely different personalities in every way—their day-to-day demeanor, their religious beliefs, their beliefs about family and marriage, their priorities, things like that. But I think they both shared a drive and a striving for perfection that few people can really appreciate. I think they saw that in each other. It’s one of the things that made them great. I think it’s one of the things that united them was they both were obsessive about specifics and details and nuance. The other thing, we are not major, major international celebrities.
Not yet.
True. We’ll check back in 20 years. I would guess there is a commonality for people who are larger than life and on a first-name basis with everyone, especially in the later years. As you said, early during the war, John Glenn was really nobody. But after he goes into NASA and becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, and a senator and a presidential candidate, he was just like Ted Williams in terms of fame and celebrity where you can’t walk to the corner store without people wanting your autograph or to take a picture with you. They were both in that fraternity. In the later years, I think that’s something that also united them. So, again, two totally different personalities with two totally different lives. But there was just a connection between them both as sort of young, virile fighter pilots and then later on, particularly when Ted Williams was dying, late in life as geriatric senior citizens.
John Glenn catches up or even surpasses Ted in fame toward the end of their lives. But the one most amazing things about the book is it seemed like Ted was his biggest cheerleader. Ted was really happy for him in a way that almost seemed out of character.
Yeah, one thing that I did learn about Ted Williams was he was gruff and didn’t get along with a lot of people. But there are a lot of people, particularly well-known celebrities, that he did—Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Carl Yastrzemski. And outside of baseball, people like President Nixon, and Governor Bush—he had a lot of friends. John Glenn obviously falls in that category. I think that was part of it. Ted Williams, obviously had a huge ego. There’s a famous quote, “No one can throw a fastball past me. God could come down from Heaven, and He couldn’t throw it past me.” He had a huge ego, but I do think he had tremendous appreciation and respect for other giants. Ted Williams looked at John Glenn like that. He looked at him as a giant in a lot of different avenues, and I think that’s one of the reasons why he was one of his biggest cheerleaders.
It’s unrelatable today to imagine, say, Mike Trout, getting called to war. You mentioned Ted didn’t want to go to Korea. How does he end up going?
You have to start with World War II to understand this. Everyone from that era went to World War II—Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, Bob Feller, they all went whether or not they actually served in combat. I think Joe DiMaggio really just played a lot of baseball, raising money for the army or the military, war bonds, and stuff like that. But Ted Williams went to the Navy during World War II and eventually into the Marine Corps. He stayed after the war, you could sort of choose to be discharged from the military, and most people did. But you can also stay in with this very distant, superficial relationship, called the inactive reserves, which meant you were still in the Marine Corps. You didn’t have to do anything to stay. You didn’t have to go fly planes over the weekends or go to training every so often as they do in the reserves today. Ted liked still being in the Marine Corps and even when he returned to play for the Red Sox, he was still in the reserves. He was promoted to first lieutenant, and then later, he was promoted to captain. So he liked that. He was pretty much assured that he would never have to go to war again. Whoever told him that was wrong. When Korea broke out, anyone who was in the reserves, if they were called back, they had to go and fight.
There are a lot of different versions of the story about how he actually gets called back. But I did run across this story about a Marine Corps major who was in charge of choosing these people based on their files. They’d look at the files and decide, ‘This guy passed all these tests, he’s healthy, he’s flown, we need to call them, bringing them back.’ The story I ran across, which I verified through the actual major’s son and in a few other sources, was that he just saw the name Williams and looked at the file, didn’t recognize him, and said, ‘Okay, we’ll contact this guy.’ He didn’t even realize it after the address on file was Fenway Park. Once word got out, it was a big story: the Marines were calling Ted Williams back. When the Marines realized this was Ted Williams, I don’t think they wanted to say, ‘Oh, it’s Ted Williams, never mind.’ Because that would have been a bad look getting preferential treatment. After the cat was out of the bag, they realized this would be good to show people that this is a serious battle and we need bodies, and maybe other people will enlist. It sounds to me in my research that they offered him the chance to have a ceremonial figurehead position where he wasn’t actually going to go to war, he would train on bases where he was going to train pilots. It sounds like from Ted’s perspective, he really didn’t want to do that. And remember, Ted did not serve in World War II in combat. He stayed in Pensacola throughout World War II training fighter pilots. I think part of him wanted the challenge of not only going to combat and doing his duty when really no one else was from the Major League Baseball celebrity pool. I think learning the jet was really appealing. It was the very, very beginning of the jet age. I think he was really intrigued by learning how to fly jets because he had just flown these propeller planes, which are not nearly as fast or sophisticated. So there were things about his recall that I think did entice him. Did he want to go put his life on the line every time he got in the cockpit? No, I don’t think so. But there were other things about it that I think did appeal. So yes, to your point, you’re not going to find Mike Trout, or Patrick Mahomes or whoever called into service, and you’re really not going to find them in a foreign country fighting war.
