Some people will do anything to avoid going to Florida.

The story has been retold countless times and has become one of the most prominent parts of the Williams legend. On his first mission as a Marine fighter pilot in the Korean War, Williams’ jet took a significant hit and caught fire. His instrument panel and communications system were virtually destroyed, and he had to follow a fellow pilot’s pantomimed instructions to find his way back to base. He refused to bail out, fearing that ejecting would destroy his knees and end any hope of playing baseball again.

Nothing sums up Ted Williams better than the fact that he was flying a plane literally spurting flames, and at least some part of his mind was concerned with how it would affect his ability to hit Ed Lopat.

When Williams attempted to land at 225 miles per hour, an explosion in the plane ripped off part of the structure and he could only deploy one landing wheel. As the fiery hellmouth of a plane skidded across the runway and the sparks flew, Ted offered up what had to be the most unique prayer in the history of organized religion:

“If there’s a Goddamn Christ, this is the time ol’ Teddy Ballgame needs you.”

How that didn’t become a psalm I have no idea. Because as it turned out, it was also the only prayer in history that proved to be 100 percent effective. Somehow, the plane finally came to a stop and Ted dove out of the burning wreckage and was immediately whisked away to something resembling safety.

For just about any other mortal, that would be enough of a story to last them the rest of their lives. But for Ted Williams, it was only the start of one of the most harrowing and ultimately triumphant years of his time on earth. A year that began with him escaping fiery death on the other side of the globe somehow ended with him returning to the Boston Red Sox before the season was out. And the level of baseball he played in 1953 was nearly as miraculous as his survival that day in Korea.

There were several factors underlying Williams’ 1953 season that made his sublime performance almost unfathomable. The first was the fact that his infamous crash landing was not the only time he was lucky to escape Korea intact. Williams scholar Bill Nowlin identified another instance when Ted’s plane took damage while attempting to complete his mission.

This near miss took place a little over two months after his crash landing on April 27 when Williams absorbed anti-aircraft fire in his left tip fuel tank. Fortunately, that particular tank “was the first fuel tapped by the jet engines, so the tanks were empty by the time the Pantherjets had begun their run.” Essentially, Ted’s life was saved by the engineers who designed the fuel supply system of his airplane–had the Pantherjet been built to take its initial supply from a different source, the ground flak would have hit a tank full of jetfuel and the result would have been catastrophic.

So by the time the 1953 Red Sox had put up a 4-6 record to bury themselves in sixth place, their Hall of Fame left fielder had already faced two brushes with death. And you thought the 2011 Sox had a rough start.

The second obstacle that Williams had to overcome to play baseball again in 1953 was the adverse effect Korea had on his health. During his deployment on the peninsula, he contracted several illnesses — some quite severe. Always sensitive to cold weather, Williams did not take winter in Korea well and found himself grounded on February 20th with an ear infection that soon escalated into pneumonia. He was eventually sent to a hospital ship in Inchon Harbor and did not fly another mission for six weeks.

He was hardly in good condition when he returned to the United States either. According to Ben Bradlee Jr, Williams’ “head was all plugged up, he couldn’t hear the radio, and flying was painful.” Finally, after flying 39 missions, “further testing revealed that his eustachian tube…was inflamed and would require more specialized treatment than was available in Korea.”

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, Leigh Montville related that Williams “confided to a nurse, years later, that he had returned from Korea with a social disease.” Which was a hell of a way to find out that Ted Williams Brand Champ Prophylactics apparently spent all of their budget on marketing instead of quality control.

Yet another factor that Williams had to overcome was that when he finally returned stateside in time to throw out the first pitch for the All-Star Game, he hadn’t picked up a bat since April 30, 1952. In the past five months, he nearly escaped death twice and had contracted pneumonia, a severe ear infection that nearly left him deaf in one year, and the clap. But after he “received an ovation that lasted for several minutes” at the Midsummer Classic, Williams delivered the message everyone had been waiting to hear: “Tell the Boston fans to get their lungs warmed up. It looks like I’ll be back.”

As talk turned to a possible return, he was also reminded that the writers doubted him–to the surprise of no one. The New York Times’ Arthur Daley offered a measure of sympathy with his skepticism, noting upon Ted’s recall to the Marines that he “would be asked to pick up the threads of a broken career at the age of 35, so dubious an undertaking that it verges on the impossible…

“Unlikely to be realized, though, is his one burning ambition. After his career had ended, he wanted folks to be able to point at him and say, ‘There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.’”

And the only way that Ted could shut these people up was to prove that he was still the greatest hitter who ever lived.

His comeback began with a legendary batting practice session. In late July, Williams returned to Fenway to meet with Tom Yawkey for the first time since he reentered the service. Pleasantries were exchanged and the eager Red Sox owner soon suggested “Why don’t you go down and hit a few?” It was the most excited Yawkey had sounded since the last time he got to say something racist. After making a show of hemming and hawing, Williams agreed.

