Ted Williams - Early Life

Early Life

Ted Williams was born in San Diego as Teddy Samuel Williams, named after his father, Samuel Stuart Williams, and former President, Teddy Roosevelt, although Williams claimed that his middle name stemmed from one of his mother's brothers (in truth, her dead brother was Daniel Venzor) who had been killed in World War I. At some point Williams changed his name on his birth certificate to Theodore. His father was a soldier, sheriff, and photographer from New York, while his mother, May Venzor, from El Paso, Texas, was an evangelist and lifelong soldier in the Salvation Army. Williams resented his mother's long hours working in the Salvation Army, and Williams and his brother didn't like it when she took them to the Army's street-corner revivals.

Williams' paternal ancestors were a mix of Welsh and Irish, and his maternal ancestors were of Mexican and French descent. The Mexican side of Williams' family was quite diverse, having Spanish (Basque), Russian, and American Indian roots. Of his Mexican ancestry he said that "If I had my mother's name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California".

Williams lived in San Diego's North Park neighborhood (4121 Utah Street). At the age of eight, he was taught how to throw a baseball by his uncle, Saul Venzor. Saul was one of his mother's four brothers, as well as a former semi-pro baseball player who had pitched against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe Gordon in an exhibition game. As a child, Williams' heroes were Pepper Martin of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bill Terry of the New York Giants. Williams graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego, where he played baseball as a pitcher and was the star of the team. Though he had offers from the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees while he was still in high school, his mother thought he was too young to leave home, so he signed up with the local minor league club, the San Diego Padres.