By Patrick F. Cannon

Funny how the mind works. How discussing one thing leads to another, then another, then finally to the subject of today’s article – Ted Williams.

            It started at a family event at my niece Eve’s, my late sister’s eldest daughter. It was a rare occasion when her sisters Noelle and Ellen were both in town. The group also included my daughter Beth, son-in-law Boyd, and Eve and her husband Tim’s sons and their families. At dinner, the lads started arguing the merits of (mostly) pro football players. When I could get a word in, I would throw in names like Sammy Baugh and Don Hutson (look them up), NFL heroes when I was a kid.

            Comparing players from different eras is difficult. For example, Sammy Baugh of the Wasington Redskins threw for 2,938 yards in 1947. It was 1960 before this was exceeded by Frank Tripucha (remember him?), who threw for 3,038. The current record is 5,250 yards, by Patrick Mahomes in 2022. The game is different now, so how do you compare Baugh and Mahomes?

            Baseball, of course, is statistics mad. One that didn’t exist when I was young was WAR, which stands for “wins above replacement.” Although it’s a bit more complicated, in simple terms it means the value of a player over an average player who might replace him. Unsurprisingly, the all-time leader is Babe Ruth, with a WAR of 182.6 (the total of yearly values). The list includes pitchers, and numbers two and three are Walter Johnson and Cy Young. The only other pitcher in the top 10 is Roger Clemens. (I could find no list that included Negro League players.)

            Barry Bonds, whose stats are tainted in my mind, is at number four with 162.8. Willie Mays (156.2) and Hank Aaron (143.1) are in the top ten. Ted Williams is at number 14 with a WAR of 121.8. He missed five prime seasons serving as a Marine fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War. It’s estimated – conservatively in my mind – that he would have accumulated 41.6 more WAR points during those years, for a total of 163.4, which would have put him second among position players on the all-time list.

Interestingly, Ruth’s WAR includes 20.4 earned as a pitcher. Ruth of course hit 714 home runs to Williams’s 521 (which would likely have been in the 600s if he had played those five seasons), but Ted had an on-base percentage of .482 to Ruth’s .474. Career batting averages were .344 for Williams and .342 for Ruth. As far as average runs batted in (I deleted 1952 and 1953 for him since he played so few games in those seasons) Williams averaged 108, and Ruth 101. Lou Gehrig topped both with 117.

Who was the greatest hitter? Not easy to say. For getting the bat on the ball and reaching base, you would have to say Ty Cobb. He averaged .366 for 24 seasons. But the world loves a power hitter, so Ruth has long been considered the greatest hitter of all time. He helped his cause by being flamboyant and approachable, the kind of man you could image having a beer with (or quite a few as it happened!). Williams could be prickly, particularly with the beat reporters who covered baseball daily. He had close friends, but very few.

In his final at bat for the Red Sox, he hit a home run. The Boston fans gave him a standing ovation, but he refused to come out of the dugout to acknowledge them. I saw him once, in 1949 I think, at Comisky Park, a game the Red Sox of course won. At the end of that year, the Red Sox and Yankees were tied for the American League Pennant. The Yankees won the tie breaker, thus confirming the “curse of the bambino.” For you curling fans who don’t follow baseball, it refers to the 1919 sale by the Red Sox of Ruth’s (the Bambino) contract to the Yankees, who went on the win multiple World Series before the Red Sox finally won one in 2005. In 1949 Williams batted .343, hit 43 home runs and batted in 159 of his teammates. Alas, not enough to break the  curse.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon