RESEARCHING TED WILLIAMS' MEXICAN-AMERICAN ROOTS

By Bill Nowlin

Society for American Baseball Research

There was one sentence that I read in Ted Williams’ autobiography, My Turn At Bat, which set me off on a personal research journey that took me some unexpected places and raised a few eyebrows along the way. It was a 44-word sentence about his mother, which I really only focused on the third time I read the book:

“Her maiden name was Venzer, she was part Mexican and part French, and that’s fate for you; if I had had my mother’s name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California.”

I was re-reading his autobiography while trying to organize material for the 1997 Masters Press book that I co-authored with Jim Prime: Ted Williams, A Tribute. 

I hadn’t read My Turn At Bat for maybe 10 or 15 years, but the sentence probably caught my eye that time around because early in the 1990s I had married a woman of Mexican-American ancestry. I wanted to find out more about May Williams’ family background, but her surname was misspelled in Ted’s book (Venzer for Venzor) which stymied further research.

After Jim and my book came out, we heard from one of Ted’s nephews, Manuel Herrera. He was a treasure trove of family lore and put me in touch with Sarah Diaz of Santa Barbara. She was May’s sister — Ted’s aunt. She was 94 years old at the time, but very sharp. 

Talking with both Manny and Aunt Sarah, I was able to put together a kind of family tree. Both of Ted Williams’ maternal grandparents had come to the United States from Valle de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico. Pablo Venzor and Natalia Hernandez Venzor entered the U.S. at El Paso around 1890. May Venzor was born in El Paso in 1891. The family ultimately made its way to Santa Barbara.

May met her future husband, Sam Williams, in the Salvation Army. They made their home in San Diego. (Ted Williams, left, poses with his mother May and brother Danny, circa 1921. Notice he is barefoot. (MAY WILLIAMS COLLECTION)

One of May’s brothers, Saul Venzor, was an accomplished baseball pitcher in Santa Barbara. When I learned the names of Ted’s uncles and aunts, I dug into more research. In Saul Venzor’s case, his 1963 obituary in the Santa Barbara News-Press said that he had given Ted Williams’ his first baseball lessons and that Ted had told friends that “Mr. Venzor was his first instructor.”

While I was accumulating more information about Ted’s family background — on both sides of the family — I had the opportunity to have lunch with Ted at his Florida home in April 2000. I asked him about Uncle Saul. He said, “He was my mother’s brother…He was a pretty good baseball player. Santa Barbara. I don’t know any other relatives that had much ability.”

And then he changed the subject. It didn’t feel awkward, but it was clearly something he preferred not to talk about. As Ted himself had written in My Turn at Bat of growing up in San Diego in the 1930s, he was well aware of the racial prejudice he would have faced, with “no doubt” about it.

As Al Cassidy, the executor of Ted Williams’ estate, told writer Ben Bradlee about Ted’s early days, “Ted didn’t want anyone to know he was part Mexican. It concerned him. He was afraid they wouldn’t let him play. He’d say, ‘It was an entirely different time back then.’”

The greatest hitter in baseball history carried a secret – one he was told to bury. His mother was Mexican, but in a time when Latinos were erased from the spotlight. Ted was forced to pass.

"If I had my life to do over again, I would have proudly told everyone I was Mexican."

To read the rest of the article, click on link: https://sabr.org/journal/article/researching-ted-williams-latino-roots/