What followed would be remembered forever by the few who were fortunate enough to witness it. Boston sportswriter George Sullivan recalled that “When Williams came out…there was a roar. You would have thought you were in Yankee Stadium. Everything just stopped. Everybody was watching.” It was time for Ted to put on a show. He took a couple of tentative swings trying to find his timing. And then he sent one over the wall. And then another. And another.

All of a sudden, the only sounds heard in the ballpark were those of yet another baseball being crushed over the fence and Ted Williams yelling “Throw the son of a bitch!” A mixture of home runs — nine in a row — and profanity. Ol’ Teddy Ballgame truly was back.

Williams hadn’t even played a game and he was already creating a scene that would have fit perfectly in The Natural. As if all of that wasn’t enough, Williams remembered that “After I’d finished, we were standing at home plate and I told [Joe] Cronin I thought the plate was off line. ‘Gee, it couldn’t be,’ he said, but he agreed to humor me. He got a guy to check it with a transit and sure enough it was off a fraction.”

Of all the nicknames Ted picked up throughout his career, it’s a shame that the only one that never caught on was “The Human Protractor.”

After a few more days of BP and getting in baseball shape, it was time to see what Williams could do against real major league pitching. He activated himself and took his first at bat in a pinch hitting appearance against the St. Louis Browns’ Marlin Stuart on August 6.

In his last game before being recalled for duty in 1952, Williams had homered off of Dizzy Trout in his final at-bat in what later came to be known as “rehearsing for John Updike.” The question on everyone’s mind was: could he bookend it with a homer in his first at bat back from Korea? His initial plate appearance was in the midst of a furious Red Sox ninth inning rally as they attempted to come back from a three-run deficit. With the tying run on third base, Williams strode to the plate to the roars of the crowd and…popped out to first.

So much for drama. According to Bradlee, “the small crowd nonetheless roared appreciatively, both as Ted was introduced and as he made his way back to the dugout.” Already Ted had witnessed an even bigger miracle than surviving the crash landing: Boston fans cheering him after making an out.

His next test came three days later against a formidable foe in Cleveland’s Mike Garcia.  Once again, Williams emerged late in the game to a thunderous response, with the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Harry Jones noting “The instant he walked up the steps to the dugout, swinging two bats, the fans leaped to their feet and began applauding, shouting, roaring.”

In an at bat that quickly felt familiar, Williams worked the count to 3-1. Here was his first real test — a hitter’s count where everyone in the park knew that Garcia would challenge him with a fastball to see how his timing was after a year and half away. As Jones reported, “The crack of the bat was unmistakable. It was a home run, high over the Boston bullpen and into the right field bleachers. The din that followed must have been heard in Seoul and all points between here and there.” The blast traveled an estimated 420 feet.

So Williams didn’t hit his first home run of 1953 until his second at bat back from Korea. Arthur Daley was right. He was slipping.

That homer alone would have made Ted Williams’ return one of the most dramatic stories of the year. Standing at third base, Cleveland’s Al Rosen noted that even Ted seemed moved by the moment: “I’ll bet maybe he was trying to hold back tears or something.” Sox manager Lou Boudreau called it “The greatest ovation I’ve ever witnessed on a ball field.”

But there were still two months of baseball to play. Ted followed the homer up with five more pinch hitting appearances, going hitless with a walk and three strikeouts. Finally, on August 14, he told the media, “Today for the first time I feel I’ve got it again.” The American League was officially on notice.

Williams got his first start of the season in the second game of a doubleheader against Washington on August 16. He was greeted with yet another five-minute ovation when his name was announced in the starting lineup and he did not disappoint. A line drive out to first base off of Spec Shea in the first inning served as a warning shot. This was followed by a ringing double to right and his second home run of the season before he left the game after five innings.

And he was just getting started.

His third home run came just three days later on the 19th, a two run blast that went 410 feet deep to right field in the bottom of the seventh that turned a one-run deficit into a Red Sox victory over the Athletics. And it turned out that three days between homers was too long for Ted, as his next one came on the 21st, a game-tying, three-run blast in the fifth inning in Washington. For good measure, he later drove in the game-winning run with a two out RBI single off Shea in the seventh.

After the game, the beleaguered Senators pitcher told the media that “the Marines should have kept Williams 20 more years.” Ted had made all of four starts on the season, and he was already accepting opposing pitchers’ unconditional surrender.

Over four games in Washington, Williams went a scintillating 7-for-11 with two walks. He drove in another game-winning run in the seventh inning on the 22nd, and hit yet another game-tying homer in the seventh frame on the 23rd. The only person in baseball history to consistently have better seventh innings than Ted Williams was Harry Caray.

By that point in the season, the Red Sox were 15 games back of the pack in fourth place with a 70-56 record. With the team out of the pennant race, Williams’ .480/.521/1.120 batting line was the whole show. As if that wasn’t enough of an indication of how The Splendid Splinter had taken center stage, the Sox as a team had hit eight home runs in the month of August. And Williams had five.

The destruction of the Washington Senators was the beginning of a 12 game hitting streak, during which time he went 19-for-37 with nine walks and only four strikeouts. He blasted six home runs over that stretch, with two sets of back-to-back homer days on August 30-31 (off of Bob Feller and Garcia no less) and September 6-7.

