Player Profile: Ted Williams

Player notes: First, I have to admit my particular bias as it relates to Williams. I was named after him (my father was a great admirer, even though he had never been to Boston in his life and never saw Ted play in person), so I grew up idolizing the man.

That being said, what else can I write about Williams that hasn't already been written? He's one of the best-known players the game has ever produced, widely admired for his surpassing excellence as a hitter yet often reviled for his brusque manner and disdain toward reporters. The word "hero" is, I think, widely misused as it is commonly applied to sports stars. Professional athletes deserve our admiration for their skills and feats of greatness, but there is nothing particularly heroic about getting paid an exorbitant salary to play an enjoyable sport that millions play for the sheer joy of it. But Williams is one of the authentic heroes the game has produced, having gone off to war twice in the service of his country, risking his life and sacrificing some of the best years of his career to military service. He was far from the only one, of course, to do so in World War II, but he was the only great player to do so in both World War II and Korea.

Altogether, Williams lost almost all of five years to military service. (1942-1945 and 1952-53. He played some in both '52 and '53, but that totaled only 43 games.) His career numbers are impressive as they stand, but if you factor in what he probably would have done during the years of military service, they become truly astounding, and give a more complete picture of what a great hitter he really was. I calculated the effect of those lost years by adding in hits, HR and RBI using an average of what he did the years immediately before and immediately after the lost years, then subtracting out the small numbers he accumulated in the 43 games in '52-'53. The results are as follows:
3,380 hits   677 HR   2,299 RBI
That would place him eighth on the all-time hits list, third (behind Aaron & Ruth) on the all-time home run list, and first on the all-time RBI list. So if you're a casual fan who has wondered how a man who does not rank at the top in any of the major career hitting categories can be widely regarded as the best hitter in baseball history, that's why.

Ted Williams was once quoted as saying "All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street, people will say 'There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived.'" It would be easy for me, a common fan who is admittedly predisposed to liking the man, to arbitrarily make that statement. But I'll leave it to Bill James to say it for me:

"The further we go in the analysis of batting statistics, the closer we come to being forced to accept the conclusion that Williams, not Babe Ruth, was the greatest hitter who ever lived."
(The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract)

So there you go, Ted. I agree with Mr. James, and I'm mighty proud to carry the name.

July 5, 2002. When I heard the news today that Ted had died I was profoundly saddened. He had been in failing health for many years, so the news wasn't totally unexpected. Yet the news made me sad, because my childhood hero is now no longer with us. At several times throughout my life I had thought of writing to Ted just to let him know that there was a guy out there who had been named after him and grew up looking to him as a source of inspiration, and who still (as an adult) considered him to be my greatest hero. I never did it, figuring that he probably got more letters than he had time to read and wouldn't be that impressed by it anyway. Now I'll never get the chance.