Ted Williams in 1941

Baseball’s last .400 hitter was probably the sport’s best pure hitter ever. Over 60 years have passed since 1941, and no one has duplicated “Teddy Ballgame’s” feat of hitting .406. Great hitters such as Rod Carew, George Brett, Tony Gwynn, and Todd Helton have carried .400-plus averages far into the season but died in the home stretch.

In 1941, Williams knocked out 185 hits in 456 at-bats, including 33 doubles, 3 triples, and a league-leading 37 homers. He also walked 147 times, giving him an incredible .553 on-base percentage. Up until Barry Bonds’ 2002 campaign, this was the highest on-base percentage ever recorded in one season. Williams also led baseball in slugging percentage with a .735 mark and struck out only 27 times, a career low.

Ted led the AL with 135 runs scored and finished second to Joe DiMaggio in RBI with 120. DiMaggio hit .357 with 125 RBI and set an all-time record by hitting in 56 consecutive games. During the summer of 1941, America’s last summer before its entrance into the Second World War, Williams and DiMaggio took turns grabbing the headlines in the sports pages of newspapers across the nation. Their names have been forever linked together in baseball lore since 1941, and countless comparisons have been made between the two giants of the sport.

Under today’s rules and the rules common to most of baseball history, Williams would actually have been credited with a .412 batting average in 1941. At that time a fly ball that drove in a runner from third base counted as a time at bat and not as a sacrifice fly. Williams was charged with a time at bat for six such fly balls in 1941 that would have been scored sacrifice flies today.

It is not surprising that Ted was baseball’s last .400 hitter. His career batting average of .344 is sixth all-time and the highest since Rogers Hornsby retired in 1937 at .358. Williams also holds the highest career on-base percentage at .483. Babe Ruth is second at .474. Williams’ career .634 slugging percentage is second only to Ruth’s .690. Probably the best statistical measure of a player’s offensive value is total average. This is derived by dividing a player’s bases made (total bases + stolen bases + walks + times hit by pitches – number of times caught stealing) by his outs made (at-bats – hits + times caught stealing + times grounded into double play). Williams owns the second-highest all-time total average at 1.320. Ruth is first at 1.399.

Williams knocked out these fabulous stats despite losing more time to military service than any other player in baseball history. He missed all of the 1943, 1944, and 1945 seasons, when he served his country as a Marine fighter pilot in World War II. He then missed all but 43 games to the Korean War in 1952 and 1953 for the same reason. All totaled, he missed 727 games during his peak years due to wars. Consider the number of games he missed, plus the difficulty of hitting major league pitching at so high a level after returning from such long periods of absence, and the magnitude of Williams’ statistical greatness becomes staggering.

By the time he reached the Red Sox in 1939, Ted’s 6’4″ frame had filled out to 175 pounds, and he was hitting many balls over 400 feet. He gave the Fenway Park faithful an inkling of things to come when he batted .327 with 31 homers and led the league in RBI with 145, still a rookie record. At age 20, he also began to be known for his boyish cockiness. In one game in Detroit he blasted a homer off Bob Harris that landed on top of the right-field pavilion at Briggs Stadium. As he crossed home plate, he told Tiger catcher Birdie Tebbetts, “I hope that guy is still pitching the next time I come up. I’ll knock it clear over the roof.” This is exactly what Ted did.

Sometimes he practiced his swing while standing in the outfield. He did not fare well playing right field, the sun field, at Fenway Park. The next season he would be shifted to left field, where he would eventually become a good if somewhat underrated fly chaser. There were times that he sulked after tapping an easy ground ball and did not run hard to first base. If he had a bad day at the plate, it might noticeably affect his fielding adversely. The Boston writers, led by Dave Egan of the Boston Daily Record, often magnified his mistakes. In 1939, Ted’s father and mother separated, and he decided not to go home during that winter. He sent money to his mother, but home was not a happy place for him.

