TED WILLIAMS an American hero. The baseball legend and maybe greatest hitter ever in rare WWII and Korean fighter pilot photos and commentary.
Wecome STEEMIAN FRIENDS. Let's take a look at the legendary Ted Williams. My lifelong love of The Yankees ( and their interest in me as a pitcher) never got in the way of my complete respect for Ted Williams. Yes a Yankee fan ought to be able to respect a great player regardless of uniform.
Photo:wikipedia
Above is Ted Williams age 20, 1939 Rookie season.
Plenty has been wriiten about his poor childhood in San Diego. His mother sadly nicknamed "Salvation" Mae, as she supported Ted working for the Salvation Army. And a good woman she was. Ted's father was rarely around.
Let's get to the "bottom line". Williams is to this day the owner of the highest career batting average (.344) for a player with over 300 homeruns. His career on base percentage is .482. This is unheard of! In other words Ted basically was on base 48 percent of the time, via hit or base on balls. He never hit 60 home runs, or even 50 in a season. But he was 35-40 per year for about 15 seasons. Of course this is way before the steroid era. He played 1939-1960.
Ted batted .406 the last .400 hitter in major league ball, in 1941 at the age of 22! At the age of 38 he batted .388. At the age of 41 he batted .316 and hit 29 homeruns. Not Ruth, nor anyone touched these kind of numbers. And he struck out about 8 percent of the time!! Today even singles hitters strike out 20 percent of the time.
But how about the below. See photos compliments Vintage baseball photos.
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Above is Williams seen with John Glenn future astronaut and fellow aviator.
Williams missed 5 years in his prime to service. He even re-enlisted for the Korean conflict and was a Marine corp. aviator, flying many missions.
Barring injury Ted would have certainly surpassed 700 homeruns to rival Ruth.
Was Williams the greatest hitter to ever live? I believe so.
Thanks for visiting...and as always, your UPVOTE is appreciated.
Ted Williams was a scientist of the game. Hard to imagine seeing another one of his caliber ever.
I listened to an interview with Tony Gwynn (another brilliant hitter) talking about his conversations with Williams. Williams lived in San Diego and has a street named after him there. He and Gwynn met often. He told Gwynn that the biggest hole in his swing was high, inside fastballs and that if he wanted to be the best he had to not only handle those pitches, but make pitchers pay by putting them out of the park. If he did that, Williams said, nobody would dare go high, inside on him.
Other great commentaries on Williams that I heard was from Buck O'Neil, a negro leagues veteran and one of the founders of the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City. He said that Satchell Paige was the greatest ball player ever, but that Williams was the greatest hitter. He said that Williams knew more about what a pitcher wanted to throw than the pitcher himself.
My favorite quote from Williams goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing). "If I knew that hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal, I would have done it more often."
What a true hero of the game. Thanks for posting.
great! and thanks for taking the time to send me this excellent response! the game has sure changed!
What an outlier. I don't think we'll ever see someone come close to what Ted did on the field and off.
thanks for stopping buy...totally agree...and when he played, he NEVER had a topo hitter in from or behind him..those Bosox teams after 1948 were usually under .500!
Ted Williams was one of the best to do it. Appreciate you putting this post together. He was actually given the option to sit-out the final day of the season in 1941 because his average was at .39995 and would have rounded up to .400, but he told his manager no way - he was going to play and finish it out. They had a double-header and Teddy went 6 for 8 I believe in the two game to raise it up to .406 for the season. What a way to finish off the season! Great post
exacatly..and thanks for stopping by!!