Posted on: Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Service higher call for some

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

How many home runs, you wonder, might Ted Williams have hit out of Fenway Park if he hadn't been a replacement pilot at what they used to call 'Ewa Marine Air Station here during part of his World War II stint?

How many more could he have hit if not for the parts of two additional seasons spent flying 39 combat missions during the Korean War?

In all Williams served nearly five seasons in military service during the prime of a Hall of Fame career. Nor was he alone. Willie Mays, who spent two years in the Army, was another of the 64 inductees at Cooperstown who served during the nation's wars.

It is something to think about the next time the Giants' Barry Bonds belts another shot into McCovey Cove and some announcer tells you how much closer to Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron he has just moved.

If not for two wars and the men who served in them, Bonds might be just now creeping up on Williams and could be at least another season from overtaking his godfather, Mays, both of whom he has already passed. Not to take anything away from Bonds, who lives in a different era and is on pace to eclipse whatever they might have done.

We were reminded just how different the times are when Tiger Woods made headlines for taking a week out of the PGA Tour for an Army Special Forces "experience." As such it makes it hard to imagine a time when sports stars put their careers on hold, sometimes for years at a time, to fulfill military obligations alongside other citizens.

Mays, though he rarely mentions it in interviews, could have been the one instead of Aaron popping up in those commercials taunting Bonds' pursuit of the career home run mark.

Instead of 660 home runs, eclipsed last week by Bonds, who knows what heights Mays might have hit, especially playing in the Polo Grounds. Consider that after his Rookie of the Year season of 1951, Mays missed all or most of the next two seasons. In his first two seasons back in baseball, Mays hit a combined 92 home runs.

Had he managed to hit 92 in the two seasons he missed — and since we're speculating anyway, who knows if he might have hit more — Mays would have broken Ruth's record first and finished with 752 home runs, three back of Aaron's 755.

As for Williams, two years after hitting .406, he was in uniform, where he spent his 25th through 27th birthdays. Between those seasons and the two in Korea, it isn't hard to imagine Williams adding another 150 homers to his 521.

Not that Williams much bemoaned what might have been. He often said, "the two things I'm proudest of in my life is that I became a Marine pilot and I became a member of Baseball's Hall of Fame."

To have done both is a deed that stands much more remarkable today.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.