In 1940, Ted’s relationship with the writers worsened. The first time Williams did something to displease sports reporter Harold Kaese, he wrote, “Well, what do you expect from a guy who won’t even go see his mother in the off season.” It was comments like this that turned Williams against the writers. He explained in his autobiography, “Before this, I was willing to believe a writer was my friend until he proved otherwise. Now my guard’s up all the time, always watching for critical stuff. If I saw something, I’d read it twenty times, and I’d burn without knowing how to fight it. How could I fight it?”

In 1940, Ted’s batting average improved to .344, but his power numbers fell off to 23 homers and 113 RBI. Only seven of his homers came at Fenway. Some of Fenway’s fans started to boo him. After being booed one day after striking out and following it up with an error in left field, Williams vowed never to tip his cap again. He never did tip it during his playing days, even after hitting a home run in his final at-bat in Fenway in 1960.

The 1941 season, however, was probably Ted’s most enjoyable. Even his most zealous critics could find little fault with him that magical summer. It was the hitting perfectionist’s perfect season. The so-called kid with the swelled head proved to the baseball world just how remarkable a talent he was. He showed that he was the equal of anyone playing the game and won many fans over. From then until the end of his career all the potshots that the press took at him could not deny his true greatness. It may be that no one will ever hit .400 again.

The 1941 season did not start out promising for Williams, however. In the second exhibition game he caught his spikes sliding into second base and chipped a bone in his right ankle. He came out of the exhibition season still limping and relegated to pinch-hitting duties only. On April 15, a sparse opening day crowd of 15,000 at Fenway Park saw the Red Sox rally for three runs in the ninth inning to top Washington, 7-6. Ted delivered a key pinch-hit single in the rally.

Strangely enough, Ted’s teammate Bobby Doerr believed that Williams’ ankle injury might have actually helped Ted hit .406. Doerr explained his theory; “I remember him going into the trainer’s room every day to get his ankle taped up. In batting practice you could see him kind of favoring it. I kind of wondered then, and I kind of got to thinking as the season went on, that it was sensitive enough to make him stay back for as long as possible to keep the pressure off his front foot.”

Williams agreed that he was able to hold back a little longer in 1941. Ted said, however, “But I never thought it was because of my ankle. I never thought that. From 1941 on, I was getting stronger and stronger and stronger. I was late to mature, and I think I was the strongest between the ages of 22 and 32. As a result, I was able to hold back and hold back, getting quicker and stronger than at any time.”

Boston won five of its first six games without Ted in the lineup. He tried to play left field at Griffith Stadium during a 12-5 loss to Washington on April 22. He whacked a single and a double in four at-bats but wound up aggravating the injury further. In the next four games he appeared only once, pinch-hitting unsuccessfully during a 6-3 loss in New York. Ted never was a good cold weather hitter. Fenway almost always had chilling adverse winds during the first couple of weeks of the season. Not being in the lineup every day then probably helped Ted’s batting average in 1941.

Ted was back in left field on April 29 in Detroit. He bashed a long double and a 440-foot home run off Johnny Gorsica, but Gorsica outpitched Lefty Grove to win, 5-3. Ted always considered Detroit as his best park to hit in with its short right field porch. In 585 career at-bats there he homered. 55 times and knocked in 162 runs.

On May 7 in Chicago, Ted walloped a 500-foot two-run homer into the upper right-field stands at Comiskey Park off Johnny Rigney in the third inning. Rigney liked to challenge hitters with high, hard fastballs, and the book on Ted was that he murdered the high fastball. Ted came to bat against Rigney again in the eleventh inning with the score tied at 3-3. Rigney tried to surprise Williams with a slow curve. Ted drove it over the roof of the second tier in the deepest part of right center and sent it bouncing into a parking lot estimated at some 600 feet from home plate. Only Ruth and Gehrig had hit balls over that roof before.

