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Tebbetts would look carefully at it and then say, with a touch of regret in his voice, “It’s a great jacket, Jack, but it’s just a little bit off on the left sleeve.” Batts and Parnell would quickly agree. Visibly upset, Kramer would look in the full-length mirror, and yes, the left sleeve did look a little off. So it went. No matter what jacket he tried on, Tebbetts spotted a flaw in the left sleeve, and the other two players agreed. The following morning Kramer took his entire wardrobe to a tailor, delighting Tebbetts and incurring needless tailoring bills. That, thought some of the players, was just Tebbetts getting back at Kramer for the previous spring, when Tebbetts had arrived in camp with an enormous trunk filled with clothes and announced that he, the lowly Tebbetts, had as many jackets as Kramer. “Yeah, Birdie, but my jackets fit me,” Kramer had answered. But to Tebbetts it was all in good fun; he had played on winning teams in the past in Detroit, and this felt like a winning team.
    Much of the good feeling in the Red Sox camp seemed to come from Ted Williams. He was at once a star and a little kid, eager to be back at that which he loved best aftersome six months away. Like many of his teammates he was a serious fisherman, but unlike them he didn’t use the time in Florida as a means of getting out on the water. For him, when spring training started fishing ended; he became a full-time baseball player. This spring he seemed more at ease than ever. When writers pressed him for his goals, he talked about leading the American League in hitting, which he had already done four times. “No one but Cobb has done it more than four times,” he said. “If I can win it this year I’ll be ahead of Harry Heilmann [who also had done it four times]. I’ll be second in the record book. There’s no point in even thinking of catching up with Cobb.”
    Matt Batts caught a lot of batting practice that spring, and he loved catching when Williams was up. Batts had barely made the team as a rookie the previous year, and yet here he was with the great star, talking to him as though they were equals. “Goddamn Batts, did you see that,” Williams would say as he lashed a ball on a line to right. In would come another pitch. Again a swing, again a line drive. “Batts, I’m going to tell you a secret—I’m good and I’m getting better.” In came another pitch. Again he swung, again the ball hurtled deep into the outfield. “I can’t stand it, I’m so good,” he said. Then, as the pitcher got ready, he would say, “Batts, I’m going to show you something.” This time he swung and the ball sailed into left field. “See that, Batts—I can hit to left field. I can hit there any damn time I want. But my money’s in right field—that’s what they pay me to do.” He would take one more swing, Batts remembered, hit it again, and leave the batter’s box most reluctantly. “Goddamn, but this is fun,” he would say. “I could do this all day—and they pay me for it.” Batts thought: He makes it easier to remember that baseball was supposed to be fun.

CHAPTER 2
    T HE YANKEE CAMP IN spring training that year was not nearly so harmonious. There was a new manager, Casey Stengel, and the veteran players were suspicious of him, in part because they were still angry that Bucky Harris had been fired (George Weiss, the general manager, had thought him too lax in his control of the players). Also, Stengel brought with him a reputation as something of a buffoon. He came by that reputation honestly, for as a young man he had blended love of laughter with love of the game. There were many famous Stengelisms. One was the time he had barnstormed with a team dressed up as a hayseed, to mix in with the rural crowd watching the game. Suddenly the hayseed came out of the crowd, claiming he could do better. An argument ensued between him and the uniformed players. Reluctantly the players let him bat. The pitcher grooved the