KAILUA — Fifty-five years after he left the Boston nine, Hall of Fame second baseman Bobby Doerr remains the quiet Captain of the Red Sox.

Despite a decade spent manning second base for a team that featured Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio, Doerr seldom speaks of his own career without prompting. The nine-time All-Star from Los Angeles who hit .409 in the 1946 World Series prefers to talk about his teammates and family.

Now 88, Doerr still exudes the humble, affable nature that prompted longtime New York Yankee rival Tommy Heinrich to remark, "he is one of the few who played the game hard and retired with no enemies."

"I never did think I was that good of a ball player to be put in the Hall of Fame," said Doerr, sitting on a couch in his daughter-in-law's Kailua home. "You have to be lucky with things that happen in your lifetime. I could have played with the St. Louis Browns and just been an average ball player but I got to play with a good ball club and good ball players."

Doerr arrived in Honolulu on Thursday with his only son Don to visit his in-laws. While in the Islands Doerr is scheduled to sign autographs today at Borders in Ward Warehouse and will speak at the Quarterback Club luncheon tomorrow at the Pagoda Hotel.

He still follows the Red Sox and threw out the opening pitch with five other members of the 1946 World Series team during this year's home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Much of Doerr's time is split between his home on the Rogue River in Oregon and a home he keeps in Junction City, Ore., a half-hour from his only son.

Since his wife of 65 years Monica passed away in 2003, Doerr spends his time fishing or talking baseball with whomever wants to hear stories and advice from a living legend.

The white-haired Doerr remembers moments from his past as vividly as he did in the days after they happened.

Save for a two-year stint in the Army, Doerr played all 10 seasons with the Red Sox. He remembers the curveball St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Mort Cooper threw him in the 1943 All-Star game that Doerr deposited in the bleachers for a three-run homer.

He remembers hitting a line drive between the first and second baseman for his 2,000th hit on July 1, 1951 and how Yankee catcher Yogi Berra ran out to get the relay throw from the outfield, then jogged the ball over to Doerr.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Doerr came of age in Los Angeles during the Great Depression, but was fortunate that his father had a job with the telephone company. He spent much of his youth bouncing a rubber ball off of whatever surface he could find or playing pickup baseball games in the park near his home.

His father was one of the few men in their neighborhood who had a steady job and area kids were constantly eating meals at the Doerr home.

Occasionally, Doerr's father would buy baseball shoes for some of the kids.

"I just didn't realize back then that things were that bad. Dad was wonderful about making sure I could play baseball," he said. "Some of the kids didn't have food."

At 14, he joined an American Legion team that came within a game of going to the National Championship, a squad that featured former major league catcher Mickey Owen.

"It was all that I thought about. It was a disease almost, wanting to be a ball player."

Two years later Doerr signed a professional contract worth $200 a month with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League. It was with the Stars, who were later renamed the San Diego Padres, where Doerr would meet one of his best friends for the next 60 years, Ted Williams.

It was Doerr's responsibility to bring Williams to his first spring training in 1938. After a hectic cross-country trip during which the two were separated by a rain storm that forced them to take different trains to Sarasota, Fla., Doerr remembers finding Williams at a train station in El Paso, Texas.

When the pair finally made it to spring training, Doerr remembers Williams greeting then Red Sox manager Joe Cronin with, "Hi sport!"

"Not hello Mr. Cronin, nice to meet you Mr. Cronin, just 'Hi sport,' " he said, laughing. "He wasn't trying to be disrespectful, that was just Ted. We were both the same age so we got real close. He had kind of a tough time as a kid."

Doerr said his friend's sometimes surly exchanges with the media were blown out of proportion. Williams always visited children in the hospital and held court with kids in private after almost every game.

The two would go to movies and get milkshakes every night in an effort to put on weight.

Doerr's friendship with Williams, DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky is the subject of a David Halberstam novel "The Teammates."

Doerr still remembers when Cronin walked him out of the dugout and into an empty Fenway Park in 1937.

" 'This is what you're going to be playing in' he told me," he said. "What a sight it was to see Fenway Park.

"It was a wonderful place to play and the fans were always great. I remember standing on second base and feeling the wind hit my back. I would turn and watch the flags come from the west and (blow) back east."

BASEBALL THEN AND NOW

The biggest difference between today's game and the way it was played when Doerr was active is the relief pitcher, he said. The ability of a team to bring in a pitcher who in many cases has better stuff than the starter is a luxury the clubs of Doerr's generation did not have.

If the Red Sox of his era had a closer like the Yankees' Mariano Rivera, Doerr is sure things would have been different.

Doerr is convinced the ball is juiced and that home runs are easier to hit. But he also thinks the players are more athletic now then they have ever been.

"The ball has to be juiced up a little bit but it brings in the fans and it's helped baseball," he said. "I think baseball right now is better than it's ever been."

On the topic of steroids, Doerr isn't judgmental. He said there are players from his generation he is sure may have tried performance-enhancing drugs if they knew it could help their game. But he said he is not sure how the Hall of Fame will treat players like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.

"Bonds definitely is a great hitter," he said. "It's too bad because he's a good athlete and he might be one of the great hitters of all time and it might be interesting whether they vote him in (to the Hall of Fame) when it comes time."

Had steroids and supplements been widely used in his day, Doerr is sure he wouldn't have touched them.

"I was afraid to take an aspirin when I was playing," he said.

After the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, Doerr said he and the surviving members of the 1946 team that fell short in the series were relieved.

"We thought, 'We don't have to go through this maybe next year' thing again," he said.

He remembers how Johnny Damon, Pedro Martinez, and David Ortiz behaved as if it were spring training during the American League Championship Series and the World Series.

During one moment, while the Red Sox were down big to the Yankees in Game 3, Ortiz came over and bear-hugged Doerr.

"Here you are in the World Series and playoffs and these guys are horsing around and loosey goosey and I think that's what did it," Doerr said, showing off the World Series ring that Red Sox owner John Henry gave him.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.