The Yankees arrived in Boston for the first time of the season on May 11, and the Red Sox routed them, 13-5, before an overflow crowd of 34,500. Ted singled twice and doubled in six at-bats while Joe DiMaggio singled three times in five at-bats. Joe was off to a slow start barely hitting .300, when he began his historic 56-game hitting streak on May 15. Ted singled once in three at-bats that day during a 6-4 loss to the first-place Indians. That single, however, started him on a 23-game hitting streak of his own.

Over the course of those 23 games, Ted would hit .487 (43 for 88) while DiMaggio hit .368 (32 for 87). On May 21, Ted went 4-for-5 with a double off the Browns’ Bob Harris as the Red Sox won, 8-6. Williams was always a terror against the Browns. In 1941, he hit .426 with nine homers and 26 RBI in 61 at-bats against them. From 1939 to 1953 he feasted on Brownie pitching, batting .393 with 60 homers and 223 RBI in 754 at-bats.

The Red Sox played three games at Yankee Stadium from May 23 to May 25. The first game was called because of darkness after nine innings with the score tied, 9-9. The Yanks won the second game, 7-6, as DiMaggio’s two-run single in the seventh inning proved to be the decider. Boston won the final game, 10-3, as Williams singled three times and doubled. His average was now at .404.

During a four-game series against the N..s from May 27 to May 29, Ted ripped eight hits in 15 at-bats, including a double and two homers, to bring his average up to .421. On Memorial Day in Boston, the Yanks and Red Sox divided a doubleheader. New York won the opener, 4-3, and Boston took the second game with a 13-0 rout. Ted was 3-for-5 on the day with a double and scored four times. DiMaggio had two singles in five at-bats but experienced the worst day of his career on defense, making four errors. Ted ended May at .429. He had hit .436 for the month.

The Sporting News opined: “Unless all people who know anything are 100 percent wrong, Williams is due to firmly establish himself this year as one of the truly great left-handed batsmen. There isn’t anything particularly new about this estimate of his ability, either. In 1939, his first complete season in the major leagues, Williams did things with a bat and ball that made all wonder where his limits were. He hit homers in many parks that went so far as to be almost unbelievable. He didn’t hit them off young or unskilled pitchers altogether either.”

As June opened, an announcement was made that all servicemen would be admitted free of charge for the remainder of the season at all major league parks. Ted began June in Detroit with four hits in nine at-bats including his eighth homer as the Red Sox swept a doubleheader, 7-6 and 6-5. Lou Gehrig died on June 2, and flags were at half-staff in all major league parks for the day of his funeral on June 4. Cleveland was leading the league on June 2 at 30-19. Another baseball star who would distinguish himself in military service during World War II, Bob Feller, had won 11 of the Indians’ games, including three shutouts. Chicago was 1 ½ games out. The Yanks were three games back and Boston was four out with a 22- 19 record.

The Red Sox teed off on Cleveland pitching on June 5, socking 16 hits in a 14-1 win. Williams singled twice, homered, drove in three runs, and scored four times. The next day his average reached its high-water mark for the season at .438 as he doubled and clouted a two-run homer off Rigney in a 6-3 win in Chicago.

Around this time Carl Felker characterized Williams in The Sporting News. Felker wrote, “Ted Williams rolled up a newspaper, gritted his teeth, faced the mirror in a hotel room in St. Louis and took a cut at an imaginary ball. ‘Hitting is the biggest thing in my life,’ he exclaimed. ‘I love it. And the thing I like next best is to hunt ducks in Minnesota.’ But right now, duck hunting doesn’t occupy any part of Ted’s thoughts. He is concentrating on the job of trying to top the .400 mark in hitting for the 1941 season. And he believes he has a good chance to reach his goal perhaps even to smash the all-time figure at .438 set way back in 1894 by Hugh Duffy, now a coach with the Red Sox. ‘If you don’t have confidence in yourself, who will?’ asks the Boston kid.”

Felker continued: “Every chance he gets, Williams practices hitting. ‘I’ve always done that,’ he declared. ‘It’s my pet theory—practice your swing all the time, from morning to night. Strengthen those muscles you’re going to use. I go out to the ball park in the morning for batting drill. Even when I’m in the outfield, I take my imaginary cuts at the ball. I’m always taking swings in my room. It all helps.”‘

Concerning Ted’s ability to hit left handers well, Felker added, “Williams doesn’t believe southpaws are any tougher for him to hit than right-handers. ‘At Minneapolis, where I played in 1938, we had a short right field fence (actually only 278 feet) and the other clubs would save their left-handers to send against us there,’ Ted related. ‘As a result I was fortunate in getting to look at a lot of southpaw pitching.”‘

Williams’ 23-game hitting streak was stopped in the first game of a doubleheader in Chicago on June 8 by Ted Lyons. Lyons walked him three times, including once with the bases loaded. The Red Sox won, 5-3, behind Grove. On June 12 in St. Louis, Ted’s two-run homer off knuckleballer Johnny Niggeling was the difference in a 3-2 win. Back in Boston on June 15, Ted whacked four hits in six at-bats including another double and homer as the Yawkeyites swept the White Sox, 8-6 and 6-4, before 34,000-plus.

On Bunker Hill Day in Boston, the Red Sox took the opener of a doubleheader from Detroit, 14-6, but dropped the second game, 8-5, before 23,000. Ted drilled a two-run homer and doubled in five at-bats. In New York, the Yanks completed a three-game sweep of Cleveland before a combined crowd of 100,675 for the series as “Joltin’ Joe” ran his streak to 29 games.

On June 23, Cleveland still led the league at 40-25 when they entered Boston for a three-game set. The Yanks were two games back, and Boston was four games off the pace. The Red Sox. won the opener routing Mel Harder and his successors with 18 hits, 13-2. The next day Williams cracked a two-run homer in the fourth inning to tie the score at 2-2, and Boston went on to win, 7-2. The loss knocked the Indians out of first place as New York took over the top by besting St. Louis, 7-5. “Joltin’ Joe” homered to bring his streak to 37 games. In the final game Cleveland rebounded to win, 11-8. Feller, showing signs of overwork, was hit hard but still recorded his 16th win Williams went 5-for-10 in the series, scoring six runs and knocking in three. He was now at .412 with 53 RBI and a league-leading 63 runs scored. DiMaggio was at .349 with 62 runs scored and a league-leading 57 RBI.

The Red Sox invaded Yankee Stadium for a big doubleheader on July 1, trailing the Bronx Bombers by five games. It was the Red Sox ‘s last real chance to get into the pennant race and they failed miserably. A crowd of 52,832 saw the Yanks win, 7-2 and 9-2. DiMaggio laced three singles, tying Wee Willie Keeler’s 1896 mark by hitting in consecutive game number 44. He broke Keeler’s mark the next day with a three-run homer that went over Ted’s head and sailed into the left-field stands. The Yanks won again, 8-4, to open up an eight-game lead over Boston. Ted managed just three singles in nine at-bats in the important series without an RBI.

On the last day before the All-Star break, Ted went 4-for-8 with two doubles as the Bosox bested the Senators twice, 6-2 and 6-3, at Fenway. Ted was getting second billing during DiMaggio’s streak but he was still drawing a lot of attention with his .405 average at the break.

The All-Star game was considered as big an event as the World Series in those days, as both leagues played for keeps to get bragging rights. With the American League trailing 5-4, Ted came to bat with two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth against Claude Passeau. He fouled off the first pitch, took two balls, and then lifted a fly ball toward the foul line in right. He described his historic homer in his autobiography: “I had pulled it to right field, no doubt about that, but I was afraid I hadn’t got enough of the bat on the ball. But gee, it just kept going, up, up way up into the right field stands in Detroit-halfway down to first, seeing that ball going out, I stopped running and started leaping and jumping and clapping my hands, and I was so happy I laughed out loud. I’ve never been so happy, and I’ve never seen so many happy guys. They carried me off the field, DiMaggio and Bob Feller, who had pitched early in the game and was already in street clothes, and Eddie Collins leaped out of the box seats and was there to greet me.” Ted called the home run “the biggest thrill” of his career.