Leigh Montville related a story about the August 31 game that illustrated the kind of zone Ted was in:

“[Sox first baseman] Dick Gernert remembers Williams asking the clubhouse boy to find out who was pitching for the Indians…the answer was ‘Mike Garcia.’ Williams said, ‘Sliders. I’m going to hit a slider out of here today.’

“Gernert watched and waited. Williams struck out in his first at bat, grounded out in his second. In his third trip to the plate, he smoked a home run into the second deck.

“‘The fuckin’ guy finally threw me a slider,’ Williams said. ‘I told you I’d nail it.’”

It turned out that among Ted’s many skills was clairvoyance. But only when predicting his own awesomeness.

After the hitting streak ended, Williams briefly cooled down — going 3-for-22 in his next six games. This knocked his line for the season all the way down to .380/.494/.887. Clearly, this kind of mediocrity could not stand. And after hitting a pinch-hit, three-run homer against the White Sox on September 14th (his twelfth in 30 games), he went off once again, all the way through the end of the season.

Over his final 23 at bats, Ted crushed 10 hits with three doubles and two homers. His thirteenth and final home run of the season came on September 17 at Fenway. With the Tigers leading 1-0 in the bottom of the eighth and Jimmy Piersall on first with two outs, Ned Garver admitted to the media that he was trying to walk Ted on a 3-1 pitch.

But as Williams later said, “It was a slider but I don’t think Ned got it where he wanted to.” The slider ended up 15 rows deep into the right field grandstand for a 2-1 Boston victory. That was indeed probably not where Ned wanted it to go.

After going 1-for-3 off of Whitey Ford on September 27, Williams ended the 1953 season with this absurd slashline: .407/.509/.901(!). It took all of 37 games for Ted to amass 2.1 WARP–and only 26 of those were starts. He later tried to shrug off this brilliance, claiming that “I think this will happen when you come in fresh like I did, because baseball is never quite as good at the end of the year, everybody is tired, the pitching isn’t as tough.”

Yeah, that explains it. Now that we know that’s how someone could come back from serving in Korea and put up those numbers, I guess that’s why the only other person to put up a 1.400 OPS in 1953 was Ed McMahon.

Between Williams beginning the year by cheating death and ending it by slugging .901, there has never been a season in baseball history like the one he had in 1953. And considering that his year encompassed military service, a transcendent performance at the plate, and even the Red Sox adopting the Jimmy Fund as their official team charity, 1953 was also symbolic of everything that made Williams’ legacy so memorable.

So of course he ended it hitting .400.

Sources

Bradlee Jr, Ben. The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams. Little, Brown and Company, 2013. p. 363, 368

Montville, Leigh. Ted Williams: The Biography of An American Hero. Doubleday, 2004. p. 173-174, 180, 182

Nowlin, Bill. 521: The Story of Ted Williams’ Home Runs. Rounder Books, 2013. p. 194, 198

Nowlin, Bill. Ted Williams at War. Rounder Books, 2007. p. 161, 229, 254-255, 258

Seidel, Michael. Ted Williams: A Baseball Life. University of Nebraska Press, 1991. p. 252

Williams, Ted with John Underwood. My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life. Simon & Schuster, 1969. p. 185-186

Photo by Aaron Doster – USA TODAY Sports

Since the trade of Ramirez in 2008, the Red Sox have had a rotating cast of mediocrity at what has traditionally been the bedrock of the Red Sox offense. From 2009- 2016, Jason Bay, Daniel Nava, Carl Crawford, Johnny Gomes, Hanley Ramirez, Chris Young, and Brock Holt have been the only players with over 50 games played at the position in a given year during those seasons. Aside from Bay in 2009 and the highly productive 2013 platoon of Nava and Gomes (25 HR and 118 RBI!), the production has left the team wanting.

This hasn’t always been the case though and I think it’s fair to argue that from 1940-2008 no team in baseball has had a more productive position than left field has been for the Boston Red Sox. During that 68-year span, the team has had just six left fielders (min. 50 games per year) with three or more seasons at the position. To put that in perspective, over the same time span, Boston has voted in a new mayor a mere seven times. The names are pretty stunning, so here they are along with their best single-season OPS:

This is obviously a slight oversimplification, but these six men represent a nearly unbroken line at the position. There were a few exceptions: from 1943-45 and from 1952-53, Ted Williams missed time due to being a war hero in WWII and Korea. In 1964, the Red Sox experimented by putting Tony Conigliaro in left and Yaz in center field before switching back the following year. In 1973, Tommy Harper took over left field from Yaz before splitting time with Yaz in 1974, and then being traded to the Angels in the off-season. When Rice took over in 1975, he and Yaz continued to evenly split time until 1978. Yaz played less and less there until he retired in 1983. Mike “The Gator” Greenwell missed 1992 due to Tommy John surgery, and Wil Cordero bridged the gap between The Gator and O’Leary in 1997.

