National Post (National Edition)
UNEARTHED TREASURE
STUDENT’S HOMEMADE MOVIE DOCUMENTS 1960 FINAL-GAME HEROICS OF TED WILLIAMS
Bill Murphy, a 19-yearold student at an art college in Boston, skipped class on Sept. 28, 1960, and bought a $2 ticket to Fenway Park. Ted Williams was playing his last game in the major leagues.
More auspiciously, Murphy brought his 8-millimetre colour film camera with him.
“I wasn’t a rabid fan, but something told me to go,” Murphy said last month. “I took my camera to the front row and shot scenes as I roamed freely around the park all afternoon.”
A few days after the game, Murphy developed the film. There was Williams, one of the best hitters to ever play the game, clouting the last of his 521 home runs for the Boston Red Sox in his fabled final at-bat. Murphy showed the film to his father and a few friends then tossed it into a desk drawer where it has remained since, all but hidden.
“At one point, the film was in the attic,” Murphy said.
For the past 58 years, Williams’ last game has been seen in grainy, black-andwhite, newsreel-like footage. But this year, on the 100th anniversary of Williams’ birth, Murphy’s homemade movie, like a buried treasure, has finally been unearthed.
The vibrant colour footage will make its broadcast première Monday in a new PBS documentary.
Murphy’s film captured each of Williams’ four plate appearances, and also shows the famous closing chapter of Williams’ long-running feud with Boston’s newspaper writers and fans when he refused, in any way, to acknowledge a roaring standing ovation that enveloped Fenway Park after the final home run.
The journey of the film from Murphy’s desk drawer is a tale that wends through the vicissitudes of everyday life and ends with serendipitous opportunity.
Murphy, who went on to have a long career as an art director at three Boston advertising agencies, always believed his 1960 film was, as he said, “pretty good.” Still, he did not consider it historic.
“I knew it was a significant occasion, and just once many years ago, I did talk to a memorabilia expert who told me it was valuable,” Murphy, now 77 and retired, said. “But I didn’t do anything with it. It was an unknown thing, just part of my stuff that went with me for all those years.”
Experienced at editing film, he had reduced the original film to about four minutes, to include the best, most revealing scenes and sequences. He had the film transferred to Beta videotape and eventually digitized.
Several years ago, Murphy said he phoned ESPN but an associate producer showed little interest. Murphy also initiated a cordial conversation with the Red Sox, but the team did not request to see the film either.
But as time went on, Murphy grew more uneasy.
“Every three to eight months, I would wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning thinking about the Ted Williams film,” Murphy said. “I’d say to myself, ‘Geez, this thing is sitting there anonymously.’ It would be on my mind. But I wasn’t motivated enough to do anything about it.”
Then, early this year, he read about the coming PBS documentary. Murphy wrote an email to the production firm that found its way to Nick Davis, the film’s director.
Davis, who had been working on the Williams project since late 2015, had scoured film archives and baseball research repositories for additional footage of Williams’ last day, which he considered crucial to the narrative of Williams’ life. “I’d given up,” Davis said. Davis set a March 2 deadline to cut the last version of the documentary. At 9:32 a.m. on the day before that deadline, Murphy’s email appeared in his inbox, describing what he had.
“I don’t know if you’re interested,” Murphy wrote. “No one but my family and a few friends has ever seen it.”
Davis’ first thought was that someone was playing a joke on him. Although he also admitted: “I nearly fell out of my chair.”
In short order, Davis was viewing the footage.
“It was just stunning — the colour, the intimacy and how Bill Murphy, God bless him, walked around to get different vantage points for each at-bat,” Davis said. “It was the holy grail.”
Nick Trotta, MLB’S senior director of media programing and licensing, immediately verified what was contained in Murphy’s footage, shocked by the quality of the film itself. He had seen plenty of deteriorated 50- or 60-year-old homemade movies, but Murphy’s was near pristine.
“It seemed like a sign,” Trotta said. “I believe in the baseball gods.”
“I wasn’t shocked to hear that Bill Murphy was an art student,” he added, “because he was a good cameraman, and obviously had a good eye for capturing scenes.”
Trotta would not disclose what MLB paid Murphy for the rights to his film.
Murphy’s film provided Davis new perspectives for some scenes. In the fifth inning, for example, when Williams swung and lofted a deep fly ball, Murphy was standing behind the first base dugout and caught the fans seated near home plate leaping to their feet in anticipation of a home run.
The ball was caught just in front of the right field wall.
“Now you could feel the excitement building during the course of the game,” Davis said.
As Murphy’s camera work showed, the fans were standing throughout Williams’ three-pitch final at-bat in the eighth inning. The view of the last swing by one of baseball’s greatest hitters did not disappoint, capturing Williams’ fluid but powerful swing for all its might and gracefulness.
“The black-and-white footage we had previously panned into the stands as Ted is circling the bases, but Bill Murphy kept his camera on Ted,” Davis said. “Between second and third base, you can see Ted practically make the decision on what he’ll do next. He’s not going to tip his cap to the fans.”
Williams never so much as lifted his glance toward the grandstand.
But there is a postscript. Murphy hustled out to the seats overlooking left field where he shot Williams standing alone in the outfield for the top of the ninth. A few minutes later, before the half inning has ended, Williams is removed from the game. It spawned another ovation, and palpably, a last chance for Williams to salute the fans. Yet Williams made no gesture as he hustled to the dugout.
As John Updike, who was at the game, wrote roughly a month later in The New Yorker: “Gods do not answer letters.”
Davis considered the scene integral.
“It’s writing your own ending to your story; Ted is Ted to the end,” he said. “It’s one of the great exits in all of sports.”
Murphy recently gave the camera he used at Fenway Park that day, still in good working order, to his grandson, who is interested in making films with it. Murphy, who still lives in the Boston area, said he was thrilled and deeply relieved his hidden treasure is no longer in his desk drawer.
“When I wrote that email in March I thought to myself: This might be my last chance.
“I’m getting older. How many more at-bats do I have?”
ITWAS JUST STUNNING — THE COLOUR, THE INTIMACY.