The Red Sox stayed in Detroit for a four-game series after the All-Star game. On July 12, Ted received a base on balls, then took a big lead off first base. The Tigers pitched out and catcher Birdie Tebbetts fired down to Rudy York, trying to pick Williams off. Ted slid back to first hard, and when he did his foot hit the corner of the bag and twisted. It was the same foot that he had injured in the spring. He limped around a few more innings before retiring to the clubhouse. The ankle swelled up like a balloon. He had received three walks in the game before fouling out in his last at-bat. On the previous day he had been collared in four at-bats by Bobo Newsom. His average had now dipped to .397, and the dream of a .400 season seemed in serious jeopardy.

Meanwhile Joe DiMaggio ran his streak to 56 games before being stopped on July 17 before 67,468 in a night game in Cleveland. From the time he broke Keeler’s record until the end of his streak he had been on fire, whacking 24 hits in 44 at-bats. He now led the league in RBI with 76 and home runs with 20. During one span in the streak the Yankees won 30 of 35 games to run away from the pack into a solid lead in the standings. On July 21, they led Cleveland by 7 games and Boston by 14. Joe’s average was up to .375, and he told reporters that he hadn’t given up on catching Ted for the batting title. During the streak he had hit .408. During the same 56 games, Ted hit .412.

Ted spent the next 12 games on the bench while his foot healed. He pinch-hit four times in those 12 games. He walked once, hit an RBI fly ball, popped out, and cranked a three-run homer. He returned to left field in Fenway on July 22 and tagged Chicago’s Rigney yet again for a gigantic homer into the right-center bleachers in the second inning. Stan Spence replaced him in the field later in the game, but Ted was back for the full nine innings the next day, socking a single and a double in five at-bats. In his first 12 games back from the injury Ted collected 19 hits in 35 at-bats to bring his average back up to .412.

After DiMaggio’s streak was stopped in Cleveland, he ran off another 16-game streak, hitting safely in an unbelievable 72 out of 73 games. He went almost two months without striking out. Yet Ted was pulling away again in the batting race. His three singles on July 26 helped deny Feller his 20th win. His two-run homer on July 29 was the key blow in a 3-2 win over St. Louis. He smashed a grand slam against the Browns the next day. He ended July at .409 to “Joltin’ Joe’s” .377. On August 1 he went fishing on an off day and caught a record-breaking 374-pound tuna.

In two consecutive doubleheaders in St. Louis on August 19 and August 20, Ted went 8-for-14 with five homers, seven runs scored, and eight RBI. DiMaggio cooled off and dipped to .356. Joe then sprained his ankle on August 19. He would miss three weeks. DiMaggio’s injury now gave Ted a good chance at the Triple Crown, if the pitchers did not walk him so much. He was in the midst of a 21-game road trip that visited all seven cities. During the road trip he was walked 32 times in 96 plate appearances. He had 26 hits. He hit .406 on the trip with a .623 on-base percentage. On August 30 he celebrated his 23rd birthday with a single and a home run during a 12-3 win over the A’s at friendly Fenway.

The Sporting News reported, “The orders the pitchers get now when Ted comes to bat, particularly with men on base, is to walk him. They start walking him as early as the first inning. If he isn’t walked intentionally with the catcher moving off to one side, they might as well put on the act, because they pitch so wide to Ted it would be silly for him to swing on any of the pitches …. It is the exception when Ted is pitched a ball not down near his left knee or so far on the outside as to be almost a wild pitch. Therefore his chances of hitting are kept way down. Ted has one of the best eyes for pitches of any batter in baseball.” Later while in the Marines, Ted’s eyesight would be tested at 20/10, and he would set the student gunnery record at Jacksonville.

On Labor Day in Boston, Ted smashed three tremendous home runs in a doubleheader sweep of the Senators. This gave him 34 homers on the season, passing New York’s Charlie Keller for the league lead. He was also walked four more times. One of the homers came off Bill Zuber, the pitcher who had come close to ending Ted’s career with a beaning at Minneapolis in 1938. The writers said it was the longest homer Ted had hit at Fenway all season.

The Yanks clinched the pennant with a 6-3 win at Fenway on September 4. Atley Donald, a pitcher noted for his control, walked Ted four straight times before he managed a single in his final time at bat. They were the only free passes that Donald gave up all afternoon. The same frustrating experience had happened to Ted three weeks earlier at Yankee Stadium. After a first-inning RBI single, he was walked four straight times to a chorus of boos from New York fans, who had paid their money to see Ted hit. Yankee pitchers were well aware of Williams’ competition with Keller and DiMaggio for the league’s home run and RBI crowns.

The four walks to Ted in the game on September 4 were unfortunate for another reason. A 14-year-old boy named Billy Kane started out on a 250-mile hitchhiking trip from his home in South Brewer, Maine, on September 1 to sec his hero, Williams, at Fenway Park. He arrived in town on September 2, which was an off-day for the Red Sox. He walked through Boston to Fenway and fell asleep under the bleachers. When the police found him there, he told them his story. He was taken to the station house and the desk sergeant phoned Williams in his hotel. Ted had already gone to bed, but when he heard the kid’s story he dressed quickly and took the kid out for a good meal. He then put Billy up for the night at his hotel. The next day the youngster was permitted to sit in the Red Sox dugout during the game. After four walks, Ted whacked a single. The kid supposedly said to Williams after, “Dog-gone, Ted! Gee, pal, but I was pulling for the home run.”

On September 7 at Yankee Stadium, Ted hit a single and a pair of doubles off Lefty Gomez in an 8-5 loss to the Yanks. Yankee Stadium was the only park that Williams did not hit a home run in that magical summer. In the fifth inning, however, he crushed a 450-foot double off the top of the center-field wall, missing a round-tripper by mere inches. The next inning Gomez walked him on four pitches with the bases loaded, giving Ted his only RBI of the day. On September 15, Ted belted his 35th homer of the season, a three-run shot off Chicago’s Johnny Rigney (his sixth off Rigney in 1941) in a 6-1 win at Fenway. His three RBI that day tied him with DiMaggio at 116. The Yanks’ Keller was leading the league at 122, but he had twisted his ankle on September 7 and was lost for the remainder of the season. It was likely that both Ted and Joe would pass him in RBI.

When the Yanks came to Fenway on September 20, Joe and Ted were still tied in RBI at 116. Ted had two-thirds of the Triple Crown locked up and was battling Joe for the RBI crown. The Yanks won the first game, 8-1. Joe singled, doubled, and drove in two runs to take the lead again at 118. The next day Boston clinched second by winning, 4-1. In the sixth inning, Ted launched a two-run homer off Ernie “Tiny” Bonham to tie Joe for the RBI lead once more.

Ted was now hitting .406 with six games left to play—three in Washington and three in Philadelphia. He was quoted saying: “Lots of times I could belt the ball into the stands if I wanted to take a chance, but I have to think about my average this season. Next year, everybody will be talking about my 1941 mark. Then I’ll be swinging from my heels and giving the home run record a whirl. I’ll go after ’em all, one at a time. I’ll beat Gehrig’s mark for runs batted in, Hornsby’s and Cobb’s batting records, and Ruth in homers. I’m the boy to do it, too.”

The Sporting News remarked: “From the rockbound coast of Maine to the sun-kissed shores of California, the real fans are rooting almost to a man for Ted to continue above the .400 mark … . Williams has a grip on the fans of this country that is remarkable. He is only a youngster, having become 23 on August 30. It may be that his great ability as a batter for one so young has appealed to the fans. There is a boyishness about Ted that gets everybody. A string bean in build, with a frame so shy of the usual sinew and muscle which great hitters of other days have had, he does not appear to have the power to do what he does and yet he does it.”

