My name is Ted Williams, born as Edward, this is what is on my birth certificate. I come from the proud progressive First Nation known as Rama. Growing up there 1 of 15 children to Leland and Sheila Williams, with connections to Shawanaga, Nawash, Curve Lake, Hiawatha and Georgina through my ancestors and this is only what I am aware of. Our neighbour actually gave me the name Ted Williams, when my mother came home with me after being born. 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, he was the last major leaguer to hit for a .400 average. Born in 1956, I did not know who Ted Williams was until about 10 years old and decided to go to the library to look him up, actually my first real research. My research found that he was a great baseball player who hit for power and average as well as the cleanup batter in the lineup. A pretty decent ball player, one of the best of all-time who was known as “Teddy ballgame.” Growing up in Rama, my friends and I spent alot of time swimming, playing road hockey and during the summer time, softball. I loved to practice for hours on end in front of the our 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 periodically to an indian rubber ball, this was faster, bigger and it hurt when you caught it. This would increase my reflexes and movement from right to left and back again, depending on how the ball reacted off the cement blocks. As a result of hours and hours of practice, my glove hand was excellent. 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 watching me for hours, just hitting stones about the size of your thumb with a stick, as thick as two fingers put together. You see, I just loved fastball and baseball, this was my imaginary game each day. In my imaginary game, 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. Launching stone after stone over the imaginary wall, the wall of willow trees and leaves. Hitting stones to each part of the imaginary ball park, that had been created in my own mind. Never striking out, I always got a hit. Playing this game so often, I would have to take a wheel barrow and shovel down the stone filled road, scooping up more stones and take them back to the front of our house. Dumping the full wheel barrow on the road so I could continue to play, this went on for about 4 summers. Now Rama had a junior softball team they play in the local rural league. As kids, my friends all played ball, we played each position in this softball league. I was the cleanup batter, played pitcher, 2nd base, 3rd base and some shortstop. Now, the softball is fairly large, the bat is also a larger tool to hit the ball with. So when it came time to hit the softball coming at you about 60 miles per hour, I was accustomed to picking a stone out of the air with a stick, hitting it out 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, leading the team in runs batted in, home runs and batting average. Eventually, and in my own mind, I became Ted Williams-the great baseball player. Our softball team was difficult to beat and would win many championships over the years as a Junior and Senior softball players.
Let me ask you, who do you want to become?
