Baseball legend, Texas Rangers manager Ted Williams shunned this part of his heritage

At the home opener of the Texas Rangers ball club on April 21, 1972, in Arlington Stadium, 20,105 jubilant fans cheered the team’s first appearance in North Texas.

Through deft negotiations, Arlington Mayor Tom Vandergriff and his crew persuaded Washington Senators baseball team owners to move their operations to the Entertainment Capital of Texas. The club manager who led the Texas Rangers’ premiere was Ted Williams, nicknamed “The Kid.”

He came to Arlington with the legacy of a stellar 19-year career as a player. His batting average in the 1941 season was .406; 17-time American League All Star recipient; two-time American League Most Valuable Player; two-time Triple Crown winner. Determined to succeed on the diamond, the former Boston Red Sox star power-drove the baseball with a left-handed swing not many batters could replicate.

Few, if any, fans on that opening night game in Arlington knew Williams guarded a secret most of his life — he was Mexican American. He said, “If I had my mother’s last name, there is no doubt I would have run into trouble in those days (considering) the prejudices people had in Southern California.”

His shame for his Mexican American roots stemmed partly from his troubled childhood. His mother May Venzor, born in El Paso, Texas, spent many hours in Tijuana, Mexico, working as a Salvation Army soldier. Williams and his brother Danny resented accompanying her as they stood at corner revivals, striving to save Mexican souls.

Venzor on occasion left her sons in the care of their alcoholic father, Samuel Williams, or alone for days. Receiving scant emotional support as a child, Williams grew into an angry but talented ballplayer. Uncle Saul Venzor, who had played semi-pro baseball, mentored young Williams on ball playing fundamentals.

When Williams returned to San Diego, after an outstanding Red Sox rookie year, he ran away from his family, who had gathered at the train station to celebrate his success. Williams’ parents never saw him play major league ball. In 1946, he turned down a $300,000 offer to play in the Mexican Baseball League.

Williams was a tortured symbol of American life. Talented, brash, aggressive, foul-mouthed, he was a reluctant patriot, interrupting his baseball career for five seasons to serve in World War II as a flight instructor and the Korean War as a combat jet pilot where he flew 39 sorties. In 1966, as he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he called for admittance of Negro League ball players.

Yearning for approval and fame, he said he wanted people to say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.”

If Williams were alive, he might have found solace seeing the large numbers of Latino Major League Baseball players, especially on the Texas Rangers team. Three Latino ball players in 1972, as compared to the 17 who earned a spot on the Rangers’ roster in 2019. Perhaps he would have celebrated openly his Mexican American identity on Hispanic Heritage Day at the park.

After the 1972 season of 54 wins and 100 losses, Williams left the team. Suffering from heart disease, he died on July 2, 2002, at age 83. Based on a contested will, his children had his body cryopreserved (frozen) in Arizona.

Ted Williams’ hustle for fame on the ball field thrilled fans as the “The Kid” ran from a Mexican American tag and into the record books.

Author Richard J. Gonzales writes and speaks about Fort Worth, national and international Latino history.

This story was originally published July 4, 2020 at 8:00 AM.