On September 23 and 24, the Red Sox played three games in Washington, and Ted managed just two singles in ten at-bats. His average dropped to .402. Meanwhile in New York, the “Jolter” smashed two home runs and drove in three runs to take the RBI lead for keeps. On September 27, Ted got just one hit in four at-bats, a double to deep right center, against A’s rookie knuckleballer Roger Wolff during a 5-1 Red Sox win in Philadelphia. His average had now dipped to .39955 with a season-ending doubleheader scheduled for the next day at Shibe Park.

Ted described the evening before the big doubleheader in his book: “That night before the game Cronin offered to take me out of the lineup to preserve the .400 (.39955 rounds off to .400). I told Cronin I didn’t want that. If I couldn’t hit .400 all the way I didn’t deserve it. It sure as hell meant something to me then, and Johnny Orlando, the clubhouse boy, always a guy who was there when I needed him, must have walked ten miles with me the night before, talking it over and just walking around. Johnny really didn’t like to walk as much as I did, so I’d wait outside while he ducked into the bar for a quick one to keep his strength up. The way he tells it, he made two stops for scotch and I made two stops for ice cream walking the streets of Philadelphia.”

On the last day of the season a sparse crowd of 10,000 showed up at a cold and miserable Shibe Park. Ted recalled, ”As I came to bat for the first time that day, the Philadelphia catcher, Frankie Hayes, said: ‘Ted, Mr. Mack told us if we let up on you he’ll run us out of baseball. I wish you all the luck in the world, but we’re not giving you a damn thing.”‘

Williams started off the first game with a line single between first and second off Dick Fowler. The next time up he homered. Then he hit two singles off a left hander he had never seen before, Porter Vaughn. In the second game he hit a ground single to right, then doubled off a loudspeaker horn in right center (Boston writers said it was the hardest ball he had hit all year). Mack had to have the horn replaced in the winter, so badly was it dented. Ted was already 6-for-8 on the day, when the second game was called on account of darkness after 8 innings. As it happens, Ted was scheduled to lead off the top of the 9th and they probably would have pitched to him.

Suppose he’d gotten up one more time? With one more at bat, assuming the Athletics didn’t have the good sense to give him an intentional walk, he may have gone 7 for 9—which would have given him a .407 average. If he’d made an out, it would have reduced him to .405.

But darkness descended, with Philadelphia ahead, 7-1, so Ted never had that final at bat. For the day Williams wound up with six hits in eight at-bats to finish at .406. He added to his legendary story, “I don’t remember celebrating that night, but I probably went out and had a chocolate milk shake.”

The final day of the 1941 season would not be the last time Ted rose to the occasion. On opening day in 1946, in his first game back after three years in the military, Ted blasted a 400-foot home run in Washington. In 1952, in his last game before leaving for military duty in the Korean War, Ted broke up a 3-3 tie with Detroit by creaming a home run off Dizzy Trout. Ted flew 39 combat missions over Korea. When hit by small-arms fire during one mission, he crash landed his damaged jet and escaped from the flaming wreckage fortunate to be alive. In his first Fenway appearance back from the cockpit near the end of the 1953 season, he homered off Mike Garcia and went on to bat an incredible .407 in 37 games.

In 1957, at age 39, Ted topped the league with an amazing .388 batting average and slammed 38 homers, coming within five leg hits of hitting .400 again. He batted .453 during the second half of 1957. Off the field, his concern for charitable causes in Boston and his efforts on, behalf of the Jimmy Fund were numerous, often unpublicized and made genuinely from his heart. Today he is most remembered for hitting .406 in 1941, but Ted Williams’ whole career—both on and off the field—was nothing short of colossal. He was a true American hero. The greatest pure hitter ever? I’d say so. 

PAUL WARBURTON is a former baseball player, captain of the hockey team and sports editor at Moses Brown Prep in Providence. He lives in Wakefield, Rhode Island.