There Goes Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived

Hall of Famer Ted Williams began playing baseball professionally at age 17, joining the then minor league San Diego Padres and playing his entire major league career with the Boston Red Sox. With subtle rhythm, Tavares’s prose poem depicts the course of Williams’s career, from his tireless commitment to practice (“He watches his swing in the mirror,/ again and again and again./ Two on, two out, last of the ninth...”) through events that took him away from the field, including the eruption of two wars. But Williams always returned to baseball: rejoining the Red Sox after his plane is shot down in Korea, Williams hits 13 home runs in 37 games and is named Player of the Decade for the 1950s (Tavares briefly notes some of Williams’s less positive traits in an afterword). With smooth, sweeping lines and naturalistic details, Tavares’s mixed-media artwork conveys Williams’s joyful devotion to his sport. Ages 6–10. Agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary Studio. (Feb.)