New York ( CNN ) -- It came as no surprise to anyone who is a baseball fan that last year on September 28 a flurry of articles marked the 50th anniversary of Ted Williams ' final game . Williams ended his career as few major leaguers do , with a home run in his final at bat . But this year as we approach the 51st anniversary of the game that ended Williams ' career in 1960 , it is time to turn our attention to novelist John Updike . It is the story Updike wrote for the New Yorker , `` Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu , '' that has allowed Williams ' last hurrah to take on a life of its own and that last year prompted critic Charles McGrath to argue that `` Hub Fans '' is `` probably the most celebrated baseball essay ever . '' Thanks to Updike , Williams ' last home run is far better known than his even more remarkable feat -- which took place exactly 70 years ago this month -- - of going six for eight on the final day of the 1941 season to lift his average to .406 and become the last man in baseball to hit .400 . Like Updike , I was at Williams ' final game . I cut the graduate school poetry class I normally went to three afternoons a week for the chance to see Williams end his career . I had expected to get stuck sitting in the center field bleachers , but Fenway Park was not even half filled . Only 10,454 fans showed up for the game with the Baltimore Orioles . The Red Sox were a seventh-place ball club in 1960 , and even for Ted Williams , most Bostonians were unwilling to take off work on a Wednesday afternoon so gloomy that in the sixth inning the stadium lights were turned on . I got good seats along the third base line , and in the fifth inning I was able to move down to the field boxes next to the visitors ' dugout . The ushers could not have cared less . Before the game Williams was honored with a Paul Revere silver bowl and speeches from Boston 's mayor and Red Sox television announcer Curt Gowdy , but the ceremonies felt perfunctory . Like the small Fenway Park crowd , they reflected Boston 's divided view of Ted Williams . He was someone to admire but not to love , and in his final game he stayed true to form . In his last time at bat in an otherwise meaningless game , Williams pulled his miracle . In the eighth inning on the third pitch to him , he hit a towering home run to right field that cleared the Red Sox bullpen with plenty to spare . It was the 521st home run in a baseball career that had been interrupted by service as a Marine pilot during World War II and the Korean War . The home run was the perfect stage exit , but as Williams trotted around the bases with his head down , he made no effort to dwell on the drama of the moment . Once in the Red Sox dugout , he refused to come out despite the chants of `` We want Ted , '' and when at the start of the ninth inning manager Mike Higgins sent Williams out to his left field position , then instantly replaced him , he jogged back to the Red Sox dugout with his eyes firmly on the ground . As he had done since the end of his first year in the major leagues , Williams refused to tip his hat to the applauding fans . The Ted Williams whom Updike describes is a man divided between pride in his craft and determination to avoid making himself vulnerable to the whims of fans . But what sets Williams apart in Updike 's account is that his internal and external struggles have taken place before thousands in stadiums across the country . In his role as a marquee athlete , he has not had privacy since his rookie year of 1939 . As much as our contemporary culture will allow , Ted Williams is a man of mythic dimensions , . In Updike 's story , ironically titled to sound as if it belonged on the sports page , Williams is both `` Achilles , the hero of incomparable powers and beauty , '' and a figure who at rest looks like `` Donatello 's David . '' But always he is larger than life . Circling the bases following his home run , Williams moves for Updike `` like a feather caught in a vortex . '' Updike was able to capture more than any of us saw that afternoon at Fenway Park , and with the passage of time , his story of Ted Williams ' final game has become more powerful than the original experience . Updike 's account is all that thousands who were never at Fenway Park that fall afternoon , and who now outnumber those of us there , know of the heights on which Williams left the game . If Williams is our Achilles , then Updike is our Homer . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nicolaus Mills .
Mike Mills : This year marks 70th anniversary of Ted Williams ' .400 average . Mills says John Updike told lyrical story of Williams ' final game . Williams hit a triple in his last at bat , delighting a sparse crowd . Williams declined to acknowledge the applause of the fans .