Tag: Baseball

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Ted Williams

from the Boston Public Library

Florida’s population in  1850 was 87,445.  The population of Texas, also granted statehood in 1845, was 212,592 (which included at least one of my great grandfathers, Joseph M. McReynolds, and another great-great grandfather, Samuel Elliott).  As of 2015, Florida was estimated to have a population of 20.24 million, making it the third most populous state behind California and Texas. In 1900 the population of Florida was 528,542.  Between 1960 and 2010 the population grew from 6,789,443 to 18,801,310.

I don’t think I have any ancestors who landed in Florida, and Texans don’t go to Florida to retire, but that’s what I’m finding out about Florida.  People come to Texas for oil and gas, or maybe medicine, NASA, or agriculture; people go to California for tech and agriculture and to be stars; people go to the Sunshine State for, well, sunshine. The Boys are Where They Are for sunshine.  The 17% retiree population is in Florida for sunshine.  It is the state of land speculation and oranges and sunshine. South Florida is further south than Brownsville, Texas, which I thought was as far south as the world went.  The average temperature of West Palm Beach, which is where we’re a’heading for our fishing foray, is 75.35°, which is higher even than the average for Houston,  69.05°.  It better not be humid.

And there were plenty of carpetbaggers after sunshine, from Henry Flagler to Governor Rick Scott. Ernest Hemingway carpetbagged.  Tennessee Williams carpetbagged.  Jack Kerouac carpetbagged. It’s a thing.

Going to Florida for baseball and fishing, I’ve been thinking a lot about the carpet baggerTed Williams.  There was never a purer hitter than Ted Williams.  He was the last player to hit .400, and maybe the last ever (though I have some vague hope for Jose Altuve).  He spent three prime seasons in military service as a navy fighter pilot in World War II and Korea.  He didn’t get along with Boston fans, for which one can hardly blame him, didn’t get along with his players when he managed, didn’t get along with the Boston press, was a 17-year All Star, a two-time MVP, and between 1941 and 1958 led the league in hitting six separate times. His head is frozen in a cryogenic lab, and I don’t think the lab has ever been paid. 

A generation bought Ted Williams sporting gear from Sears Roebuck: he was the paragon of the late mid-century sportsman. Williams’ had a 3,193-square-foot home on Upper Magecumbe Key on Islamorada.  There was a Sears Ted Williams model boat and motor, and Ted Williams shotguns and baseball gloves and weights. There was Ted Williams fishing gear. He was one of a group including Lefty Kreh, Joe Brooks, Chico Fernandez, and A.J. McClane who invented fly fishing for bonefish.  At one point Williams claimed to have caught 1000 bonefish and 1000 tarpon and 1000 Atlantic salmon, so he hit 1.000 for something.  He was obsessed with fly fishing. He was obsessed with fishing. I suspect he was as opinionated and fussy of an angler as he was a manager, if not a batter.

I’m not sure he would have been fun to fish with.  He would have been great to fish with.

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Florida

When I told Kris I was starting a blog, she asked me if it was about baseball. I’m a pretty obsessed baseball fan, but write about baseball? I’ll leave writing about baseball to people with some actual knowledge.

That said, the team of which I am a fan, the Houston Astros, won the World Series last year–you may have heard, but it never gets old in the telling.  Kris goes to most games with me, and we go to a lot of games. At games Kris stops watching by the third inning and reads magazines (pre-internet) or plays Words with Friends (post-internet). From April to October, if I’m not at the game, most nights I watch the television in my office and talk to my friends on the internet about the game’s progress.

A month or so ago Kris announced that we were going to West Palm Beach in February for the first games of spring training.  Kris now is not only a theoretical fan–she goes to games–she apparently wants to go to games.  I doubt she’ll give up Words with Friends though.

I never thought seriously about going to spring training, and I had already booked us to Tampa in June when the Astros play the Rays. It’s apparently the thick of tarpon season, and Kris has caught a tarpon but I haven’t.

We’re flying into Fort Lauderdale on Friday February 23 and flying out the next Sunday.  I’ve booked us a guide for a half day on Saturday morning, one Scott Hamilton at Fly Fishing Extremes.  It’s my first chance at a foreign fish since I started this, and since my January luck with Texas fish has been so poor, it may be my first chance for a fish.

*Actually, during two of the ‘Stros three 100+ loss seasons, 2011-2013, I wrote a weekly game recap on a local website.  They rarely had much to do with the games, but if I may say so myself they were pretty funny. Nothing else about those seasons was funny.