He retired in 1960 with 521 home runs, 1,839 RBIs, and a .344 batting average highlighted by a .406 performance in 1941, his third year in the majors. (Age 42-029d) Your email address will not be published. A piece of the loudspeaker . All rights reserved. Ted Williams MLB Stats - Official Site for "The Splendid Splinter", MLB Hall Of Famer Ted Williams #9, Boston Red Sox . Thats a debate for another day (or article). var pfHeaderImgUrl = '';var pfHeaderTagline = '';var pfdisableClickToDel = 0;var pfHideImages = 0;var pfImageDisplayStyle = 'right';var pfDisablePDF = 0;var pfDisableEmail = 0;var pfDisablePrint = 0;var pfCustomCSS = 'https://www.baseball-almanac.com/css/print.css';var pfBtVersion='2';(function(){var js,pf;pf=document.createElement('script');pf.type='text/javascript';pf.src='//cdn.printfriendly.com/printfriendly.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(pf)})(); Did you know that Ted Williams and Andre Dawson are the only two Major League ballplayers to have hit a home run off a father/son pitching duo? Ted Williams. So he was worried about this.. Williams being sworn into the U.S. Navy Reserve on May 22, 1942. Did you know that Ted Williams was actually hitting .401 the day before [box], Red Sox manager Joe Cronin offered him to sit out of the game, Williams refused, went 1-for-4, and had his batting average (before the double header) drop to .3995? The same cannot be said of Ted Williams. Babe Ruth? Rogers Hornsby, 3. Ted Williams: L.349/.488/.663 . Ted Williams, Boston (1941) As already mentioned, Williams' .406 batting average is the highest off all-time while no other player has crossed the .400 mark. It's still only April, but Colorado Rockies outfielder Matt Holliday is on pace to tie the highest season batting average since Hall of Famer Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941, becoming the last big leaguer to top the magic .400 barrier. I had to maintain my focus throughout. In 1952, at the age of 34, Williams was recalled to active duty for service in the Korean War. The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, Did not play in major or minor leagues (Military Service), Salaries may not be complete (especially pre-1985) and may not include some earned bonuses, Note, this is done in an automated way, so we apologize for any errors, & please. On September 28, 1941, Boston Red Socks first baseman Ted Williams had six hits in eight at-bats, raising his average to. Williams was 20 years old when he broke into the big leagues on April 20, 1939, with the Boston Red Sox. Ted Williams is the best pure hitter I ever saw. Ted Williams was known by the nicknames "Teddy Ballgame . Watch our How-To Videos to Become a Stathead, Subscribe to Stathead and get access to more data than you can imagine. Ted Williams was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1966. 18 - Ted Williams was the eighteenth player in Major League history to end his career, during his last at-bat, with a home run, joining the "club" on September 28, 1960, with some assistance from the opposing pitcher, Jack Fisher. A career.344 batting average ranks second to Ty Cobb, and he won six American League titles in the league. OF. 22 - Ted Williams was an inaugural inductee into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame, one of twenty-two enshrined in 1995. Copyright 2000-2023 Sports Reference LLC. He won 2 MVP awards. He had a . Required fields are marked *. But perhaps there is no better bridge to the legendary past of Ted Williams than the Red Sox hitter who won back-to-back AL batting titles in 1999 and 2000 . The SPORTS REFERENCE and STATHEAD trademarks are owned exclusively by Sports Reference LLC. Ted Williams Armed Forces Identification Card | Library of Congress Collection. The camp was capped off by being presented with the Coaches Award for spirit and . by Handedness. Foxx, 5. Williams returned to the United States in December and was discharged from the Marines on January 28, 1946. If anybody shifted that way on Musial, he would have wrecked them, by slapping base hits into left. Did you know that during the opening ceremonies he invited one active player to be attendance and it was Tony Gwynn? Aside from winning two Triple Crowns and being a two-time Most Valuable Player, Williams was also a 17-time All-Star. Along with John Olerud in 1993, Brett remains just one of two players on the list that played in over 100 games when batting for the record. These batting averapes cannot be compared directly because the distribution of major league batting averages has changed over the years. The runner-up in our five-part series documenting the best years of Boston Red Sox star Ted Williams brings us to his 1941 season. One of these accomplishments is Ted William's hitting over .400 on the season. In the last 80 years, the highest career batting average RH 324.6, Joe DiMaggio. Pujols and Cabrera are the only players with five-digit career plate appearances. His batting average in 1941 concluded at .406, the highest ever. Ted Williams impressive career totals are a testament to his skill as a hitter and his legacy as one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. update=copyright.getFullYear(); Williams was first sent, with teammate John Pesky, to the Navy's Preliminary Ground School at Amherst College in Massachusetts, for six months. by Retrosheet. His plaque reads, "A .344 career hitter with 521 home runs and 1,839 RBI in 19 seasons with the Red Sox, Ted Williams was voted A.L. In 1941, he also had the most hits in a single season with 230 and the most home runs with 37. Ted Williams once said it was his goal in life to "walk down . But not others. 