It turns out that Ted helped save his daughter’s life.

The big voice was first heard by my family in 1993 when 8-year-old Kate Shaughnessy was diagnosed with leukemia. Ted and I had no relationship. I was just another annoying *writer* asking dumb hitting questions around the cage in Winter Haven and at Cooperstown. But when Ted heard there was a sick child at Children’s Hospital in Boston, he made Kate his mission.

[[ted_williams]]

The phone rang in Kate’s room on 7-West at Children’s. Still fairly strong in the early days of chemo, Kate answered, and started listening. Early in the conversation, she jerked the phone away from her ear, as if it had delivered an electrical shock. She covered the mouthpiece and said, *Daddy, there’s a loud man on the phone telling me I’m going to be OK.*

He’ll be missed.