So picture the scene. It’s the summer of 1966, not even three years since Martin Luther King Jr’s speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It wasn’t even a year and a half since the first march from Selma to Montgomery, and not even a year after the Watts Riots.

Gutsy stuff from the best hitter in baseball.

And lastly, I have to mention the sad, embarrassing fact that the Boston Red Sox were the last major league baseball team to integrate their roster, waiting until 1959 to bring up a black player from the minor leagues.

Here’s the text of Williams’ speech:

“I guess every player thinks about going into the Hall of Fame. Now that the moment has come for me I find it difficult to say what is really in my heart. But I know it is the greatest thrill of my life. I received two hundred and eighty-odd votes from the writers. I know I didn’t have two hundred and eighty-odd friends among the writers. I know they voted for me because they felt in their minds and in their hearts that I rated it, and I want to say to them: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Today I am thinking about a lot of things. I am thinking about my playground director in San Diego, Rodney Luscomb, my high school coach, Wos Caldwell, and my managers, who had so much patience with me–fellows like Frank Shellenback, Donie Bush, Joe Cronin, and Joe McCarthy. I am thinking of Eddie Collins, who had so much faith in me–and to be in the Hall with him particularly, as well as those other great players, is a great honor. I’m sorry Eddie isn’t here today.

I’m thinking of Tom Yawkey. I have always said it: Tom Yawkey is the greatest owner in baseball. I was lucky to have played on the club he owned, and I’m grateful to him for being here today.

But I’d not be leveling if I left it at that. Ballplayers are not born great. They’re not born great hitters or pitchers or managers, and luck isn’t a big factor. No one has come up with a substitute for hard work. I’ve never met a great player who didn’t have to work harder at learning to play ball than anything else he ever did. To me it was the greatest fun I ever had, which probably explains why today I feel both humility and pride, because God let me play the game and learn to be good at it.

The other day Willie Mays hit his five hundred and twenty-second homerun. He has gone past me, and he’s pushing, and I say to him, ‘go get ‘em Willie.’

Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as anybody else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren’t given the chance.

As time goes on I’ll be thinking baseball, teaching baseball, and arguing for baseball to keep it right on top of American sports, just as it is in Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, and other Latin American and South American countries. I know Casey feels the same way. . . . I also know I’ll lose a dear friend if I don’t stop talking. I’m eating into his time, and that is unforgivable. So in closing, I am greatful and know how lucky I was to have been born an American and had the chance to play the game I love, the greatest game.”

Ted Williams
July 25, 1966
Cooperstown, New York

A post-script – both Paige and Gibson were two of nine players elected to the hall by the “Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues” in 1971 and 1972. And just five years ago another Special Committee on Negro Leagues elected 17 more Negro leaguers.

Apparently ace pitcher Cliff Lee didn’t sign with the Rangers or the Yankees last night, and instead signed with Philadelphia!

From the Inquirer: “Lee returning to Phillies in five-year deal“:

Pinch yourself, Phillies fans.

What used to be fantasy has now become reality.

Cliff Lee, even after being offered more money by the American League champion Texas Rangers and the 27-time World Series champion New York Yankees, has decided to sign with the Phillies.

That’s the kind of Philadelphia story most of you probably thought you’d never read.

My anti-Yankee sentiment had me all excited, until I realized that Philly now has Lee, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels.

I’m calling it right now: in eleven months it’s going to be a Philadelphia/Boston World Series.

Key quote:

With Gonzalez reportedly having agreed to a seven-year, $154 million extension to his contract, the Red Sox have invested $296 million in a span of four days. The additions of Gonzalez and Crawford, two stars in their prime, should set the team up as contenders for years to come.

Red Sox Nation just got an early Christmas present …

Now that’s called diversifying! They own the Sox, Fenway Park, 80 percent of NESN, 50 percent of NASCAR’s Roush Fenway Racing, and now a British football club?

Today’s the final game of the season for my Boston Red Sox, after having been statistically eliminated from the post season last week. Both the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays are mathematically guaranteed to make the playoffs; one team will be the American League East champions and one will be the wild card.

Today’s game of the Sox versus the Yankees, isn’t going to shake out like Major League Baseball’s wanted, with baseball’s most storied rivalry to end the season. But it is still key to the Yankees winning the AL East title, as opposed to the less prestigious wild card; the Yankees and Devil Rays are tied for the lead in the AL East, so the Yankees need to win today, and have the Rays lose, to win the AL East.

Every other scenario gives the division to Tampa Bay.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Check out this article from the Boston Globe: “Wakefield, Looney Tunes helping out kids.”

Sweet.

Says something about that division, doesn’t it?

Wha?

Key stats:

With 17 more innings, he’ll tie Cy Young for second most innings pitched in Red Sox history and could pass Roger Clemens (whom he trails by 64 2/3) by the All-Star break.

He’s the oldest player in the American League, and second only to the Phillies’ Jamie Moyer, Wakefield turns 44 in August.

If Wakefield is still playing in May of next year (he is signed though 2011), he will become the oldest Red Sox player ever, a distinction currently held by something of an interloper. Deacon McGuire was 85 days shy of his 45th birthday when he played his final of seven games in a Boston uniform in 1908.

Just how long has Wakefield been around? He actually played on the last winning Pirates team, a franchise that has posted 17 straight losing seasons, a record for all four major sports.

Over the weekend I saw this ad, and, while probably for a different program (no “Live”, no Gammons) it’s at least a little more like Spring Break:

At least they don’t have Tom Caron’s ugly mug in there …