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Scott Raab, Esquire writer-at-large, is now writing about sports for Esquire.com all week long.

Today seems like the right time to polish off the Ted Williams anecdote -- all's quiet on the NBA front until tonight and MLB's unkinking its summer-long lap dance a day at a time, as baseball always does. I was flipping channels late to check on the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game, to see if there might be a repeat of the nasty brawl the two teams fought the night before, and I happened upon a Stanley Cup game, but that was up on Channel 848, so I'm assuming the NHL remains in lockout mode and it was just a rerun for the few poor fools who still give a shit.

Anyway, I'm sitting with Ted Williams in the den of his house in Hernando, Florida, and he's bad-mouthing pitchers.

"I think they're dumb. They don't play but once every four days. Scratchin' their ass or pickin' their nose or somethin' most of the time. A ballplayer's in the game all the time. They're pitchin', most of 'em, because they can't do anything else."

He's 79 years old, mind you, in failing health, but his brain and barb-wire tongue are in fine shape. He's in his bathrobe and slippers, loud as hell, serious. Hitting a baseball was his life's work; holding pitchers in permanent professional contempt just goes with the job.

"That's the reason baseball might be a little tougher today -- they bring a new pitcher any old time. You gotta go through that whole ritual again of trying to find out as much as you can on six pitches. You hit at him four times, you got a chance of getting him locked in a little better."

In Williams' case, most of the legends are true. He was one of the greatest hitters ever, one of the greatest fishermen ever, one of the greatest fighter jet pilots ever. But later that day, when John McCain stopped by, Williams set him straight on one particular myth about how his extraordinary vision -- it was said only 1 in 100,000 could match him -- enabled him to see exactly where he hit the baseball spinning furiously towards him.

"I told all my friends that I was coming to see you," said McCain. "I bet fifty of them said, 'Ask him could he really see the laces on the ball?'"

"Shit, no," Williams barked. "You're readin' all these sportswriters. Jesus. Listen, that ball looked like a pea to me comin' in there once in a while. Hell, no, I couldn't see the laces."

THE MISSION OF RAABID: By Scott Raab

I believe that sports are more vital to human nature – and often vastly richer and more exciting than – than other performing arts, revealing truths fundamental to our individual lives and collective cultural constructs, truths beyond the reach of safer, less sweaty efforts to express and inspire the soul, with the possible exception of line dancing.

I believe sports do this naturally because, unlike "serious" artistic endeavors, they are not by nature exercises in social or intellectual elitism or the pursuit of false purity, with the possible exception of polo and – if it were a sport rather than a game – golf.

I believe that writing is a mission, and writing about sports is a holy mission.

I believe that flags fly forever. I have to: I'm from Cleveland.

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