Sunday, September 18, 2011

It was seventy years ago this month that Ted Williams surpassed .400

As all true baseball fans know, Ted Williams didn't play it safe.

He went for what he considered the legitimate, undisputed .400 average on the final day of the 1941 season, and succeeded in removing all doubt by shredding A's pitchers to the tune of 6 for 8 during a doubleheader at Shibe Park.

Ted Williams was my father's favorite player. My dad was 16 years old that summer, playing baseball when not working on my grandfather's property in Georgetown, and only a year away from running away from home to join the Marines, fighting as a naval gunner in the same conflict as his hero, a pilot.

Also, both of New Albany's two finest professional ball players were alive to observe the 1941 campaign. 31-year-old Billy Herman, a future Hall of Fame selection, was playing second base in the National League. Elderly Jouett Meekin, star pitcher during the pre-1900 days, had wrapped up his career as a New Albany fireman and was living out his years in the city of his birth.

Here's a toast to Teddy Ballgame of the MFL. If you know what the acronym means, you're a true baseball fan.
Ted Williams’s .406 Is More Than a Number, by Bill Pennington (New York Times)

Inside his room at Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Hotel on Saturday, Sept. 27, 1941, Ted Williams was jumpy and impatient. That might have been an apt description of the mercurial Williams at most times, but on this evening he had good cause for his unease.

His batting average stood at .39955 with a season-finale doubleheader to be played the next day at Shibe Park, home of Connie Mack’s Athletics. Since batting averages are rounded to the next decimal, Williams could have sat out the final two games and still officially crested baseball’s imposing .400 barrier.

No comments: