“The only way to become a hitter is to go to the plate and get mad. You get mad at yourself and you get mad at the pitcher,” said legendary baseball player Ted Williams. 1938. The lanky, clumsy kid on the Minneapolis baseball team’s dugout followed that advice literally and consistently: in a rage, he broke bats, kicked water boilers and benches… Of course, that giraffe in the china shop was Ted Williams, a 20-year-old prospect for the Boston Red Sox system, the team he would play for all his life and which his fans would call “Ted Sox.” But that’s when his career was nearly cut short: One of the Boilermakers retaliated, and with a bad hit, Ted injured his wrist…
His honed technique is what got him noticed by the scouts. Fury is what they didn’t know and what almost ruined him. But the following year, when he made his MLB debut, two more components were quickly added to that list that made him the greatest hitter in baseball history – eagle-eyed vision and a phenomenal memory. 31 home runs and 145 RBI in his debut season was the bomb! Williams, the owner of “sniper’s vision,” later half-jokingly claimed that he could see which way the ball was spinning at the time of pitching – and that was over 2,000 revolutions per minute, like an engine in a car. But even if that was part of a psychological attack on all pitchers at once, he always had his memory. The average reliever who, by some miracle, struck out him three months ago could be sure: A slightly different Ted Williams hit a home run this time. He remembered all three strikes and had already figured something out.
Mr. 400.
In the fall of 1941, as the forces of Nazi Germany were sweeping Europe and the USSR, baseball America was watching a very different incredible campaign. In July, Joe DiMaggio’s legendary streak of 56 consecutive games where he was making a hit was interrupted. And now all anyone was discussing was rising star Ted Williams, who was constantly balancing on the brink of a mind-boggling .400 batting percentage (AVG) throughout the season. Above or below, reporters watched it every day, like stock market reports or the trial of a homicidal maniac…
On the last day of the regular season, Williams’ Boston Red Sox had to play two consecutive games to make up for a previously postponed game. Ted had an even .400. Club manager Joe Cronin suggested he take no chances and miss a couple of games so that a setback wouldn’t ruin a nice number. The guy barely looked at him, “If I can’t maintain .400 all season, I’m not worth it.” He went out in both games, had six hits and finished the regular season with an AVG of .406.
Since then, of course, no one has repeated DiMaggio’s record or Williams’ achievement — not even close. “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a guy who succeeds in three attempts out of ten is considered a great performer. That’s probably his most widely repeated phrase. And it’s true: Even this season, fewer than 20 people in all of MLB are hitting .300 or higher. So .400 isn’t even space. It’s just a different universe.I wish I could say it wasn’t the only season like this…Alas, we remembered the Nazis for a reason. In 1942, Williams became a Triple Crown winner – that is, the rare leader in three key offensive metrics at once: AVG, RBI and home runs. And at the same time, he also learned how to be a pilot. And then he spent a full five seasons of what would have been his best, mostly at the controls of a plane over Europe and Korea. On a flying field, not a baseball field.
Speaking of which, he was good at that, too: in 1953, he was put at the wheel of the F9F Panther, one of America’s first jet fighters. Wild stuff. On a mission over Korea it was shot down, and it was only thanks to the pilot’s skill that Williams landed the plane that was losing control and survived. Both before and after that he often said that if he didn’t have his favorite bat waiting at home he would have been glad to fly and crush Krauts all his life.
Despite five blurry seasons, Williams spent his career with an AVG of .344 (now that “average Ted” would be the season leader) while hitting 521 home runs! Had it not been for Hitler, DiMaggio might have had to move up, and Hank Aaron might not be competing with Babe Ruth in home run numbers anymore… Such speculation is a necessary part of the discussion about Williams. But he himself, it should be noted, never allowed himself to speak in that spirit and remained a true patriot, cheerfully mixing baseball and military slang in all his conversations.
And then he would pick up a bat and mix one pitcher after another with the ground. It was against the left-handed Williams that MLB began to routinely use shifts (defensive formations), moving the defense to the right. The formation was called the “Ted shift” – but it worked less and less often. Ted learned after every at-bat.
Fun fact: If you revive Williams, put him on the field, and don’t let him hit a single pitch in the next 1,140 at-bats… Only then would his strikeout rate finally drop to 300.