The fact that we can sum up 68 years of baseball at a single position on the team in just a few bullet points and a single paragraph shows just how special the string of Red Sox left fielders have been.

 

The fact that we can sum up 68 years of baseball at a single position on the team in just a few bullet points and a single paragraph shows just how special the string of Red Sox left fielders have been. Williams played for 19 years and is considered a top-three hitter of all time. Yaz played for 23 seasons, amassing a career WARP of 99.4 before retiring as arguably the most iconic Red Sox player of all time. Rice wasn’t as accomplished as Williams and Yaz, but still managed an MVP season in 1978 and eight All-Star appearances. At 24-years-old in 1988, The Gator posted one of the most under the radar great seasons in Red Sox history, generating a WARP of 7.5 while finishing second to Jose Canseco in the MVP vote due to his chemically aided 40-40 campaign – something Greenwell is still bitter about. O’Leary enjoyed his best seasons with Boston in LF, and Manny gave the Red Sox 2004 and 2007 along with some of the best offensive seasons in Fenway history.

Benintendi has a real chance to be the next guy to grab the job and never let it go, as he currently sports a nifty .864 OPS. This mark is better than all left-fielders 22-years-old and under aside from Boog Powell, Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, and Miguel Cabrera and better than Barry Bonds, Jim Rice, Yaz, and Rickey Henderson, to name a few. This is good company to be in. While he may not be a traditional slugger in the mold of Williams, Yaz, Rice, and Ramirez, years like Greenwell’s 1988 season – when he posted a .325/.416/.531 slash line – are within reach.

Many teams see left field as a place to hide players with defensive issues by rotating players in and out, but the Red Sox can consistently trot out a player with “future All-Star” written all over him. Time will tell, but I would bet on Benintendi manning left field and hitting in the middle of the order for a long time to come.

If he was in a particularly foul mood, DiMaggio “even undercut Ted’s .406 achievement, telling pals he could have achieved the milestone himself in 1939 but for his manager…”² Which is somewhat ironic, because DiMaggio, like most baseball figures of his era, didn’t realize that during Williams’ career, Ted had actually achieved a feat that eclipsed Joe D’s most famous accomplishment.

In 1949, Ted Williams recorded an on-base streak of 84 consecutive games, becoming the only player in baseball history to reach base every day for more than half a season. Ignored by baseball writers of the time due to a lack of appreciation for walks and the ability to get on base, it is only recently that Ted’s streak has begun to earn proper appreciation. The story of that streak also coincided with what almost became one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history.

Things did not look good for Ted or the Red Sox on June 30, 1949. Picked by many to run away with the American League pennant, the Sox dropped a 6-3 decision that day to the first-place Yankees and suffered an ignominious sweep at Fenway Park. The series belonged to DiMaggio, who had made his return from offseason heel surgery two days prior and proceeded to hit four home runs and drive in nine over the course of the three games.

DiMaggio’s performance was so remarkable that it prompted what might be considered the rarest moment in Fenway history: “The Boston fans, aware that something remarkable was going on, had started cheering for DiMaggio as well as for their own team.”³ Indeed, as he marked the grand finale of his dramatic comeback with a three-run homer, “over Fenway flew a small biplane trailing a banner that said: THE GREAT DIMAGGIO.”⁴

Now we know how Red Sox fans treated Yankee stars before the invention of the word “suck.”

To make matters worse, Williams had gone 0-for-5 with a double play against Vic Raschi. At that point, the favored Red Sox were listing along in fifth place with a 35-31 record, eight games behind the revitalized Yankees. It wasn’t as if Williams was the problem (which is how you can tell this piece didn’t appear in a Boston newspaper), as he was putting up a .320/.463/.621 line.

Still, something was definitely missing from the 1949 Sox. So to help the cause from that day forward, Ted Williams would not go a single game without reaching base until September 28. Even set against a career that was essentially a 19-year hot streak, the second half of 1949 made it feel like Ted’s hitting could form a new sun.

The streak began innocuously enough, with a pair of 1-for-4 days and a two-walk game as the Sox sunk deeper into the morass while getting swept by the Philadelphia A’s. Then it was as if a switch flipped and Ted went from “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived” to “He is The One.”

Boston finally broke their seven-game losing streak with a 4-2 win over the Yankees on July 5. Williams reached base four times, going 2-for-3 with two walks. And just like that, the Red Sox exploded in the opposite direction with an eight-game winning streak, during which Ted hit .391 (9-for-23) and walked 12 times.

Suddenly, the only thing keeping Ted from putting up a performance comparable to steroid-era Barry Bonds was an uncharacteristic lack of home run power. Despite his blistering on base pace, Ted hadn’t hit one out of the park in 16 games.

Finally, after going 2-for-3 with two doubles in the first game of a July 10 doubleheader, Williams laced “a high belt into the curving right-field pavilion sector”⁵ of Fenway Park during an 11-10 triumph over the A’s in the nightcap. And after homering for the first time since June 24, “it became known that Ted had fractured a rib on July 4 at Yankee Stadium.”⁶

At that point, Ted Williams was the only person on earth who could enter “fractured rib” into WebMD and get a list of symptoms that began with “.600 On Base Percentage.”

