From THE WINGMEN by Adam Lazarus, reprinted with permission from Kensington Books. Copyright 2023.
Twitter/X: @Lazarusa57
In one of the more unusual intersections of American history, astronaut-turned-senator John Glenn and baseball legend Ted Williams served together in the same Marine Corps fighter squadron during the Korean War. In Spring 1953 Major Glenn and Captain Williams flew combat missions — side-by-side aboard matching F9F Panther jets — into Communist North Korea, routinely dodging anti-aircraft and small arms fire.
When the war ended that summer, Williams and Glenn returned home to resume the separate and disparate careers that would eventually establish each man’s undeniable place in the pantheon of American icons. Across the ensuing decades they remained in touch — through letters, telegrams, Christmas cards, phone calls — but eventually became closest toward the end of Williams’ life in 2002.
A new nonfiction book by author Adam Lazarus, entitled The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, chronicles the relationship which lasted nearly half a century.
The following excerpt focuses on a highlight of the friendship. After the Korean War, Glenn became a military test pilot, a career that culminated in the first-ever transcontinental supersonic flight. “Project Bullet,” as he dubbed it, saw Glenn fly from Southern California to Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field in three hours and twenty-three minutes. At 722 miles per hour — well beyond the speed of sound — the flight represented a remarkable aviation achievement and earned Glenn national acclaim.
While Glenn conceived, planned, and ultimately executed Project Bullet during the spring and summer of 1957, Ted Williams enjoyed one of the finest seasons of his long career. Not only did the 38-year-old left fielder for the Boston Red Sox match Yankees star Mickey Mantle home run for home run but by early June The Splendid Splinter was hitting well over .400, sixteen years after becoming the last man to do so.
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July, 1957.
Rejuvenated by a few days off during the all-star break, Ted Williams’s torrid pace resumed. During a five-game road trip through Detroit and Cleveland, he pounded out seven extra-base hits, including five home runs. Following a doubleheader against the Indians, in which Williams homered in both games, the Red Sox headed to Kansas City for a three-game set with the Athletics.
Trailing 2−1 during a ninety-degree summer night, Williams came to the plate with one out in the top of the ninth. He hit the first pitch thrown by veteran right-hander Virgil Trucks over the right field fence to spark a Red Sox comeback victory. For the fifth straight game he socked a home run, the sixth in his last eleven at-bats. He was just one shy of tying the American League record for consecutive games with a home run. With a league-leading twenty-six home runs, Williams now trailed Mickey Mantle, the reigning American League Triple Crown champion, by just one point in the race for the batting title.
“Theodore Samuel Williams won’t be washed up as a great hitter,” Boston Daily Record reporter Joe Cashman wrote from Kansas City, “just so long as he can drag himself to a plate and swing a bat.”
That July 16 morning had been a typical day on the road for Williams. The team’s eight-hundred-mile train ride from Cleveland had taken more than twenty-one hours. While his teammates slept before resuming their eleven-game road trip, Williams woke up early to enjoy his standard breakfast: orange juice, two lamb chops, and double orders of bacon and liver. But unlike his younger days, instead of touring a new city or stopping by the movie theater to see a Western, Williams remained in his hotel room. Room service and valets brought him everything he needed.
Although sportswriter Edwin Pope later explained that the thirty-eight-year-old Williams “had begun husbanding his strength by resting for much of the playing day,” he was just as content to hide out from reporters and autograph-seekers until much closer to game time.
At some point that day, however, he did see a familiar face. News of Major John Glenn’s transcontinental supersonic flight saturated television and radio airwaves as well as the afternoon editions of hundreds of American newspapers. The Kansas City Star mentioned the milestone on the front page, while pieces in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Missouri’s Springfield Leader were accompanied by large photographs of the Marine in his sleek tan flight suit.
By early evening Williams was ready to leave his solitary confinement for the ballpark. But before heading to Kansas City Municipal Stadium, he had to make a stop. At a local Western Union station he sent a telegram to the rear entrance of the Main Navy and Munitions Building adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The message, addressed to Major John Glenn, Jr., read, “CONGRATULATIONS ON RECORD I AM BIG SHOT NOW TELLING EVERYONE I FLEW WITH YOU IN KOREA TED WILLIAMS.”
When he returned from Brooklyn to his post at The Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington, D.C., Glenn picked up the telegram. He held on to it for more than fifty years.
