"He is one of a kind,'' Tony Gwynn said. "His memory was unbelievable. He could dig in to his memory bank, and pull out all sorts of stuff. All good hitters have that, but he had it to a higher level than anyone I've ever met. It was uncanny the stuff he could pull out. He knew the pitcher, the weather, the way the ball was carrying that day, the thickness of the grass.''
In 2003, comedian Billy Crystal was asked, on the field at Yankee Stadium before one of the league championship series games, for his first recollection of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. "I was sitting right up there [first-base side, upper deck],'' Crystal said. "In the second game of a doubleheader, Ted Williams strikes out against Bobby Shantz. Thirty years later, I meet Mr. Williams. I said, 'I have home movies of you striking out against Bobby Shantz in the second game of a doubleheader at the Stadium.' He looked at me and I swear, Tim, he says, 'Curveball, low and away.' He said, 'Ellie [Yankees catcher Elston Howard] dropped the ball and tagged me, right?' I said, 'Yes, that's it!'"
Williams remembered details about random at-bats because hitting a baseball was far more than a skill to him, it was a science. Tom Grieve is a television game analyst for the Texas Rangers. He played for Williams in 1970 with the Washington Senators and in 1972 for the Rangers. Grieve said he never met anyone who knew more about hitting, and explained it better, than Williams.
"Ted was debating whether to play in the Jimmy Fund Game in Boston [in 1972], and he wasn't sure until Mr. [Tom] Yawkey [Red Sox owner at the time] asked him personally to play,'' Grieve said. "So he did. He came into the dugout looking for a bat. He was in a zone now, not like the rest of us. I used a W183 bat, I had no idea what it stood for, but he picked out that bat, and I later found out the W stood for Williams! He grabbed the bat and said, 'Now this is a damn good bat.' Then he went looking for pine tar and screamed out, 'There's too much oil in this pine tar, no wonder you guys can't hit.' So he walked to the plate, and Lee Stange was throwing. Ted screamed at him, 'Now throw the ball hard, don't be throwing any s--- up here.' He took the first pitch, he always took the first pitch. He was a sarcastic guy, I looked at a teammate and said, 'I hope he swings and misses 20 times.' He took 15 swings, and hit every one on the sweet spot. He hit every one hard.''
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