As if to show the rib wouldn’t bother him going forward, Williams homered again three days later against the Tigers, part of a 5-for-10 performance over two days that also saw him safely drop down a bunt to third base against the Boudreau Shift. The streak had reached 15 games and Williams was doing impressions of Jimmie Foxx in one at bat and Wee Willie Keeler in another. This was getting fun.

Then on July 19, it started to become absurd. Over the next six games, Williams would walk only four times. Given several more chances to hit, he proceeded to go 13-for-26 over that stretch and homered in four consecutive games from July 20-24. He twice found the right-field roof of Sportsman’s Park and his final homer of this blistering hot stretch put him in the American League lead.

Ted Williams was the only person on earth who could enter “fractured rib” into WebMD and get a list of symptoms that began with “.600 On Base Percentage.”

After ebbing and flowing recordwise over that week, his teammates again found a groove as the Sox went 8-2 over their next ten games. At the end of July, Ted had reached base in 31 straight and his slashline had risen to .340/.486/.643. The Red Sox were nine over .500 at 54-43, still trailing the Yankees by seven games. Over the next two months, they made it clear that they were just getting started.

August saw the Red Sox finally begin to make a move on the Yanks as they posted two seven-game winning streaks in the first half of the month and won 19 of 22 overall to cut the deficit to 2 1/2 games by the 21st. In the span of a month and a half, they had gone from a lost season to a reason for Boston fans to hope. Which, for Red Sox teams of the late 1940s, was an act of utmost cruelty.

For Ted Williams, August meant the continuation of unrelenting dominance. Ted began the month by recording multiple hits in seven of his first ten games. The last of these was a 3-for-4 performance with a home run in a taut 7-6 win over the Yankees as he extended the streak to 41 games.

Over that ten-game stretch, Williams slashed .500/.609/.889. Joe McCarthy could have saved time by filling the number three spot in his line-up card with “We accept your surrender.”

Finally, the League started to realize that Williams was locked in and pitchers began saying “No thanks” when he stepped to the plate. After that stretch of multiple hit games, Williams then amassed multiple walks in six of the next seven contests. He had slowed down a bit with the bat with only six hits over that span, which meant that his OBP over that weeklong stretch was a miniscule…

.541.

Simply put, the streak meant that Williams had invented a way to stop making outs during a slump. In August of 1949, facing Ted Williams was like reading a two-page Choose Your Own Adventure book where Page 2 said: “You lose.”

As if switching back into God Mode, Williams emerged from his brief slowdown with several more transcendent performances. Game 49 was a 4-for-5 effort with a home run “into 20th Street, far over the right field wall”⁷ of Shibe Park. The streak then entered DiMaggio territory in style: in Games 55-57, Ted went 8-for-16 with four home runs, including “a smash against the upper deck balustrade”⁸ at Comiskey Park.

The Red Sox and their slugger spent the dog days playing superlative baseball. By the end of this insane month, Ted’s numbers were at .356/.501/.672. The Red Sox were still two games back in second and looking to make a run at the Yankees down the stretch. They had gone hard for two months to get back into the race but their “regulars were simply exhausted…McCarthy was using fewer men then Stengel.”⁹ In order for Boston to keep winning, Williams would have to keep hitting every day.

In August of 1949, facing Ted Williams was like reading a two-page Choose Your Own Adventure book where Page 2 said: “You lose.”

Incredibly, as September played out, both of these things continued to happen. The Sox ran off a five game winning streak at the beginning of the month as Ted’s streak reached 68 games. But at Game 73, the Sox dropped a doubleheader to Philadelphia. With Boston three games behind and with only 14 to play, “That, the Boston writers noted, virtually ended the American League pennant race.”¹⁰ Because really, when were Boston writers ever wrong when it came to Ted Williams?

In the most astounding sequence of an incredible season, the Red Sox then ran off 11 wins in a row. Williams’s batting average and on-base percentage during this stretch were actually slightly below his jaw-dropping standards at .289 and .460, respectively. So he made up for that by slugging .789: a number that can only be described by asking “Are you sure Jose Canseco didn’t invent a time machine?”

In Game 75, Williams spoiled Hal Newhouser’s four-hitter with a home run that accounted for the only run of a 1-0 win. Game 80 found Ted untying a 6-6 deadlock with a game-winning homer “inches over Luke Easter’s glove”¹¹ in the seventh inning.

He followed this up with homers in Games 81 and 82, helping Boston beat the Yankees twice to finally pull into a first place tie. And both streaks continued over the next two days with Ted reaching base in his 84th consecutive game, going 1-for-4 with a walk as the 95-55 Sox beat Washington and took a one game lead over the Yankees with four to play.

And that, unfortunately, was the highpoint of the season. On September 28, the Red Sox faced Ray Scarborough, a pitcher David Halberstam called “poison to their best left-handed hitter.”¹² Utilizing a unique pitching motion, “Scarborough could decoy Williams better than any other pitcher in the league.” Sure enough, the streak was finally snapped when Ted went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. The Red Sox would heartbreakingly lose three of their last four to miss out on the pennant by one game.

