Patrick Killoran

"David Pressman, a 14-year-old boy who 'loved baseball and also had a scientific bent', one night he left his wood bat outside. In the morning he thought the bat felt heavier and had 'less pop'. David took it to the post office, borrowed their scale and confirmed his hunch: Wood bats absorb moisture. David devised a method for drying his bat out over coal embers, and then he wrote a letter on his father’s stationary to tell the biggest baseball star in the world, Ted Williams, all about it. "Next thing you know my father got a call from Ted Williams. My dad said: ‘You might want my kid. He’s in school.’ When I got home, I got a call from Ted Williams. He said, ‘Can you come to Fenway?’” David went and explained to Ted the principle of restitution: 'In which both bat and ball compress and then expand at impact'. David told Ted to put his bats in the clubhouse clothes dryer and weigh them every 15 minutes until they quit losing weight. So Ted Williams, when sent an unsolicited letter from a fan promising to make him a better hitter, called the fan. And when he found out the fan was actually a 14-year-old boy who was unavailable because he was in school, Ted Williams called back. “The Kid” Ben Bradlee, Jr. David Pressman went on to graduate from Harvard. Ted Williams weighs one of his new 36-ounce Hickory baseball bats in the clubhouse.