Ted declines Harvard’s offer
Exclusive excerpt from Ben Bradlee, Jr.’s “The Kid”: Unlike many professional ballplayers—probably most of them—Ted was embarrassed that he never went to college, or had no formal education beyond high school. In 1991, on the 50th anniversary of his .406 year, Harvard University wanted to give him an honorary degree, but he turned it down, feeling that he would have been out of place among the intelligentsia in Harvard Yard.
(PHOTO: Ted Williams at Boston’s Back Bay station, April 1939, arriving in the city for the first time. Boston Globe photograph.)