Ted Williams
Theodore Samuel Williams was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball career, primarily as a left fielder, for the Boston Red Sox from 1939 to 1960; his career was interrupted by military service during World War II and the Korean War. Nicknamed "Teddy Ballgame", "the Kid", "the Splendid Splinter", and "the Thumper", Williams is widely regarded as one of the greatest hitters in baseball history in addition to being the last player to hit over.400 in an MLB season.
Williams was a nineteen-time All-Star, a two-time recipient of the AL Most Valuable Player Award, a six-time AL batting champion, and a two-time Triple Crown winner. He finished his playing career with a.344 batting average, 521 home runs, and a 1.116 on-base plus slugging percentage, the second highest of all time. His career batting average is the highest of any MLB player whose career was played primarily after World War II, and ranks 11th all-time.
Born and raised in San Diego, Williams played baseball throughout his youth. After joining the Red Sox in 1939, he immediately emerged as one of the sport's best hitters. In 1941, Williams posted a.406 batting average; he is the second-last baseball player to bat over.400 in a season. Williams's career.482 on-base percentage is the highest of all-time. Williams followed this up by winning his first Triple Crown in 1942. Williams was required to interrupt his baseball career in 1943 to serve three years in the United States Navy and Marine Corps during World War II. Upon returning to MLB in 1946, Williams won his first AL MVP Award and played in his only World Series. In 1947, he won his second Triple Crown. Williams was returned to active military duty for portions of the 1952 and 1953 seasons to serve as a Marine combat aviator in the Korean War. In 1957 and 1958 at the ages of 39 and 40, respectively, he was the AL batting champion for the fifth and sixth time.
Williams retired from playing in 1960. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, in his first year of eligibility. Williams managed the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers franchise from 1969 to 1972. An avid sport fisherman, he hosted a television program about fishing, and was inducted into the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame. Williams' involvement in the Jimmy Fund helped raise millions in dollars for cancer care and research. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush presented Williams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award bestowed by the United States government. He was selected for the Major League Baseball All-Time Team in 1997 and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999.
Early life
Theodore Samuel Williams was born on August 30, 1918, in San Diego, California, and named "Teddy Samuel" after former president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt as well as his father, Samuel Stuart Williams. Williams himself claimed that his middle name was in honor of a maternal uncle who had been killed in World War I. He disliked the name "Teddy" and later amended his birth certificate to say "Theodore" instead.His father was a soldier, sheriff, and photographer from Ardsley, New York, who had served in the United States Army and was a veteran of Philippine–American War. His mother, May Venzor, a Mexican-American from El Paso, Texas, was an evangelist and lifelong soldier in the Salvation Army. Williams resented his mother's long hours working in the Salvation Army, and Williams and his brother cringed when she took them to the Army's street-corner revivals.
Williams' paternal ancestors were a mix of Welsh, English, and Irish. The maternal, Spanish-Mexican side of Williams' family was quite diverse, having Basque, Russian, and American Indian roots. Of his Mexican ancestry, he said, "If I had my mother's name, there is no doubt I would have run into problems in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California."
Williams lived in San Diego's North Park neighborhood. He spent much of his time playing ball with his friends at a field that later became known as Ted Williams Field. At the age of eight, he was taught how to throw a baseball by his uncle, Saul Venzor. Saul was one of his mother's four brothers, as well as a former semi-professional baseball player who had pitched against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe Gordon in an exhibition game. As a child, Williams' heroes were Pepper Martin of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bill Terry of the New York Giants. Williams graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego, where he played baseball as a pitcher and was the star of the team. During this time, he also played American Legion Baseball, later being named the 1960 American Legion Baseball Graduate of the Year.
Though he had offers from the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees while he was still in high school, his mother thought he was too young to leave home, so he signed up with the local Pacific Coast League club, the San Diego Padres.
Professional career
Minor leagues
Williams played back-up behind Vince DiMaggio and Ivey Shiver on the Pacific Coast League's San Diego Padres. While in the Pacific Coast League in 1936, Williams met future teammates and friends Dom DiMaggio and Bobby Doerr, who were on the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. When Shiver announced he was quitting to become a high school football coach in Savannah, Georgia, the job, by default, was open for Williams. Williams posted a.271 batting average and 11 runs batted in on 107 at bats in 42 games for the Padres in 1936. Unknown to Williams, he had caught the eye of the Boston Red Sox's general manager, Eddie Collins, while Collins was scouting Doerr and the shortstop George Myatt in August 1936.Collins later explained, "It wasn't hard to find Ted Williams. He stood out like a brown cow in a field of white cows." In the 1937 season, after graduating from Hoover High in the winter, Williams finally broke into the lineup on June 22, when he hit an inside-the-park home run to help the Padres win 3–2. The Padres ended up winning the PCL title, while Williams ended up hitting.291 with 23 home runs and 98 RBI in 138 games. Meanwhile, Collins kept in touch with Padres owner Bill "Hardrock" Lane, calling him two times throughout the season. In December 1937, during the winter meetings, the deal was made between Lane and Collins, sending Williams to the Boston Red Sox and giving Lane $35,000 and two major leaguers, Dom D'Allessandro and Al Niemiec, and two other minor leaguers.
In 1938, the 19-year-old Williams was 10 days late to spring training camp in Sarasota, Florida, because of a flood in California that blocked the railroads. Williams had to borrow $200 from a bank to make the trip from San Diego to Sarasota. Also during spring training Williams was nicknamed "the Kid" by Red Sox equipment manager Johnny Orlando, who after Williams arrived to Sarasota for the first time, said, "The Kid' has arrived". Orlando still called Williams "the Kid" 20 years later, and the nickname stuck with Williams the rest of his life. Williams remained in major league spring training for about a week. Williams was then sent to the Double-A-league Minneapolis Millers. While in the Millers training camp for the springtime, Williams met Rogers Hornsby, who had hit over.400 three times, including a.424 average in 1924. Hornsby, who was a coach for the Millers that spring, gave Williams useful advice, including how to "get a good pitch to hit". Talking with the game's greats would become a pattern for Williams, who also talked with Hugh Duffy, who hit.438 in 1894, Bill Terry who hit.401 in 1930, and Ty Cobb with whom he would argue that a batter should hit up on the ball, opposed to Cobb's view that a batter should hit down on the ball.
While in Minnesota, Williams quickly became the team's star. He collected his first hit in the Millers' first game of the season, as well as his first and second home runs during his third game. Both were inside-the-park home runs, with the second traveling an estimated on the fly to a center field fence. Williams later had a 22 game hitting streak that lasted from Memorial Day through mid-June. While the Millers ended up sixth place in an eight-team race, Williams ended up hitting.366 with 46 home runs and 142 RBI in 148 games. He received the American Association's Triple Crown and finished second in the voting for Most Valuable Player.
Boston Red Sox (1939–1942, 1946–1960)
1939–1940
Williams came to spring training three days late in 1939, thanks to Williams driving from California to Florida, as well as respiratory problems, the latter of which would plague Williams for the rest of his career. In the winter, the Red Sox traded right fielder Ben Chapman to the Cleveland Indians to make room for Williams on the roster, even though Chapman had hit.340 in the previous season. This led Boston Globe sports journalist Gerry Moore to quip, "Not since Joe DiMaggio broke in with the Yankees by "five for five" in St. Petersburg in 1936 has any baseball rookie received the nationwide publicity that has been accorded this spring to Theodore Francis Williams". Williams inherited Chapman's number 9 on his uniform as opposed to Williams' number 5 in the previous spring training. He made his major league debut against the New York Yankees on April 20, going 1-for-4 against Yankee pitcher Red Ruffing. This was the only game which featured both Williams and Lou Gehrig playing against one another.In his first series at Fenway Park, Williams hit a double, a home run, and a triple, the first two against Cotton Pippen, who gave Williams his first strikeout as a professional while Williams had been in San Diego. By July, Williams was hitting just.280, but leading the league in RBI. Johnny Orlando, now Williams' friend, then gave Williams a quick pep talk, telling Williams that he should hit.335 with 35 home runs and he would drive in 150 runs. Williams said he would buy Orlando a Cadillac if this all came true. In 149 games, Williams batted.327 with 31 home runs and 145 RBI, leading the league in the latter category, the first rookie to lead the league in RBIs and finishing fourth in MVP voting. He also led the AL in walks, with 107, a rookie record. Even though there was not a Rookie of the Year award yet in 1939, Babe Ruth declared Williams to be the Rookie of the Year, which Williams later said was "good enough for me".
Williams' pay doubled in 1940, going from $5,000 to $10,000. A new bullpen was added in right field of Fenway Park, reducing the distance from home plate from 400 feet to 380 feet and earning the nickname "Williamsburg" for being "obviously designed for Williams". Williams was then switched from right field to left field, as there would be less sun in his eyes, and it would give Dom DiMaggio a chance to play center. Finally, Williams was flip-flopped in the order with the great slugger Jimmie Foxx, with the idea that Williams would get more pitches to hit. Pitchers, though, proved willing to pitch around the eagle-eyed Williams in favor of facing the 32-year-old Foxx, the reigning AL home run champion, followed by the still highly productive 33-year-old Joe Cronin, the player-manager. Williams also made his first of 16 All-Star Game appearances in 1940, going 0-for-2. Although Williams hit.344, his power and runs batted in were down from the previous season, with 23 home runs and 113 RBI in 144 games played. Williams also caused a controversy in mid-August when he called his salary "peanuts", along with saying he hated the city of Boston and reporters, leading reporters to lash back at him, saying that he should be traded. Williams said that the "only real fun" he had in 1940 was being able to pitch once on August 24, when he pitched the last two innings in a 12–1 loss to the Detroit Tigers, allowing one earned run on three hits, while striking out one batter, Rudy York.