The Joys Of Staying In A #Marriott

Scored a copy of Bob Ryan's "Scribe," due out in October from Bloomsbury. #bea14 #beahappy2read

So @sidecardoughnuts gave out free samples today for #nationaldonutday even though they don't open for another week. #SantaMonica #sidecardoughnuts #huckleberry

South America? #Brogan thinks the piece foil he tore off the #chocolate #EasterBUnny (by #RussellStover) looks like South America. Not Jesus. Sigh.

Hot #Stuffie in the city. #boston #flour #dogdays

And then this happened, too. #IndianOcean #firsttime

Welcome to Boston, students! Explore our city and get to know the City of Boston’s many resources awaiting you with our student welcome guide, which includes tips about city services, rental housing, safety and much more. Visit http://bit.ly/hubmovein and follow @brkthebubble on Twitter! 

And then this happened. #Hippos h/t to @ZuluNyala for getting us to @StLuciaTourism w/ @joanniejohnst

Ben Bradlee, Jr. on his biography of Ted Williams. “The Kid” will be released by Little, Brown on Tuesday, Dec. 3

Well-read, an exclusive excerpt from “The Kid” by Ben Bradlee, Jr.

A voracious consumer of his own press, Ted ignored all the positive coverage and focused only on the negative. “There were 49 million newspapers in Boston, from the Globe to the Brookline Something-or-Other, all ready to jump us…” he whined in his autobiography, My Turn at Bat. He was particularly sensitive about any stories that he felt delved unnecessarily into his private life, stories that accused him of failing to hit in the clutch, or suggested that he was more interested in his own performance than that of the team.

It was natural for writers to despise Williams, and fear him, because he treated them like dirt. But they also knew Ted was great copy, and if they could get him to talk, he was usually a terrific interview because he spoke with unvarnished candor. He was not above stirring the pot with reporters to give him something to be mad at if he felt he was losing his edge. He often said he hit better if he was mad. “He nurtured his rage,” as the writer Roger Kahn once put it.

Ted Williams knew how to get on base…just like David Ortiz. 

The Kid’s goal: Get on base

 An exclusive excerpt from Ben Bradlee, Jr.’s “The Kid”: [Ted] Williams’s hitting credo was simple: get a good pitch to hit. Critics said he followed this rule to the extreme by refusing to chase a pitch that was even an inch off the strike zone, thereby hurting his team by having its best hitter often pass up an opportunity to drive a runner home. But Ted made the slippery slope counter-argument: that if he chased a pitch an inch from the plate, it would only encourage pitchers to throw two inches outside the zone, then three inches, and so on. History has vindicated Ted’s approach, as there is now broad acceptance of the value of reaching base, or on-base-percentage, a statistic that was not appreciated and barely even kept in Williams’s day. 

(PHOTO: Ted Williams happily crossing home plate at Fenway Park, 1939. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library - Leslie Jones Collection.)