There are a lot of myths about Ted Williams, and I think everyone kind of knows Ted Williams, the ballplayer. What was Ted Williams the pilot like?
It’s a great question. I continue to point to something that I remember hearing as a kid long before I started doing this book and I have heard several times over the course of writing and researching this book. One of the people who repeated this was Bobby Knight, who was actually a good friend of Ted Williams. He said that Ted Williams was the only man who was the best ever at three different things: hitting a baseball, catching fish, and flying a fighter jet. If you have a hard time believing that, it’s because it’s not true. I believe that Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time, so you can check that box. Fishing, I wasn’t an expert, but I did talk to people who fished with them and they said he wasn’t the greatest fisherman they ever saw. But more specifically to the fighter pilot angle, he probably was a great prop propeller plane pilot. They said in World War II he was so good that they did keep him in Pensacola to train other pilots. A lot of people who flew with him, particularly cadets who weren’t the most experienced pilots, were amazed at what he could do, especially manning the guns on his plane. He reportedly was an amazing Corsairs pilot and I believe that. When he gets into the jet age, which is about six, seven years after World War II ends, the jet is this brand new plane that was invented in the late ’40s. I don’t think he was a very good jet pilot and you can understand that because he was playing left field for the Red Sox when they were learning how to fly those. He gets called back into service and in less than a year, really after a couple of months of retraining to learn the jet, he is sent to Korea. So he did not have a lot of experience. He also did not have any combat pilot experience. So when he got over to Korea, he was not a very good combat jet pilot. It’s easy for me to say seventy years later when I never flew in war. But I think a lot of pilots felt that way. Even John Glenn, who never said anything negative about anybody, sort of hinted that Ted Williams had problems flying the jet in combat in Korea, not that he was necessarily bad or caused any trouble, but he just wasn’t as experienced. So I think that it’s blown out of proportion how great Ted Williams was as a pilot, particularly as a jet pilot. But he should be given the credit for the bravery and courage to get back there and to do his job, and he did. His plane was shot up, he crashed landed at least twice. But he wasn’t the only pilot that happened to, especially when you have people on the ground shooting at you. The famous incident of him crashing his plane on his second mission is studied in depth in my book, and there are people who flew with him that day that said for him to survive, that shows you how good of a pilot he was because he manhandled the plane into the runway when the plane was completely falling apart and on fire. He was very, very equipped and capable. I think it had a lot to do with the legendary eyesight and hand-eye coordination that led him to hit .344 for his entire career.
How was he received in Korea by the others there?
It’s very interesting and I did as much as I could with this in the book since most of these people no longer being alive. In the ’50s guys were not going to say a bad word about Ted Williams to reporters, and if they were, it wasn’t going to get printed. There were guys who I think loved Ted Williams over there. They were probably more in awe of him than anything. They liked hanging out with him. John Glenn was a separate case, as he wasn’t necessarily wowed by his baseball skills, but by his service and his personality. But there were guys who really didn’t like him. I think part of that was jealousy. He got a lot of special treatment.
There’s one story in the book where they’re at the officer’s club, which is where they get to hang out after missions and it’s just for the officers. This person describes how higher-ranking officers, lieutenant colonels, and colonels would fall all over themselves and come up to Ted, ‘Hey, Ted, tell me about that home run.’ I think a lot of guys didn’t like that. They were all supposed to be equal fighting in this fight. But that wasn’t the case. And the other thing is, if you read the book, you’ll see that Ted Williams left Korea early, he missed a lot of time in service because of some ear and head ailments that sent him to the infirmary instead of to a hospital ship. He left Korea about a month before the war actually ended. I think that also fostered some dislike among his fellow pilots because they were still fighting. It’s funny, he threw out the first pitch of the All-Star Game in 1953. He just came back from Korea, photographers were snapping photos of him. It was a big deal, Ted Williams, war hero, comes back and throws out the first pitch. Most of those guys were still in Korea at the time, so they probably saw those photos. So while they were fighting this war, he’s out there hobnobbing. I think that was another thing.
