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.
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.
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