Teddy Ballgame leaves the yard for the first time in his Hall of Fame career.
In Ted Williams’ fourth career game on April 23, 1939, the man dubbed ‘The Splendid Splinter’ announced his presence to the rest of the baseball world by hitting the first of 521 homers in his career.
Facing the Athletics’ Bud Thomas in his first at-bat in the first inning, Williams hit a two-out, two-run shot to right field He also doubled, scored twice and drove in three runs, finishing 4-for-5. It would be his first of three four-hit games as a rookie.
After May 30 of that season, Williams essentially was a fully-formed hitting genius. He hit .343/.462/.627 in 117 games, with 23 home runs, 67 extra-base hits and 108 runs batted in. He walked 94 times and struck out just 43 times. By the end of the season, he led the league in RBIs (145) and total bases (344), finishing fourth in MVP voting.
The next year, Williams kicked off a seven-year run (excluding his missed years from 1943-45 of military service) in which he led the majors in on-base percentage each season. This included his third year in 1941, when he slashed an absurd .406/.553/.735, yet finished second in MVP voting to Joe DiMaggio. That year, Williams walked a league-high 147 times and struck out just 27 times. He’s still the last person to ever bat .400 for a full season.
There was hardly ever a time in his career when Ted Williams wasn’t the game’s best hitter. In the 13 seasons in which he had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, he led the American League in wRC+ nine times. He finished second twice and never placed lower than third.
Age didn’t rob him of his hitting ability, either. In Williams’ final season, he totaled just 390 plate appearances (more than 100 shy of the minimum requirement). His wRC+ that season? A whopping 184—12 points ahead of that season’s leader (Frank Robinson).
Williams famously wrote in his 1969 autobiography, “If there was ever a man born to be a hitter it was me.” Who knows whether hitting was actually ingrained in his DNA, but for as long as the baseball world knew of Ted Williams, he was as pure a hitter the game had ever seen.
