IN PRAISE OF TED

      Three words -- "Is baseball doomed?"-- were sparking growing debate around the country. 

      Why, even the media theorist Marshall McLuhan said exactly that about baseball. It wasn't a ''hot'' sport. Too slow for modern times and unsuited for TV. Defense was suffocating offense. 

      Deadly dull, it was reasoned.

      That was early in 1969, eight years after Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams had retired and when he had just become the new manager of the Washington Senators. I wondered if he'd agree that baseball was close to joining the pterodactyl in extinction, so I went to see Williams at the Senators spring training camp in Pompano Beach, Fl.

        I did not know, nor had I ever met, Williams, but of course I'd followed his remarkable career. I was a boy the first time I got to see him in the early 1950's, when the Red Sox were playing the Chicago White Sox, my hometown team, in Comiskey Park. 

      You couldn't take your eyes off him. And this was when he was on the on-deck circle. 

      Crouched on one knee, waggling the bat, he studied moves of the pitcher with such intensity, such ferocity, it resembled a tiger in the bushes about to pounce on his unsuspecting lunch. I don't remember how Williams did in that game; it doesn't matter. What he brought to that moment matters.

      I had followed him in box scores as a player, marveling at his batting feats. I was impressed with his record as a Marine pilot in World War II and the Korean War -- and his honesty. He'd landed a burning plane, which exploded shortly after he fled it, and he had said, ''Hell, yes, I was scared.'' 

      Many said that Williams was a real-life hero. It was said that he was of the stature, and his voice sounded like, actor John Wayne in his movies. No, John Wayne sounded like Williams. And Wayne was a hero in celluloid. Williams was flesh and blood.

      When I arrived at the Senators training camp, I went to their small locker room and found my way into the manager's modest office as Williams was tugging out of his uniform. He was no longer, at 6 feet 3 inches, the "Splendid Splinter." He'd gained weight, sometimes wearing a jacket to hide a paunch.

      As I introduced myself,  a small, elderly clubhouse man was handing Williams a towel. When that man heard me say I wanted to know if Williams thought baseball was ''doomed," he started to berate me:

      ''Do you know who you're talking to? This is Ted Williams. He's baseball. What nerve to come in here and ask him such a stupid question.''

      I said nothing, taken aback. I turned to Williams for a reply. I had read about his occasional temper outbursts.

      ''It's O.K.,'' he said to the clubhouse man. Then he turned to me. ''When I come out of the shower, I'll answer your question.''

       I learned that Williams was as challenged by a good question as he was by a good fastball. He was direct, thoughtful and candid. He liked an intellectual test, from figuring out what Bob Feller's next pitch would be, to landing a salmon, to flying a plane, to a discussion that could lead to a dialectic. He loved a good argument.

      When he emerged from the shower in Pompano Beach, he did answer my questions. And the one answer I recall was:

      ''Everything goes in cycles. Baseball will return to the popularity it has enjoyed in the past.'' 

      He also might have used several expletives to punctuate the brief sentences, for that was his style, and that was, as I perceived it, his grace. Williams made you feel comfortable in his presence.

      Over the next 30 years or so, I had the pleasure of being in his company. And another two decades went by before he died in Florida, at age 83, of cardiac arrest.

      I once came across a newspaper story with the title ''Your Child's Creativity'' that began: ''What do Henry Ford, John F. Kennedy and Ted Williams have in common?'' The answer: The burning drive for achievement. I asked Williams about that.

      ''I can't speak for those other guys," he said, "but to succeed I believe it starts with enthusiasm. And certainly no one ever worked at hitting a baseball harder than I did.''

      The last time I saw him, we talked at one point about death.

      ''I don't know what's going to happen, if anything, when I'm dead,'' he said. ''I'll tell you this, though, I'm not afraid to die.''

      For many of us, Ted Williams never will. 

 Ira Berkow has written more than 20 books and is a former columnist for The New York Times .