6 years has to be a record for appearances on some of these lists. The highest lifetime batting average belongs to the legendary Ty Cobb. hitting catcher has a better batting average and on-base percentage against . Fans today look at the lofty batting average from Williams in . .406 Batting Average (1941) | .388 Batting Average (1957) (National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum) Williams was 4-for-5 at the plate in the first game raising his batting average to .404. Exceeded rookie limits during 1939 season, Nicknames: He was right about that and the list of batting champions below, reflects those great hitters who truly dominated during a single season of play. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Some defensive statistics Copyright Sports Info Solutions, 2010-2023. But instead he chose to play, hitting 6 for 8 in the games, and finished the season at .406. (Voted by BBWAA on 282/302 ballots) Tony Gwynn, 1994: .394Many who watched Mr. Padre during the 1994 season will still argue that he could have topped .400 if his season hadn't been cut short by the players' strike in mid-August. But what made Williams so remarkable was his lifetime batting average, a staggering .344. and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. Walker would win the title the very next year however, but clearly 1997 was the best hitting year for seasonal batting average leaders Tony Gwynn and Larry Walker. He hit two All-Star-Game home runs at Fenway Park and finished the season at .342 with 38 home runs and 123 RBIs, and was named the American Leagues Most Valuable Player. Join Baseball Almanac as we take a look at some additional numbers of interest as they relate to Ted Williams, easily (one of) "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived": 1 - Ted Williams has the highest on base percentage ever put together by any Major League ballplayer in history! Between the two, the Yankee Clipper's record-setting 56-game hitting streak and the Splendid Splinter's .406 season batting average have stood the test of time . In 1957, at the age of 39 and while playing for a lackluster team, Williams became the oldest man to win a batting title, with a spectacular .388 average, and then won the title the next year (.328). The Cardinals star missed out on the NL Triple Crown by just one home run, and he hit remarkably better on the road (.415) than at home (.334) that season. He was known as the "Splendid Splinter" and boasted a career batting average of .344. Number twenty was Ralph Kiner, number one was Babe Ruth, the full list of his Top 20 Hitters is in our Legendary Lists section. His accomplishments are impressive, so its difficult to imagine anyone else succeeding in the same way. It is appropriate to place Williams among the greatest hitters of all time, as his career numbers demonstrate his greatness. During his 24-year career, he compiled a .366 batting average, which is the highest in Major League Baseball history. Allan Simpson. His average was up to .40089. Williams had one more at-bat coming, in the ninth. Babe Ruth, 48 years old, pinch-hit in the 7th inning and flied out to right, but the all-stars won 9-8 on a Ted Williams home run. Ted Williams averaged 300 hits while winning two Triple Crowns, the most of any Hall of Fame player. Ty Cobb (98.2% in 1936)? Williams received his pilot's wings and commission as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps on May 2, 1944. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 1941 was an iconic year in baseball history, highlighted by the great individual accomplishments of Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees and Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox. These batting averages cannot be compared directly because the distribution of major league batting averages has changed over the years. Ty Cobb, 4. The 1941 AL MVP Award went to Joe DiMaggio, who hit 30 homers and paced . Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Ted Williams hit .406 with the Boston Red Sox in 1941. . Do you have a sports website? "Giant centerfield Willie Mays compared (Ted) Williams and (Stan) Musial to sportswriter Roger Kahn. He led the American League in batting average six times and is one of only three players to hit over .400 in a single season with a .406 average . He went on a mid-summer tear, batting .432 in July and .463 in August, but simply had too much ground to make up at season's end. (Williams was erased on a double play, but the Red Sox rallied with two outs. Ted Williams was born on Friday, August 30, 1918, in San Diego, California. Williams hit for a lifetime average of .344, which ranks 6th all-time, and he also holds the record for the highest on-base percentage of all time at .482. But Williams was locked in, leading off the second inning with a single to pull his average back up to .405. He won three National League batting titles, hit .350 or higher four times (in five seasons,mind you), and won the 1997 NL MVP. Here in 2016, Washington Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy enters play on Thursday with a .394 mark to lead the league, with no other guy within 40 points of the locked-in hitter. Free shipping for many products! Three innings later, Williams started the fifth with his 37th home run; he was now batting .402. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet. BOSTON Seventy years ago today, Ted Williams was hitting under .400. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Because of his ability to hit for both average and power, he was one of a kind and a truly special player. Reasonable shipping cost. Ted Williams, 1957: .388A full 16 years later, Williams proved he had plenty of magic left in his bat in 1957. Year by Year Leaders for Batting Average Major League Baseball Batting Champions. Stan Musial, one of the finest players in the majors during the late 1940s and in history, ended his holdout 75 years ago Saturday. Following the 1942 season, which produced his first Triple Crown (.356, 36 HR, 137 RBIs), he joined the V-5 program with a view to becoming a Naval Aviator. But more importantly, his average was now at .406593 or .407. On September 28, 1960, at Boston's Fenway Park, Red Sox star Ted Williams hits a home run in the last at-bat of his 21-year career. The Splendid Splinter posted the highest single-season batting average in the modern era by a player 38 years of age or older -- 10 points higher than 38-year old Ty Cobb's .378 in 1925. Ted Williams. But with a full season at his disposal this time, Gwynn tailed off down the stretch, batting .328 over the final two months of the season.Last day at .400: July 14How short was he? He actually led MLB with a .333 batting average the very next season, only playing in 40 games. Pearson finished the year with a .288 batting average, and he set career highs with 96 bases on . So Ted and I were scheduled together. .406 Batting Average (1941) | .388 Batting Average (1957) . Miguel Cabrera currently leads all active players in career batting average with .308, right above both Jose Altuve and Mike Trout. Copyright 2023 Endgame360 Inc. All Rights Reserved. July 5, 2002 So he was a very active combat pilot, and he was an excellent pilot and I give him a lot of credit.". We'll start with Garciaparra, who carried a .400-plus average longer than anyone else (July 20) in the quartet and, fittingly, came the closest in this group to matching the Red Sox legend.Last day at .400: July 20How short was he? Instead, the Splendid Splinter played both games, went 6-for-8, and finished with a .406 average, the last time a player in the American or National Leagues finished a season with a batting average that high. He had a career batting average of .344, which is the sixth highest in Major League Baseball history. This article (among others) that . Gwynn was also known for his hitting prowess and was credited with revolutionizing the way batting averages were calculated. When his classification was changed to 1-A following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he made an appeal to his draft board which was upheld. Larry Walker, 1999: .379Two seasons after claiming the NL MVP Award, Walker followed up with his best season at the plate by average. Here then, are the four batters since No. Instead, the Splendid Splinter played both games, went . Then, on July 28, 1943, in a charity game for the Red Cross at Yankee Stadium Babe Ruth led a team of former Yankees against the Cloudbusters. Javascript is required for the selection of a player. 1942-11-03 Boston Red Sox outfielder . 5.0. There is one major qualification to Walker's 1999 season, which is that his average in the thin home air at Coors Field (.461) was a full 175 points higher than his clip on the road (.286). The Splendid Splinter answered when his country called As mentioned above, Gwynn won the batting title in 1997 but Walker still led the majors in OPS and won the MVP. Why? It's also available for football, basketball and hockey. copyright=new Date(); The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Willie Mays, and 1. A lifetime .298 batting average he hit a home run every 15.11 at bats. Average hits per week: 6.7 Extra hits needed per week: 0.2 T3. The other thing Williams had to think about was the pitchers he would face three rookies who had all made their Major League debuts earlier that month. Create your own MLB fantasy pools & contests with RYP! Teddy Ballgame joined the club first when he went deep off Thornton Lee on September 17, 1939 then his son Don Lee on September 2, 1960. Many thanks to him. Ted wanted to play in the worst way.. That the Red Sox lost, 7-1, in a game called after eight innings because of darkness was secondary. Babe Ruth, 2. Todd Helton, 2000 .372One year after Walker ignited the Rocky Mountains with his .400 chase, teammate Helton gave it a try. Comparing batting averages Three landmarks of baseball achievement are Ty Cobb's batting average of 420 in 1911, Ted Williams's 406 in 1941, and George Brett's 390 in 1980. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. We have been getting good hitting and pitching, and both the cadets and officers on the team love to play baseball.". * Ted Williams himself lists Joe D in his book as the 5th greatest hitter ever, and he would be 6th with Williams included on his own list. "My conscience is clear. He also hit for .388 in 1957, which Rod Carew tied in 1977. Ted Williams | National Baseball Hall of Fame Plaque | Class of 1966 (HOF). "I'm tickled to death and I'm hoping I'll get into the air quick to start some slugging against the Axis," he told reporters.
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