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Nobody could walk in his footsteps Numbers told the story on slugger By Bill Nowlin, Special to the Globe, 7/8/2002
The Red Sox star, who died Friday at the age of 83, preached and practiced what Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby had taught him: ''Get a good pitch to hit.'' Williams sometimes was criticized for taking too many walks and not offering at pitches perhaps just outside the strike zone, but he believed if he started going for bad pitches, he'd begin swinging at ones ever farther outside. It was important to maintain a disciplined approach. Don't go for the ball the pitcher wants you to chase. The primary task of a hitter is to get on base, and nobody did that better than Williams. He believed that a walk was - in many ways - as good as a hit. In addition to putting a runner on base, he knew a walk could advance a runner and unnerve the pitcher. Williams had a career on-base percentage of .483 - in other words, he reached base 48.3 percent of the time. Williams walked more than 20 percent of the time - a higher percentage than any other hitter in history. He drew so many walks that his lifetime batting average of .344 (sixth best in the history of the game) became that OBP of .483, the best of any player ever. Williams also holds the record for the best on-base percentage in a season. He had a .551 OBP in 1941, but that is about to be revised upward. Researcher Herm Krabbenhoft was preparing a paper for the Society for American Baseball Research convention in Boston the last weekend of June, and he discovered two walks from late in 1941 that hadn't been included in the official record. Krabbenhoft documented his findings and Williams's corrected season mark of .553 will become the official record. Krabbenhoft uncovered that information in the process of researching another record. He knew Yankees star Joe DiMaggio had hit safely in 56 consecutive games, failed to hit in game No.57, and then hit in 16 more. But DiMaggio walked in game No. 57, so he reached base in 73 straight games; in fact, he walked in the game before his streak started, thus compiling a streak of 74 games in which he reached base. Had anyone topped that? After weeks of checking thousands of players' statistics, Krabbenhoft found that one hitter had topped that mark: Williams had a consecutive games on base safely (CGOBS) streak of 84 in 1949. Starting July 1, Williams got on base in every game through Sept.27. Consistency was a Williams characteristic. If games in other years in which he had only one plate appearance, as a pinch hitter, are excluded, there were only seven times he failed to get on base safely two games running. And only once (in 1939) did Williams fail to get on base three games in a row (May 23-25, 1939). On Aug. 20 of that season, Williams didn't get on base in either game of a doubleheader. In 1940, he failed in the second game of a July 13 doubleheader and in the first game of the next day's doubleheader. Both days he reached safely in the other game. From July 14, 1940, through Sept. 26, 1950, Williams never had back-to-back games without reaching safely, if a couple of pinch-hit appearances in 1941 and '48 are discounted. But on Sept. 27, 1950, he failed to reach base in a doubleheader - again, his lapse confined to one day. It was nearly four years later, in September 1954, that he went two straight games without reaching base. It happened just twice more, once in 1958 and once in his final season, 1960. There were not even many single games in which Williams failed to get on base. In 1948, excluding two pinch-hit appearances, there were only three games all season when he was kept off the bases. In 1949, it only happened five times. Over the 292 games in which Williams appeared in those two years, there were only 10 games (two as a pinch hitter) in which he didn't reach at least with a hit or walk. In 1957, soon after he turned 39, Williams reached base in 16 consecutive plate appearances: Sept. 17 vs. KC - pinch-hit home run Sept. 18 vs. KC - pinch-hit walk Sept. 20 at NY - pinch-hit home run Sept. 21 at NY - home run, three walks Sept. 22 at NY - home run, single, two walks Sept. 23 at NY - single, three walks, hit by pitch SABR's Cliff Otto points out this string includes four home runs in four consecutive official at-bats. Pretty good for an old man, who hit .388 that year, just a handful of hits short of another .400 season. A younger, faster Williams might well have beaten out a few infield hits and made the magic mark once more. Williams hit for power as well as average. He hit 521 home runs, despite losing nearly five prime seasons to military service. Williams was an early member of the 500 home run club. He remains the last man in the .400 club. And he is one of the very exclusive members of the Triple Crown club - leading his league in average, runs batted in, and home runs. He earned membership twice, while missing by the thinnest of margins in 1949. One would be hard pressed to find a better hitter. Williams achieved his childhood dream, to have people say, ''There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.'' Bill Nowlin is co-author of ''Ted Williams: The Pursuit of Perfection.''
This story ran on page C7 of the Boston Globe on 7/8/2002.
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ed Williams's last written words were, ''I really do know how lucky I've been in my life. Get a good pitch to hit!'' The words appeared in February 2002, concluding his remarks in the Ted Williams Museum magazine.