What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?; A Remembrance

New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [10], 114, [4] pages. Illustrations. Approximately 7.5 by 5.5 inches format. Richard Ben Cramer (June 12, 1950 - January 7, 2013) was an American journalist and writer. He earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University where he was also a writer and editor for The Johns Hopkins News-Letter. He then attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he received a master's degree in 1972. Cramer worked as a journalist at several publications, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, Esquire Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1979 for his coverage of the Middle East and was a finalist for the same Prize in 1981. His work as a political reporter culminated in What It Takes: The Way to the White House, an account of the 1988 presidential election that is considered one of the seminal journalistic studies of presidential electoral politics. His book, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life was a New York Times bestseller. His final published book was How Israel Lost: The Four Questions, about the ways in which the Israeli occupation has corrupted the country's original vision. Cramer wrote and narrated several well-known documentary films: The Choice '92, Tabloid Truth and The Battle Over Citizen Kane, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He co-wrote and narrated a film about Joe DiMaggio, The Hero's Life, based on Cramer's book. When legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams died on July 5, 2002, newspapers reviewed the stats, compared him to other legends of the game, and declared him the greatest hitter who ever lived. Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed biographer of Joe DiMaggio, decodes this oversized icon who dominated the game and finds not just a great player, but also a great man. In 1986, Richard Ben Cramer spent months on a profile of Ted Williams, and the result was the "Esquire" article that has been acclaimed ever since as one of the finest pieces of sports reporting ever written. Given special acknowledgment in "The Best American Sportswriting of the Century" and adapted for a coffee-table book called "Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid, " the original piece is now available in this special edition, with new material about Williams's later years. While his decades after Fenway Park were out of the spotlight -- the way Ted preferred it -- they were arguably his richest, as he loved and inspired his family, his fans, the players, and the game itself. This is a remembrance for the ages.