In 1940 my uncle was a fireman in Westchester, outside New York City. Uncle John Smith. A great guy. As a kid in San Diego I used to hang around the neighborhood fire station, playing pinochle with the firemen, sometimes getting to ride the trucks. It was always an attractive place for me. The first year I bought a new car, a big green Buick, I took it to the station and parked it out back and put a shine on it that must have been an inch thick, and the firemen would ask me about the great players I had seen and about my home runs. So it was natural for me to be attracted to my uncle's fire station in Mount Vernon, and I went down to see him whenever I could.

By then I was already going my own way. I have never cultivated "important" people, perhaps because I did not feel comfortable in a necktie crowd. My friends were the guys who delivered the magazines, the highway cop, the guy who took care of my car and wanted a ticket now and then, the clubhouse boy, the guy who ran the theater. I was a movie hound. I'd clip the movie schedule out of the paper and maybe see two or three a day.

I used to go down to an old theater in the old part of Boston to see cowboy movies, and I'd get in those wooden seats, kind of leaning back with my feet over the front seat like kids do, and one day I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Where the hell you think you are, home?" I looked up, and this guy says, "Take your feet down." He was the manager. Later when I was coming out he stopped me. "Aren't you Ted Williams?," We wound up going for a milk shake. His name was Johnny Buckley, and he has been one of my dearest friends ever since.

There was a place in Foxboro, outside of Boston, the Lafayette house, where I'd go with a friend of mine to eat because it was quiet and away from things and they'd give me extra cuts of meat. We were coming back from there one night, going a little fast down this hill, and suddenly we've got a patrol car on us. The patrolman was a corporal with the Massachusetts State Police. He gave us a little lecture and told us to watch it, but he didn't give us a ticket.

A few days later I was going out there by myself and the same car stopped me. This time he said it was just a social call. He said he had recognized the car -- big shiny Buick with California license plates -- and recognized me from playing ball. We got to talking and I got to thinking what a lonely job he had, so I invited him to have dinner with me. The patrolman's name was John Blake, and it wasn't long before we were fishing together and he was taking me to the police range to shoot. Friends for life. Same story.

It wasn't really a matter of being a lone wolf. But I didn't smoke. I couldn't stand the smell of tobacco. In those days I didn't drink. I liked to hunt and fish. I liked to walk. I liked a certain type of movie. I didn't want to see Gone With the Wind; I wanted to see John Wayne. And I wanted to do it now, bang, get it over with, and be home early. I've always criticized myself for the times I've let other guys dictate what happened to me. Like going someplace I didn't want to go, or eating late. Eating is a real sore spot with me. I don't want to hear "Let's wait awhile," because all of a sudden it's nine o'clock, and when I eat late I can't sleep well and I don't feel well the next day. I don't believe there was ever a ballplayer who ate in his room as often as Ted Williams. I'd ten times rather sit home and watch a good TV program than go out to some phony-baloney cocktail party and listen to a lot of bull. I think a lot of people are like that but are afraid to admit it.

I didn't have a great deal in common with most of my teammates. I mean, I liked them all. I can't think of one I didn't like. My roommate was Broadway Charley Wagner and he was a great guy, but a different type of guy. He didn't like to fish. He liked to eat later. He liked to dress up and make a little entrance someplace. They used to say I dressed like I was going to spend the day at the stadium, and that's about right. I still think neckties are made to get in your soup.

Charley Wagner was my roommate for a long time and we always got along. He was a pitcher. I knocked him out of bed one morning swinging a bat. I hit the bedpost and the bed collapsed, and the way Charley told it he looked up at me, half asleep, thinking I was the avenging angel or something, and he heard me say, "Boy, what power!" Being my roommate could be a nuisance in a lot of ways, the habits I had, so when I came back from Korea in 1953 they let me room alone. That way I could cut off the phone calls and put up the No Disturb sign and not be bothered.

I liked every one of my teammates, but I just didn't socialize with them. The only one I was real close to then and for a long time was Bobby Doerr. Bobby liked the same things I did. He liked the movies, he liked milk shakes. We talked hunting and fishing by the hour. And we'd walk -- we'd walk and he'd talk about Oregon, and I'd talk about shooting ducks, and we'd talk hitting. I got to know his mother and father. His little father was one of the dearest guys. He was retired from the telephone company and I remember he got Bobby to invest in telephone stock, and after that some real good timberland in Oregon. I always envied Bobby the father he had, a father who was close to him, telling him what to do, encouraging him, helping him with his finances.

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