August 30, 2018

Major League Baseball (MLB) legend Ted Williams was born 100 years ago today, on Aug. 30, 1918. One of the best players in baseball history, Williams played 19 seasons with the Boston Red Sox from 1939 through 1960. (Williams, a left-handed-hitting outfielder, missed most of five seasons while serving in the United States Navy and Marine Corps.) A consistent and powerful hitter, Williams hit 521 career home runs, drove in 1,839 runs, and retired with a career .344 batting average. He also drew 2,021 career walks, and his .482 career on-base percentage is the best of all time. Nicknamed the “Splendid Splinter” or “Teddy Ballgame,” Williams won six American League (AL) batting titles, led the league in home runs four times, in runs batted in four times, and in runs scored six times. Williams won the triple crown of batting (leading the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in) in 1942 and 1947. Williams was named to 18 AL All-Star teams, was the AL Most Valuable Player in 1946 and 1949, and he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. In 1941, Williams batted .406, making him the last player to reach .400 in the major leagues.

Baseball legend Ted Williams was born 100 years ago today on Aug. 30, 1918. Credit: AP/Wide World

Theodore Samuel Williams was born and grew up in San Diego, California. He excelled at baseball in high school, and he signed a professional contract to play for the minor league San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League in 1936. In late 1937, Williams signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox. He was promoted to Boston for the 1939 season and quickly became a star.

The United States entered World War II (1939-1945) in December 1941, and many MLB players soon entered military service. After the 1942 season, Williams entered the Navy, where he trained as a fighter pilot and flight instructor. He served until the end of 1945, returning to the Red Sox lineup for the 1946 season. That year, Williams played in his only World Series (a loss to the Saint Louis Cardinals). A few years later, Williams’s baseball career was again paused while he served as a Marine combat pilot in the Korean War (1950-1953). He missed most of the 1952 and 1953 MLB seasons, but he returned in 1954 to bat .345. Williams retired as a player after the 1960 season. From 1969 through 1972, he served as manager of the Washington Senators and the Texas Rangers. The Red Sox retired Williams’s uniform number  9 in 1984. In 1991, Williams was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the president of the United States. Williams died on July 5, 2002.

September 28, 2015

On September 28, 1941, Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams became the last Major League Baseball player to finish a season with a .400 batting average. Hitting .400 (4 hits for every 10 at bats) was once the benchmark of the game’s greatest hitters. Since 1941, however, the evolution of the game—more ballplayers, stronger and more athletic pitchers, longer seasons—has prevented anyone else from repeating the .400 feat. And Williams’ accomplishment was a near-run thing itself…

Ted Williams ranks among the leading modern players in both lifetime batting average and home runs. In 1941, he batted .406, marking the last time any player hit over .400 in a season. AP/Wide World

Williams finished the game on September 27 with a batting average of .39955, which rounds up to .400. He could have sat out the last games (a doubleheader the next day), and walked away as a .400 hitter. But Williams wasn’t satisfied. In his mind, he would have been a .399 hitter. As he put it, “If I’m going to be a .400 hitter, I want more than my toenails on the line.”

So the 23-year-old outfielder insisted on playing both games the next day. And what a day he had. In 8 at-bats, Williams had 6 hits, finishing the season at a robust .406—with much more than his toenails on the line. Since that remarkable finish in 1941, no Major Leaguer has hit .400, although two got very close: George Brett hit .390 in 1980 and Tony Gwynn hit .394 in the strike-shortened 1994 season.

On September 28, 1960, 19 years to the day after his 6 for 8 doubleheader performance, Williams stepped to the plate in the 8^th inning of the final game of the season—the final game of his career, his final big league at bat. And he hit a home run. No toenails on the line there, either.

Other World Book article 

• Ted Williams (1918-2002)-a Special report