While visiting my eldest daughter in Pittsburgh, Pa., I noted a Boothbay Register article, March 28, 2013, submitted by the Lincoln Theater with a photo of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, taken during the 1940s era. We are now at the beginning of another baseball season which brought back personal memories of baseball when I was a teenager.

Williams was about six years my senior; I never met him. A favorite pastime for me and a couple of friends was to go to Fenway Park on Sunday afternoon, particularly if there was a double header.

We bought bleacher seats for 50 cents. Our favorite location was directly behind the Red Sox bullpen. The pitching staff included two relievers whose names I remember from 70 years ago, Mike Ryba and Mace Brown. I was 17 or 18 years old and the relief pitchers were not a heck of a lot older than I was.

Mike Ryba was chasing a good-looking red headed, high school classmate of ours; so it was our duty to heckle him when he was within earshot. We really got Mike rattled at times. One such incident occurred when Manager Joe Cronin (or was it Jimmy Fox?) called on him in a bases loaded situation.

Our loud advice to Mike as he headed for the mound was to clear the bases. He went to work and sure enough, served up a grand slam pitch which won the game for the enemy. It was a long time before we let him forget it.

The military draft was in effect in the early 1940s and Ted Williams was drafted. Because he was the sole support of his mother, it was reversed. Later, shortly after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy Air V5 program. I enlisted in the same program but I went through the training procedure two or three months behind Ted.

When I arrived at pre-flight school, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there was a marker on the campus where a ball hit by Ted landed during a game, maybe 600 feet from home plate, a record never equaled. He was selected to train as a fighter pilot, and at Pensacola, his record of hits on a sleeve target during practice had never been equaled either.

Ted was accepted as a marine aviator and finished his World War II career without being engaged in enemy action. My career paralleled his in that respect. I earned my Navy Wings and was commissioned in early March of 1945. VE Day followed closely and Japan was done in August. Williams probably graduated in January of 1945. He was recalled during the Korean conflict and came close to punching his ticket in a plane crash while he was converting from propellers to jets.

Fenway Park is an intimate ballpark and the fans in left field stands frequently engaged with Williams during lulls in the game. Teenage delinquents were OK with harassing the bullpen in the bleachers but such behavior was out of bounds in more expensive seats.

During a double header we checked along the first and third baseline seats and if we saw three unoccupied, we would sneak into the stands for an excellent viewing of game number 2. Radio was king and it had the advantage of exercising the imagination. Public transportation was 10 cents each way and one of my buddies had access to a 1932 Chevy, with gasoline at no more than 25 cents a gallon.

Upon reflection, the era just before Pearl Harbor was exciting, but 2013 is better … I think.