White Plains CitizeNetReporter - Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived is Dead at 83

WPCNR Pressbox. July 5, 2003. From Wire Services.: Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox died today at age 83. Baseball's last 400 hitter in 1941, the man who made hitting a science and served his country twice as a fighter ace in World War II and Korea is the last of the greats from baseball's golden age. The 1950s.

Williams was a star from the start because he refused to swing at a bad ball, leading the league in walks, forcing pitchers to throw him strikes which he would hit consistently.

Williams loved to hit and worked hard at it, breaking down the strike zone, to where he knew what pitches that were strikes were the best for him to swing at. He considered the low outside pitch the toughest pitch to hit.

Just one indication of why the man they called "The Thumper," "Teddy Ballgame," "The Splendid Splinter," or simply "The Kid," was so consistently great at hitting.

Spud Chandler, the Yankee Reliefer in 1939, Ted's rookie year, recalled a clubhouse meeting on how to pitch to Williams. Chandler said, "I'll tell you what I learned about him. High and tight is ball one. Low and away is ball two."

Little Bobby Shantz, the Philadelphia A's lefthander in the early 1950s, also testified to Ted's legendary batting eye, "Did they tell me how to pitch to Williams? Sure they did. It was great advice, very encouraging. They said he had no weakness, won't swing at a bad ball, has the best eyes in the business, and can kill you with one swing; he won't hit at anything bad, but don't give him anything good."

When Williams came to the plate to hit, he was all business. No rituals. No touching the cap. No flexing the muscles. No prima donna he.

He would stand in, bat cocked high, and explode with a "fluid swing," that featured "a massive weight shift through the hips." He would practice this swing for hours daily before a hotel mirror or in hitter's cage.

Williams was hitting .39955 going into the final doubleheader of the 1941 season. Manager Joe Cronin offered to give him the day off to preserve the .400 batting average. Ted refused.

Instead, "The Splinter" went 6 for 8 in the doubleheader to finish with .406. The last time a major league hitter hit .400 in a season.

Williams was also the oldest man to win a batting crown, hitting .328 in 1958, the second year in a row he led the league in hitting at age 39 and 40, respectively. At age 39, in 1957, he hit .388, to eclipse Mickey Mantle in his prime by 23 points.

Williams is 7th in lifetime batting averge in major league history with a career .344 average. He is second in walks with 2,019 free passes issued to him in 9,725 trips to the plate in his 19 year career, second only to Babe Ruth, but actually Ted was walked more frequently than the Babe. Ted is 10th on the homerun list, and had he not lost five years serving as a fighter pilot, he probably would have hit close to 700 homeruns.

Williams was driven to be the best at everything he took up. He taught himself to be a worldclass fisherman, an expert hunter. He was shot down in aerial combat and survived.

I saw Ted Williams play in the 1950s, and there was always a stir in the stands when Ted came to the plate. He was a bigger man towards the end of his career then when he first came to the bigs, but still had that tremendous swing -- the famous corkscrew one, where he delivered the complete hip turn, something you simply do not see today in today's hitters. He hit with a long, thin black bat. His concentration was fierce. His stare intense at the pitcher. He owned White Ford, the Yankees best in the 50s.

In his last at-bat, Ted Williams, on a cloud day in Fenway Park homered into the right-centerfield bleachers in the Fens, circled the bases with his head down, never acknowledging the wildly cheering crowd. As he crossed home plate running hard, flat-out, (no home run slow trots for "The Kid"), he ran straight into the dugout and disappeared. No curtain calls. Just a last goodbye clout to remember him by.


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