Ted Williams, the name.

My name is Ted Williams, I was born as Edward and this is what is on my birth certificate. I come from the proud progressive First Nation known as Rama. I grew up there 1 of 15 children to Leland and Sheila Williams. I have connections to Shawanaga, Nawash, Curve Lake, Hiawatha, Georgina, through my ancestors, and this is only what I am aware of. Our neighbour actually gave me the name Ted Williams. I came home with my mother after being born, and he came across the road to introduce himself to me and asked my mother, “what is the boy’s name?” Mom said, “Edward Anthony Williams”. My neighbour, George Sawyer, promptly said, “no it’s not”, his name is Ted Williams, after the great Boston Red Sox star of the 40′s and 50′s, the last major leaguer to hit for a .400 average. I was born in 1956. I did not know who Ted Williams was until I was about 10 years old, when I went to the library to look him up, my first real research. My research found that he was a great baseball player who hit for power, average, and was the cleanup batter in the lineup. A pretty decent ball player, one of the best of all-time, who was known as “Teddy ballgame”. While we grew up in Rama we spent alot of time swimming, playing road hockey and during the summer time, softball. I would practice for hours on end in front of the house throwing a golf ball against the bottom tier of the cement blocks catching the ball as it shot back swiftly towards me. I would switch to an indian rubber ball at times. This would increase my reflexes and movement from right to left and back again depending on how the ball reacted from the cement blocks. I had a good glove hand as a result of hours and hours of practice. One other game I would play as a child was hitting stones with a stick again for hours at a time. My brothers and sisters may have thought I was out of my mind when I would just hit stones about the size of your thumb with a stick as thick as two fingers put together. I did this because I loved fastball, baseball, and I played this imaginary game regularly. You see off to the left hand side was a stand of willow trees about 30 feet high. This was the “green monster” of Fenway Park in Boston, I would launch stone after stone over the imaginary wall, the wall of willow tree and leaves. I would hit stones to each part of the imaginary ball park I had created in my own mind. I never struck out I always got a hit. I played this game so often that I would have to take a wheel barrow and shovel down the stone filled road, and scoop up more stones and take them back to front of our house and on the road so I could continue to play. I did this for about 4 summers. Now Rama had a junior softball team which played in a local rural league, we all played ball, we could all play each position in this softball league. I was the cleanup batter, I pitched played 2nd base, 3rd base and some shortstop. Now the softball is fairly large, and the bat is also a larger tool to hit the ball with, and so when it came time to hit the softball coming at you about 60 miles per hour, and you were accustomed to picking a stone out of the air with a stick and hitting it about 100 feet. Hitting a softball was not as dificult a task as one might think. My hand eye coordination had been developed quite well. I would lead the team in runs batted in, in home runs and batting average. Eventually, and in my own mind I became Ted Williams the great baseball player. We were difficult to beat and would win many championships over the years as a junior and senior softball player. Let me ask you, who do you want to become?.

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