While it ended in disappointing fashion, the streak remains an astonishing stretch of sustained brilliance for a player who was defined by those words. It’s no stretch to say that this legendary performance did a substantial part to fuel the Red Sox’ furious run over the last half of 1949. And upon close examination, Williams’s streak even manages to eclipse DiMaggio’s. Baseball Prospectus ran the data through our systems, crunched the numbers, and reached the following conclusion:

84 > 56

I await my offer from John Henry’s analytics department any day now.

Breaking it down further, DiMaggio batted .408/.463/.717 during his hitting streak. By comparison, in the first 56 games of Williams’s streak, he put up a .406/.557/.711 slashline. DiMaggio has him by a couple points in both batting and slugging, but Williams’s 94 point lead in on base percentage is so substantial that it more than cancels both of those out.

And while an 84-game on-base streak does allow for hitless games, it also accounts for the most unique stat from that stretch. During that time, Ted had 13 games where he failed to record any hits. Over the course of those contests, he walked 23 times.

Which means that in the games where Ted did not collect a single base hit, he averaged nearly 1.8 times on base.

In his epic biography of Williams, Ben Bradlee, Jr. related the following anecdote:

“Once, two of Ted’s friends were spending the night at his house in the Florida Keys. In the drawer of a bedside table was a small notebook of Williams’s and inside was written: ‘Ways I’m better than DiMaggio.’”¹³

It turns out that the first entry in that book could have been “Hitting Streaks.”

——

1. Bradlee Jr, Ben. The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams. New York: Little Brown & Co, 2013. 331.
2. ibid
3. Halberstam, David. Summer of ’49. New York: Avon Books, 1989. 151.
4. Halberstam, 157
5. Nowlin, Bill. 521: The Story of Ted Williams’ Home Runs. Cambridge: Rounder Books, 2013. 151.
6. ibid
7. Nowlin, 155
8. Nowlin, 156
9. Halberstam, 241
10. Halberstam, 242
11. Nowlin, 160
12. Halberstam, 251
13. Bradlee, 334

Recently on BP Boston’s own Red Seat Podcast, the discussion turned to to where Ortiz fits in all time in the Red Sox organization. Given where we are in Ortiz’s career, it’s a worthwhile and interesting topic (listen to the podcast here), and I wanted to chime in. Ortiz has been an amazing player, but the highest single season OPS+ of his career is 173. That’s incredibly good, but Ted Williams averaged an OPS+ of 190. Averaged! Williams had seven seasons with an OPS+ over 200. That means he was literally twice as good as the average player in seven seasons of his career. Ortiz has been having perhaps the best final season of any player, hitting .321/.406/.632. That’s an OPS 65 percent above league average. Williams, in his final season, at age-41, hit .316/.451/.645. That’s an OPS 90 percent above league average. Can you fathom that? I can’t.

And that might be the problem. After watching David Ortiz over the last 14 years, it’s hard to imagine anyone better than him, let alone substantially better. But Williams was, and when you look at it, there’s really no argument against him. Look at career WAR (we can’t use WARP because it only goes back to 1950). Ortiz is at 55.5, a number that, let’s admit, is partially dragged down by the DH penalty. Williams though, in his career, put up 123.1. If you add 20 extra WAR to Ortiz’s number, which you can’t do, but if you did, it still wouldn’t be close to Williams’. Williams was that good, and it’s difficult, I think, for us to imagine a player being that good unless we saw him do it with our own eyes. We’ve seen Ortiz work his magic but most of us never saw Williams.

After watching David Ortiz over the last 14 years, it’s hard to imagine anyone better than him, let alone substantially better.

“Okay, Matt,” you say. “Fine. Use WAR to make your point. But what about all the things Ortiz has done that WAR doesn’t capture? The off-the-field things, like his speech after the Marathon Bombings, his rallying of the team in the 2013 ALCS, and all his clutch post-season hits?” You’re absolutely right. Those are all very important and WAR does not, by itself, take the measure of a player’s career. Ortiz’s post-season glory will be, I think, his ultimate ticket into the Hall of Fame, and there aren’t many (any?) players who can match that part of his resume. Certainly Williams can’t. And Ortiz’s powerful speech that helped, as much as it could, heal the city after those horrific and monstrous events, is a true credit to the man, and yet another in a long list of reasons why we love David Ortiz.

But we’re talking about the greatest player in Red Sox history. Those things move the needle, for sure, but Williams was so much better than Ortiz on the field that you’d have to put your hand on the scale and then pretty much sit on the scale to get Ortiz even close. And that’s before we consider what Williams did off the field. Williams helped start the Jimmy Fund, which has raised more than $750 million to fight pediatric cancer since its founding in 1948. Williams frequently visited sick children in the hospital and is personally responsible for helping raise millions of dollars to help fight the disease. Williams is also a war hero (he’s a WAR hero also, but we’ve already discussed that). In fact, he was a war hero twice. He missed the 1943, ‘44, and ‘45 seasons to serve in World War II as a fighter pilot. Then, he missed most of the 1952 and ‘53 seasons to serve again, this time in the Korean War. It’s not hard to imagine that, had Williams played those five seasons instead of serving his country, he’d have hit another 150 home runs or more. What is hard to imagine is a player voluntarily giving up his age-24, 25, 26, and most of his age-33, and 34 seasons when his country needed him.

