So if that was indeed his last major league game, David Ross hit a home run in his final official at bat last night. That it came in the seventh game of a World Series that gave the Chicago Cubs and 
their long-suffering fans a championship for the first time since Teddy Roosevelt was president adds to the drama. (And we all know how he felt about baseball.)
But Ross is not Ted Williams, even though the Splendid Splinter’s final hit came in a fairly meaningless contest in his last game of the 1960 season, a 5-4 Red Sox win over the visiting Baltimore Orioles; the winning runs came in the ninth on an error. Williams came out of the game in the bottom of the eighth, replaced by trivia answer Carroll Hardy. The Sox played another two games, but Williams was done. You can read all about it in John Updike’s masterful essay, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” which was turned into a book to mark the 50th anniversary of the occasion.
Again, Ross — all due respect — is no Ted Williams, but he ended his career on the highest note imaginable: a home run in the seventh game of the World Series to help a team that had gone without for generations. True, it wasn’t actually his final final at-bat — he walked after the home run and was lifted for a pinch-runner — but close enough for jazz.
So who will write his story?
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