STL All Sports

Shortly after Ted Williams broke in with the Boston Red Sox, the great left-handed hitter went into a terrible batting slump that left him as depressed and unhappy as a young man could be. To a reporter who happened to catch him deep in the dumps, the impetuous youth blurted out that he wished he could be a fireman instead of a ballplayer.

The next day, Boston faced the Chicago White Sox in Comiskey Park. When Ted came to bat, a roar went up from the crowd. The clowns in the White Sox lineup had appeared in front of their dugout dressed in firehats and were dragging after them a long length of fire hose and making loud sounds to indicate fire sirens. Suddenly the gleeful sounds changed to gasps of horror. Just outside the ball park a big lumber yard was beginning to go up in flames. As the black and heavy smoke billowed up against the sky, almost every fire engine in Chicago roared past the stadium, their sirens and bells going full blast.

As for Ted Williams, a player never known for his sense of humor, when he heard all the excitement and noise going on outside the ball park, grumbled: "What a bunch of comics in this town! When they pull a gag on you here, they sure give it all they've got!"