Ted Williams' childhood home - an update!

 

Link to my YouTube video about Ted Williams' childhood home & sandlot

Let's start by answering the most common question about the boyhood home of Ted Williams at 4121 Utah Street in San Diego. No, it was not made into a museum. Real estate prices in San Diego are insanely expensive, and the cost of such an endeavor would be quite an obstacle in today's market. The Padres organization (under prior ownership) once considered taking on the project, but the endeavor never came to fruition.

The house had fallen into serious 
disrepair when Waypoint Partners LLC bought
the property in 2022.

The renovated property and plaque mounted
on a boulder to honor Ted Williams.

And then there's the fact that Ted was never too keen on that house or the childhood memories associated with it. The Boston Red Sox signed Ted when he was just 20 years old. He left San Diego to pursue a big league baseball career and never (or rarely) looked back.

There are very few photographs in circulation of Ted as a child. Here's one of him at the age of six:

His mother, Micaela “May” Venzor, joined the Salvation Army as a young teenager and was sent to Honolulu. While there, she met Samuel Stewart Williams, an Army soldier from New York who was finishing up his tour. They married and moved to San Diego in 1913. Ted was born in 1918, and his brother Danny came along in 1920.

Ted, mother May, brother Danny

May Venzor was of Mexican heritage, and her family came from the state of Chihuahua. Ted remained silent about his Latino lineage until the publication of his autobiography My Turn at Bat in 1976: “If I had my mother’s name, there is no doubt that I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California,” Ted wrote.

Ted was also embarrassed about his mother's Salvation Army activities. She was a top fundraiser for the organization in San Diego and preached on street corners from dawn to dusk. Ted was teased and bullied about this by his classmates. Still, he took care of his mother and other relatives throughout his lifetime after his success in baseball.

As for Ted's father Samuel, he was gone from the home by the time Ted turned 11. His modest photography studio in downtown San Diego seemed to occupy much of his time (along with a drinking habit), and all of Ted's biographers report that Samuel never played ball or engaged in other activities with his boys.

Fortunately, Ted had other father figures in his youth. An uncle on his mother's side, Saul Venzor, was a former semipro baseball player. On visits to Saul's home, Ted would beg Saul to go outside with him and play baseball. Saul was a "tough love" kind of guy and never took it easy on Ted. At a family reunion in their later years (after Ted's success in Boston), Saul jokingly chided Ted about "finally learning to hit a curve ball."

Ted's aunts & uncles on his mother's side
lived in the Santa Barbara area

Rod Luscomb, the playground director at the park where Ted played sandlot ball, was also very influential in his life. Luscomb, who Ted said was "my first real hero," was a former college player and the first person Ted thanked in his Cooperstown induction speech.

The fathers of Ted's buddies in the neighborhood also played a role in influencing his early life. In particular, Les Cassie was a friend's father who took Ted under his wing and taught him how to fish on the shores of Coronado Island. Cassie also accompanied Ted on the bus ride from San Diego to Sarasota, Florida, for his first Spring Training after signing with the Red Sox.

Ted attended Hoover High in San Diego and batted .430 over the three years he played for the team. In 1935, he signed with San Diego's newly-formed team in the Pacific Coast League for $150 per month. He was an immediate star, and a Red Sox scout bought out his contract in 1937 for $25,000.

In 1936, Ted played 42 games for
the PCL Padres

During and after his career in MLB, Ted returned to his home town now and then for various honors and reunions. 

Ted with his mother
in 1942

A rare visit back to his childhood home
in the early 1940s

San Diego developers Jarrett Pugh and Brian Rucker of Waypoint Partners LLC bought the property known as "The Ted Williams house" in 2022 for $850,000. They spent two years renovating the original home. They are the property’s sixth owners. As contractors were working on the house, they noticed various people along the sidewalk and across the street stopping to watch and ask questions. This solidified the developers' decision to honor the history of the site. During construction, they allowed some onlookers to take home artifacts. One baseball fan from Boston was thrilled beyond measure when Rucker gave him a doorknob from the rubble. 

The plaque that is now mounted on a boulder in the front yard to honor Ted was funded by Waypoint. 

In the course of demolishing the house, some of the materials were saved and there are plans to repurpose the wood into bats and other artifacts that could be auctioned for youth baseball charities. (The San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/17/24)

Ted's neighborhood sandlot field still stands and hosts Little League games. It's locked up most of the time to protect it from trespassers. 

Ted visited this field one last time in 1999 with San Diego journalist Jane Mitchell for her One on One Legend series. Ted became emotional at the field, but his wistfulness quickly turned to excitement as he remembered the first home run he ever hit. https://youtu.be/_yJVh01_530?si=JVp1eWnwHBiC99EB

"There used to be a short fence in center, and I hit my first
sandlot home run over that fence. It was a Sunday
game ... boy ... it was .. wow, a home run!"