Ted williams biography home run list
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Ted Williams
Any argument as to the greatest hitter of all time always involves Ted Williams. It’s an argument that can never be definitively answered, but that it always involves Williams says a lot. One could probably count the legitimate contenders on the fingers of one grabb. Most would narrow the field to just two players, Babe Ruth being the other. One could make a good case for Lou Gehrig, and a very small handful of others. Ted himself ranked Ruth, Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Rogers Hornsby, and Joe DiMaggio as the top five (he elected not to include himself in any such ranking).1
If the name of the game is getting on base, no one ranks above Williams. His lifetime on-base average was .482, and think what that means. He reached base safely 48.2% of the time he came up to bat — almost half the time. Ruth comes in second, at .474. One of the reasons Williams ranked first was his self-discipline; he refused to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. In time, he developed such a
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Ted Williams Home Runs
MLB Home Runs Hit by Ted Williams | Baseball Almanac
Ted Williams played his first Major League Baseball game on April 20, 1939, with the Boston Red Sox. Every home run Ted Williams hit over the course of his big league career appears below in chronological order, along with the date of the home run, his age at the time he homered, the pitcher who surrendered the home run, the inning (Inn), his batting order position (BOP) in the lineup, and where he was playing that day (Pos). The following abbreviations are used, where applicable, in the Notes column: Birthday (BD), Inside the Park Home Run (IPHR), Lead-Off (LO), Opening Day (OD), Switch-Hit Home Run (SWHR), and Walk-Off (WO). Research by Baseball Almanac."Giant centerfield Willie Mays compared (Ted) Williams and (Stan) Musial to sportswriter Roger Kahn. 'Ted Williams was the best pure hitter I ever saw,' Mays said. 'But Ted was stubborn. When they shifted on him, everybody to the right side, he still
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By Marty Appel
One of the more revealing tales in Leigh Montville’s acclaimed 2004 biography of Ted Williams was a small anecdote that had to do with Williams’ considering retirement following the 1954 season. He was going through a divorce, was concerned about alimony payments coming out of his salary, and some had suggested that he might be better off not playing. He even told the Boston writers that he was going to quit after ’54.
During that period, he encountered a fan named Eddie Mifflin who told him of all the statistical milestones he would fall short of.
“Do you even know how many hits you’ve racked up?” said Mifflin to Williams, during a chance encounter at Union Station in Baltimore.
“No,” Williams admitted.
“You’ve got 1,930 in all…..It won’t take much to reach 2,000. And in home runs, you’re not even among the first ten in lifetime totals. But if you stick around….”
“Who are you?” Williams asked, interested.
“Just a helluva fan,” Mifflin said before jumping on a