I think the final thing is anybody who spent a lot of time with Ted Williams could see his short temper and irritability, and how he could be your buddy one day and the next day completely blow you off. I think a lot of guys experienced that. There were plenty of guys who did not like him over there. But there were plenty of guys who did. I think he endeared himself to certain people and others, he didn’t. We can all relate to that. There’s a quote in the book from a newspaper article, a profile someone did on Ted during the war. The person who said it wanted to be anonymous, I like to believe it was John Glenn who said this, it’s something like, ‘Ted Williams, boy, he doesn’t make friends easily. But when he does, it’s all the way.’ I think that perfectly summed up Ted Williams. He was slow to warm, but when he did he made a friend for life. So if you were in that category, like John Glenn clearly was, and a handful of other pilots were, then you understood it. If he didn’t warm to you, like one of the pilots who I interviewed who is still alive, and 70 years after the war ended, he still hated Ted Williams.
Did your opinions change on Ted throughout the course of the book?
I always had tremendous respect for his baseball achievements. Even as a kid I knew 521 home runs, the Triple Crown, the two MVPs, the .406, the home run in the All-Star Game. But I had always heard he was a jerk, that he was mean to reporters and didn’t get along with fans, and that he once threw a baseball at a fan. I went into this assuming I was going to find out more about his temper and things that we didn’t like about him. Most of those things I think he earned. I think if you really ask him, he would say, ‘Yeah, I did all those things, and I was wrong.’ But I really think that he had a big heart. I think he really cared about his friends. He really cared about John Glenn. I interviewed his daughter and she told me he would write checks or send money to old retired ballplayers, not major celebrity ballplayers, players who couldn’t make the rent or pay hospital bills. He would send money and he didn’t want any credit for it. He cared about people. I think that’s what really changed my perspective for Ted. He was so complex. He could be a real jerk—don’t get me wrong—and he did not treat his children, his wives, or his mistresses very well. But he had a big heart when it came to it. And I think that’s the thing that I pulled away most about Ted, outside of the military or baseball, is nobody is their worst day. There was much more to him than the superficial, one line you read about him on Wikipedia.
There was something in the book that I did not know about him and I’m so glad you included it. It was his relationship with his dog.
I’m a dog person and I loved putting that in the book. I thought it was great. This is curmudgeon old Ted Williams, who is famous for pissing everybody off. But he’s got this dog in his lap, the dog follows him around everywhere. He says, ‘I love this old guy’ and wants to be buried with him. It was something that didn’t quite mesh with what we think of Ted Williams. He softened. That was something that I noticed when he was in his 70s or late 60s. The relationship with his dog, Slugger, is a good example that I’ve seen. I wish I could have had more room for pictures in the book because I had two or three really good photos of him with Slugger. They don’t show the Ted Williams you think of.
With Ted Williams’ legacy, people always say, ‘Oh, he could have had 700 home runs, he would have had 3,500 hits. Obviously, he missed a good amount of time in the military. What did Ted think about this?
I’m sure Ted would have liked to play all those years. He would have liked to have hit 700 home runs or maybe bat .400 again. But I truly believe that he didn’t have any regrets about it. Not that he could have changed it if he wanted to. But I don’t think he stayed up at night thinking, ‘Oh god, if I hadn’t served twice, I would have had all these other records.’ For one, everybody was doing it, for the most part. DiMaggio missed time, Feller would have won 300 games easily and had well over 3,000 strikeouts. Hank Greenberg may have hit 61 home runs one year, who knows? So I think that aspect of World War II, you can dismiss because everybody was doing it. I think he got more out of serving in Korea for his legacy than in those two years playing baseball would have achieved for him. On his birthday if you go on Twitter, it’s not just, ‘Happy Birthday, Ted, last man to hit .400, here’s his home run from the ’41 All-Star Game.’ It’s clips of him serving in Korea. It’s clips talking about how he was John Glenn’s wingman. I think in the grand scheme of things, it did more for the myth, the legacy, the Paul Bunyan figure of Ted Williams than playing in 1952 and 1953 would have. So yes, he would have done a lot more. Who knows, he may have torn his knee up. If you talk to 100 baseball fans who know what they’re talking about, most of them are going to say Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time. So it didn’t matter that he missed the years in the war. And I am of the belief that he is the greatest hitter who ever lived.
Adam Lazarus‘ The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams is available here.
Scott Bolohan thinks Barry Bonds was the best hitter of all time, but doesn’t like to admit it.
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