The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived

If you know anything about the history of the American past-time, this won't even be an argument in your mind.  Hitting a round ball travelling at either 90+ miles per hour, curving, sliding, sinking, or cutting as it comes towards you, with a cylindrical stick, is far and away the most difficult thing to do in all of sports.  The man who did this the best in the history of the game of baseball was Ted Williams.

"Teddy Ballgame", "The Kid", "The Splendid Splinter", "Mr. Red Sox," "The Thumper," "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived."  The last man to hit over .400 in a season, 521 career home runs, 2,654 hits, and 1,839 RBI.  He was selected to 19 All Star games.  He won the American League MVP twice. His #9 will never be worn by any Red Sox player again, and he was elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, during his first year of eligibility.  Not to mention he was one of the baddest sumbitches you'd ever hope to meet.  John Wayne based many of his movie roles after the persona of Williams.

By the way, he put up these numbers while committing nearly FIVE YEARS of his PRIME BASEBALL YEARS to the U.S. armed forces during World War II and the Korean Conflict.  During the Korean Conflict, he crash landed his jet on it's belly, without landing gear, and just hopped out of the cockpit like nothing happened, minutes before the jet burst into flames.

In 1941, in Ted's 3rd Major League Season, he was hitting an unspeakable .413 in Mid-September.  By the last day of the season, his average had dropped to .39955.  The Red Sox had a double-header scheduled for that day.  Had Ted Williams elected to sit out the final two games, his average would have been rounded up to .400.  Williams explained to his manager, Joe Cronin, that if he sat for the final two games, he felt that he wouldn't deserve to hit .400.  He went 6 for 8 in the last two games, raising his average to .406 to end the season.  Nobody has hit over .400 since, and it's possible nobody ever will.  That same year, Joe DiMagio had a 56 game hitting streak, and won the American League MVP, with Williams finishing 2nd.  (The media, who happened to vote for this award, disliked Ted for the most part, and is most likely the reason he finished second by a vote of 291 to 254.)

His numbers would have been absolutely staggering if he didn't spend these years at military bases and overseas as a Marine pilot.  He spent the '42, '43, '44 and most of '45 seasons in the military.  And what did he do the very next year after coming back from WWII in 1946?  He hit .342 with 38 home runs and 123 RBI, AFTER 3 and a half years completely away from baseball!  Are you kidding me?  He won the American League MVP by a landslide. 

Ted didn't care about the media, in fact he hated most media members around town, he had a love-hate relationship for most of his career with the fans, and he didn't play defense very well.  He hit the baseball. That's all he cared about.  He made it a science.  He made it an art form, and he was a master craftsman at his art.  He was tall in stature, but I promise you this, he didn't have the physical prowess that today's sluggers have, and he sure as shit didn't use any steroids.  There was no off season training programs like they have today.

He hit so well because he perfected one of the most beautiful swings you could ever see and had a perfect eye for strikes.  He very rarely swung at pitches outside the strike zone, (kind of like J.D. Drew except not a talentless pussy.)   These skills, as well as his knowledge of the physics of pitches being thrown his way allowed him to hit a baseball with more precision than any other human in the history of mankind.  Ted would often bring his bats to the post office so he could precisely weigh them to his preference.

Hitting baseballs was Ted Williams' life.  During his playing days, it's all he cared about.  He was surly, he swore all the time, he spoke with a booming voice that everyone in a room could hear, he wasn't a particularly good family man.  He hit baseballs, and he did it better than anyone. 

Imagine this for a minute...being conservative, using the math from his average season, if Ted Williams hadn't missed 4 full seasons of baseball, his lifetime numbers would have been as follows:  3,213 hits; 631 home runs; and 1936 RBI.  These are conservative numbers, remember, but go ahead and compare those numbers with any other player.  No steroids.

Do yourself a favor and YouTube "Ted Williams, 1999 All Star game."  If you don't get chills, you probably don't have a pulse.

Ted Williams stated, when asked what his career goal was, "I want people to point at me as I walk by and say 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived."  Mission accomplished.