And really this comparison is an almost impossible one for Ortiz, because Williams isn’t just the greatest Red Sox of all time, he’s the greatest hitter of all time. After Williams though, the list doesn’t get much easier. Roger Clemens is demonstrably one of the five greatest pitchers of all time. Pedro Martinez is probably the greatest pitcher ever over a six- or seven-season peak. Again, Ortiz is great, but I don’t see how he bests either. It’s like running a race where before you start you know you can’t finish any higher than fourth. That’s an unfair standard to hold Ortiz to, but that’s how it goes when you put on a Red Sox uniform.

About the only argument for Ortiz is what he did in the postseason and the teams he was a part of. And that’s really the rub. He was a part of those championship teams, but he was not the team all by himself. His performances in the postseason will stand the test of time but he doesn’t win in 2004 without Manny, without Foulke, without Derek Lowe, and on and on. The Red Sox don’t win without him either, but he can’t get full credit. That’s not how team sports work. The same is true of 2007 and 2013, too.

There are few feelings in my life I hold closer than the joy of beating the Yankees in 2004 and winning the World Series immediately after. I made damn sure I was at the parade that year and it was amazing. I stood in the cold rain with the rest of Red Sox nation and saw Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, Mark Bellhorn (LOVE Mark Bellhorn), Curt Schilling, Keith Foulke, Johnny Damon, and Theo Epstein, the Boston boy who grew up to put the team together, float through the city and down the river on duckboats and into history. That team, man. That team! So much amazing about that team, but perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Boston had never before put together a team remotely that good since the Red Sox dominated the sport back in the 1900s and 1910s. The other greats in Red Sox history never had a chance to play on a team of that caliber and when looking back through the annals of the franchise it’s not fair to hold that against them.

David Ortiz has been a great player, and hopefully he will remain so for at least another month and a week. He deserves all the adulation and the ceremonies he’s receiving, but he’s not the greatest Red Sox of all time. That’s no insult. Making the list at all is impressive.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

I love baseball for many reasons but the stars of my youth and their gregarious personalities have influenced that more than anything.  From Pedro Martinez’s hilarious and self-deprecating humor off the field and his bulldog demeanor on the mound to the outgoing nature and swagger of David Ortiz there has never been a shortage of these on Yawkey Way.  Boggs is no exception and it seems that the longer he’s away from the game the more his legend continues to grow.

With no way to truly do the man justice — and with Bryan Grosnick having already summer up his career – I thought it would be best to give the namesake of my long-time dynasty league team his due with 26 “facts” about his life and playing career.  I say facts loosely because some stories are legend but a few common themes unite them all:  Beer. Chicken.  Any yes many many hits.  

1. Wade Boggs accumulated 88.3 fWAR over the course of his 18-year playing career, which ranks fourth all-time amongst third basemen behind Eddie Matthews, Mike Schmidt and Alex Rodriguez.  
2. 70.8 of his fWAR was accumulated in his first 11 seasons, all with the Red Sox.
3. His 70.8 fWAR ranks him third all-time for fWAR accumulated while in a Red Sox uniform, only behind Carl Yastrzemski at 94.8 and Ted Williams at 130.4.
4. Legend has it that Boggs once consumed 64 beers on a cross-country flight from Boston to Los Angeles. While the number is disputed, the beer of choice is not.  
5. Wade Boggs drinks but one beer, none other than Miller Lite.
6. Known for his affection for chicken, Boggs tried his hand at sharing his favorite chicken recipes with all of us in his little-known recipe book and only known foray into writing Foul Tips: My Favorite Chicken Recipes—it is spiral bound.
7. Throughout his 1,625 games with the Red Sox, Boggs slashed .328/.428/.462. His OBP ranked behind only Jimmie Foxx at .429 and Ted Williams at .482.
8. Boggs finished his playing career with 3,010 hits, a fact which he honors with his excellent twitter handle @ChickenMan3010.
9. Boggs won five American League batting titles over his career, in 1983 and from 1985-1988.  All of these were won in a Red Sox uniform.
10. In 2005, Boggs was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 91.9% of the vote in his first year eligible.
11. Boggs was an 11-Time All-Star with eight of his selections coming while wearing a Red Sox uniform.
12. While he never won a World Series with the Red Sox he did reach one in 1986.  
13. When Boggs did win a World Series with the hated Yankees in 1996 he celebrated by riding on a police officer’s horse.
14. The number of beers consumed by Boggs is still very much up for debate. However former teammate Jeff Nelson is on the record saying “50-60 beers was not just an isolated incident but was something he did on almost every cross country flight.”
15. Boggs led the American League in OBP six-times, in 1983 and from 1985-1989.
16. In 1987 and 1988 he also led the American League in OPS.
17. 200+ hit seasons are very hard to come by, but Boggs had seven such seasons with the Red Sox.
18. As good as he was with the bat, Boggs was no slouch defensively, winning two golden gloves late in his career in 1994 and 1995.
19. While filming an appearance on my favorite comedy show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Boggs reportedly told Charlie Day that the actual number of beers he drank on the flight was a staggering 107.  Day shared this fact with the world on the Jimmy Fallon Show.  
20. From 1986-1988 Wade Boggs led the American League in fWAR amongst position players. His marks were 7.7, 8.9, and 8.6.
21. During this impressive stretch Boggs also put up an fWAR of 8.8 in 1985, but was unable to best the mark of 9.7 set by Ricky Henderson.
22. While he wasn’t considered a power hitter by any stretch of the imagination, Boggs could hit doubles.  He had 40 or more doubles eight times over his career with the Red Sox.
23. Do you like Silver Slugger awards?  Boggs has eight of them, six while playing for the Red Sox.
24. His .338 career batting average with the Red Sox is second only to the great Ted Williams.
25. Over his time with the Red Sox, Boggs led the MLB in batting average, hits, doubles and on base percentage.
26. From May 26th forward no player will ever again wear a number 26 Red Sox jersey. Boston fans will ALWAYS remember Boggs for what he did on the field while with Boston and we will cheer him on this year when his number 26 is retired in the place where he delivered the best moments of his storied career.Photo by Gregory Fisher/USA Today Sports Images

