I invited the many relatives I had called or visited, and 33 relatives from Ted Williams’ extended family attended the celebration at San Diego’s Balboa Park at the Hall of Champions. I had met Sam and John Theodore “Ted” Williams (sons of the Hall of Famer’s brother Danny) during a memorial event at Fenway Park in 2002. 6Īfter his death, I helped organize three celebrations of Ted Williams’ life during 2002–03, first at the Boston Public Library, then at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, and lastly (working with the local SABR chapter) at the San Diego Hall of Champions. It was the first time the story had been explained. That Ted Williams could be considered Hispanic came as a total surprise to those who never guessed the “Williams” surname might have masked another element of his ethnicity. The article was published on June 2, 2002. I kept gathering information and then wrote an article for the Boston Globe Magazine. Over time, I visited San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Ted’s uncle Ernesto Ponce in El Paso. From left: Pete Venzor, Saul Venzor, Natalia Hernandez, Paul Venzor. Three of Ted Williams’s uncles with his grandmother Natalia Hernandez in Santa Barbara, circa 1954. He’d say, ‘It was an entirely different time back then.’” 5 He was afraid they wouldn’t let him play. 4 As Al Cassidy, the executor of Ted Williams’ estate, told writer Ben Bradlee about Ted’s early days, “Ted didn’t want anyone to know he was part Mexican. As Ted himself had written in My Turn at Bat of growing up in San Diego in the 1930s, he was well aware of the racial prejudice he would have faced, with “no doubt” about it. It didn’t feel awkward, but it was clearly something he preferred not to talk about. I don’t know any other relatives that had much ability.” 3Īnd then he changed the subject. He said, “He was my mother’s brother…He was a pretty good baseball player.
While I was accumulating more information about Ted’s family background - on both sides of the family - I had the opportunity to have lunch with Ted at his Florida home in April 2000. In Saul Venzor’s case, his 1963 obituary in the Santa Barbara News-Press said that he had given Ted Williams’ his first baseball lessons and that Ted had told friends that “Mr. When I learned the names of Ted’s uncles and aunts, I dug into more research. One of May’s brothers, Saul Venzor, was an accomplished baseball pitcher in Santa Barbara. May met her future husband, Sam Williams, in the Salvation Army.
The family ultimately made its way to Santa Barbara. Pablo Venzor and Natalia Hernandez Venzor entered the US at El Paso around 1890. Both of Ted Williams’ maternal grandparents had come to the United States from Valle de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico. Talking with both Manny and Aunt Sarah, I was able to put together a kind of family tree. She was 94 years old at the time, but very sharp.
He was a treasure trove of family lore and put me in touch with Sarah Diaz of Santa Barbara. I wanted to find out more about May Williams’ family background, but her surname was misspelled in Ted’s book (Venzer for Venzor) which stymied further research.Īfter Jim and my book came out, we heard from one of Ted’s nephews, Manuel Herrera. I hadn’t read My Turn At Bat for maybe 10 or 15 years, but the sentence probably caught my eye that time around because early in the 1990s I had married a woman of Mexican-American ancestry. I was re-reading his autobiography while trying to organize material for the 1997 Masters Press book that I co-authored with Jim Prime: Ted Williams, A Tribute. “Her maiden name was Venzer, she was part Mexican and part French, and that’s fate for you if I had had my mother’s name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California.” 1
It was a 44-word sentence about his mother, which I really only focused on the third time I read the book: There was one sentence that I read in Ted Williams’ autobiography, My Turn At Bat, which set me off on a personal research journey that took me some unexpected places and raised a few eyebrows along the way.
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