Background and career
Theodore Samuel Williams (August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) 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. Williams was a 19-time All-Star, a two-time recipient of the American League (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 it 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 last National League or AL 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, he was the AL batting champion for the fifth and sixth time. In the process, he became the oldest player to win a batting crown at 39 and 40 years old, respectively. 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's 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.
Theodore Samuel Williams was born on August 30, 1918, in San Diego, California, and named "Teddy Samuel" after former president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt and his own father, Samuel Stuart Williams. Williams said his middle name was in honor of a maternal uncle who had been killed in World War I, but that man was named Daniel Venzor. Williams disliked the name "Teddy" and later amended his birth certificate to read "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 the 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's paternal ancestors were a mix of Welsh, English, and Irish. The maternal Spanish-Mexican side of Williams's family was quite diverse, also 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, [considering] the prejudices people had in Southern California." Williams lived in San Diego's North Park neighborhood (4121 Utah Street). 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. A former semi-professional baseball player, he had pitched against Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe Gordon in an exhibition game. When Williams was a boy, his 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, and later was named the 1960 American Legion Baseball Graduate of the Year. Though Williams had offers from the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees while he was still in high school, his mother thought that he was too young to leave home. He signed with the local Pacific Coast League (PCL) club, the San Diego Padres.
Williams played back-up behind Vince DiMaggio and Ivey Shiver on the (then) 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 that 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 (RBI) 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 for 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 500 feet (150 m) on the fly to a 512-foot (156 m) 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.
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 [sic] Williams". Williams inherited Chapman's number 9 on his uniform as opposed to Williams's 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 had given 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's 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's 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 because 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.
In the second week of spring training in 1941, Williams broke a bone in his right ankle, limiting him to pinch hitting for the first two weeks of the season. Bobby Doerr later claimed that the injury would be the foundation of Williams's season, as it forced him to put less pressure on his right foot for the rest of the season. Against the Chicago White Sox on May 7, in extra innings, Williams told the Red Sox pitcher, Charlie Wagner, to hold the White Sox, since he was going to hit a home run. In the 11th inning, Williams's prediction came true, as he hit a big blast to help the Red Sox win. The home run is still considered to be the longest home run ever hit in the old Comiskey Park, with some saying that it went 600 feet (180 m). Williams's average slowly climbed in the first half of May, and, on May 15, he started a 22-game hitting streak. From May 17 to June 1, Williams batted .536, with his season average going above .400 on May 25 and then continuing up to .430. By the All-Star break, Williams was hitting .406 with 16 home runs and 62 RBI. In the 1941 All-Star Game, Williams batted fourth behind Joe DiMaggio, who was in the midst of his record-breaking hitting streak, having hit safely in 48 consecutive games. In the fourth inning, Williams doubled to drive in a run. With the National League (NL) leading 5–2 in the eighth inning, Williams struck out in the middle of an American League (AL) rally. In the ninth inning, the AL still trailed 5–3; Ken Keltner and Joe Gordon singled, and Cecil Travis walked to load the bases. DiMaggio grounded to the infield and Billy Herman, attempting to complete a double play, threw wide of first base, allowing Keltner to score. With the score 5–4 and runners on first and third, Williams homered with his eyes closed to secure a 7–5 AL win. Williams later said that that game-winning home run "remains to this day the most thrilling hit of my life". In late August, Williams was hitting .402. Williams said that "just about everybody was rooting for me" to hit .400 in the season, including Yankee fans, who gave pitcher Lefty Gomez a "hell of a boo" after walking Williams with the bases loaded after Williams had gotten three straight hits one game in September. In mid-September, Williams was hitting .413, but dropped a point a game from then on. Before the final two games on September 28, a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics, he was batting .39955, which would have been officially rounded up to .400. Red Sox manager Joe Cronin offered him the chance to sit out the final day, but he declined. "If I'm going to be a .400 hitter", he said at the time, "I want more than my toenails on the line." Williams went 6-for-8 on the day, finishing the season at .406. (Sacrifice flies were counted as at-bats in 1941; under today's rules, Williams would have hit between .411 and .419, based on contemporaneous game accounts.) Philadelphia fans ran out on the field to surround Williams after the game, forcing him to protect his hat from being stolen; he was helped into the clubhouse by his teammates. Along with his .406 average, Williams also hit 37 home runs and recorded 120 RBI in 143 games, missing the Triple Crown by five RBI. Williams's 1941 season is often considered to be the best offensive season of all time, though the MVP award would go to DiMaggio. The .406 batting average—his first of six batting championships—is still the highest single-season average in Red Sox history and was the highest batting average in the major leagues since 1924 and the last time any National or AL player has hit over .400 for a season after averaging at least 3.1 plate appearances per game. ("If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal", he quipped in 1991, "I would have done it again.") Williams's on-base percentage of .553 and slugging percentage of .735 that season are both also the highest single-season averages in Red Sox history. The .553 OBP stood as a major league record until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2002, and his .735 slugging percentage was the highest mark in the major leagues between 1932 and 1994. His OPS of 1.287 that year, a Red Sox record, was the highest in the major leagues between 1923 and 2001. Despite playing in only 143 games that year, Williams led the league with 135 runs scored and 37 home runs, and he finished third with 335 total bases, the most home runs, runs scored, and total bases by a Red Sox player since Jimmie Foxx's in 1938. Williams placed second in MVP voting; DiMaggio won, 291 votes to 254, on the strength of his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak and league-leading 125 RBI.
