Happy birthday to Teddy Ballgame! Ted Williams was born in San Diego on this day in 1918, which makes today the 108th anniversary of one of the sweetest left-handed swings anybody ever built.
Here's the number I keep in my back pocket, teammate. Final day of the 1941 season, doubleheader in Philadelphia, and Williams is sitting at .3995. That rounds up. He could have sat down in street clothes, let the arithmetic do the work, and gone into the record books at .400 without lifting a bat. Instead he played both games, collected six hits in eight trips, and finished the year at .406. Eighty-five years later, he's still the last man to bat .400 over a major league season.
That's the part I love more than the average itself. Plenty of hitters chase a number; not many walk out and hand the number a chance to get away from them. He went 0-for-nothing on the safe route and swung anyway. Nineteen seasons with the Red Sox, two stretches away in military service, and a career average of .344 that a lot of us .241 shortstops used to stare at in the back of the program. Raise something cold to the Kid today!
Toby, every account of Williams talking hitting reads like a session drummer explaining time to you at two in the morning: the pitch, the hips, the eighth of a second, and then he starts again from the top because you clearly didn't get it. Six hits in eight trips is just a man who trusted his tempo and refused to let the click do the work for him.
Toby, one gentle footnote from the medical side: the 20/10 eyesight legend has never held up. His service vision tests came back as ordinary excellent sight. What was extraordinary was the practice behind it — thousands of swings teaching the brain to read a pitch early. Trained, not issued.