A "Tale of 2 Cities"- the New York press and the Boston press ?

Question

The New York sports-writers nearly worshiped Joe D. while their brethen in Boston were nearly united in their constant criticism of Ted Williams.

What was the reason for the Boston press deriding Williams?
What did Ted do "on the field" that justified the crtiticism? Or was it reasons irrelevant to how Williams played the game?

Answer 1

i think its how he played the game

Answer 2

That's an interesting question.

DiMaggio was more of the norm than the exception back then. Most athletic stars received plenty of hero worship in the 1940's. Not many discouraging words were heard about any of them. DiMaggio sure didn't get many. And Joe wasn't exactly "Mr. Quotes," but merely silent.

Williams had a couple of different problems. When he arrived in 1939, he was very immature and didn't follow the "seen but not heard" motto of most rookies. He loved to hit and didn't care about anything else. He reacted so violently that he became a pretty easy target.

That lack of deference may have cost him in his relations with the Boston newspaper corps, which already had a reputation as being on the difficult side. A couple of the columnists of the time, notably Dave "The Colonel" Egan, built up a reputation for being tough. It was thought to increase readership. In hindsight, Egan's columns were mean-spirited and basically unfair.

As newspapers started dying in the 1950's the situation became a bit easier. Everyone, including Williams, did some mellowing in that decade.

It was a different time. We've become more homogenized these days, with more national coverage (television, ESPN)and the Internet. Standards are higher in some ways, although stalking A-Rod in Toronto showed that sometimes we can still stoop pretty low.

Answer 3

I saw little criticism of Ted Williams by the Boston media. If it was more than Dimaggio, maybe it was because Williams wasn't a media whore like Dimaggio was away from the game of baseball.

Answer 4

Ted Williams was a guy that really kept to himself a lot instead of talking to the media. When a player is like that, the media often harasses them in hopes to get a rise out of them. Media people can be such jerks!

Answer 5

there the media there *** holes that all i can say te d was a amazing ball player he even went to the the military