Ortiz is the fifth player to wear the red and navy of the Sox to hit 500 or more homers, as he joins Babe Ruth, Manny Ramirez, Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams. Of those five, only Ruth hit his 500th homer with a different ballclub (and you know which one that is).

Given that Ortiz hit 58 homers with the Twins before coming over to the Sox, it seems very unlikely that he’ll pass Teddy Ballgame’s record of 521 dingers with the Red Sox. Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that given Double X’s and Manny’s journeyman ways, Ortiz will go in the record as the second-greatest home run hitter in Boston’s history.

There’s a reasonable chance that if Ortiz plays a full season in 2016, he’ll continue to climb up the all-time dinger leaderboard with alacrity. My best guess is that he finishes his career with about 530 homers, right around 19th place all-time and smack-dab between Foxx and Williams on the career home run list.

It took Ortiz 19 seasons to top the 500 HR list, and while that’s hardly chopped liver, Ortiz didn’t necessarily reach this plateau at a lightning pace. While many of the players ahead of Ortiz on the all-time list put in two decades or more, they also hit more homers than Ortiz, and hit the plateau a good bit before their 19th season. Heck, Albert Pujols is sitting at 555 homers and he’s only played 15 seasons thus far. In any case, it seems to be the seasonal number that most directly indicates a player’s ability to pass 500 homers. Like Papi, most hitters with 500 or more homers put in about two decades worth of time in the big leagues.

(So, for the record, if you’re looking for current young players who could conceivably reach that 500 homer plateau, I’d stay away from 23-year-old Kris Bryant — despite his SpaceX power — and put my money on, well, you know who.)

When you compare Ortiz’s plate appearances to other members of the 500-homer club, then we get to the interesting stuff. By looking at each player’s total career home runs and their total career appearances, we get a little bit of a better clue as to which hitters were the more prolific home run hitters based on frequency.

Ortiz scores a little better by this metric, as you can see the complete (and enormous) table below.

If you take a long look, you’ll see that Ortiz has hit homers at a proportional rate that’s better than 10 other members of the 500 Club. That’s not too shabby at all, even if you take into account that — at some point — Papi’s HR frequency is bound to slow to a crawl as he hits the point in his career where Father Time robs him of his efficacy. Then again, at this rate of decline, that may be during Ortiz’s age-47 season.

You may also notice that Ortiz also matches up nicely on the homer-per-plate-appearance basis with the greatest hitter in Sox history, Ted Williams. While no one would dare claim that the two Boston legends are of equal stature, it sure is nice to see the two paired together.

The debate as to whether or not Ortiz is a Hall of Famer is best left to others, as my opinion on the matter holds little weight. But what is not up for discussion is that Ortiz has placed himself in the upper echelon of big league home run hitters the way most of the players on the 500-dinger list have: by pairing a great HR/PA rate with uncommon longevity. I’d imagine that Ortiz ends his career with a very similar home run profile to another physically imposing slugger with charisma to spare: Reggie Jackson.

… in fact, this comparison carries even more weight when you compare the two clutch superstars and their postseason heroics. For the record (and from FanGraphs):

That’s just a little fun playoff data that ties these two monster sluggers together beyond just their propensity for hitting long, authoritative dingers once every 20 plate appearances.

In a season where Sox fans have to take joy in small things in order to glaze over the pain of being out of contention, this is a pretty sizeable event to get excited about. David Ortiz hit a “magic” milestone, one of those numbers that holds a special place in baseball history, and finally took his place among the great consistent sluggers in the game’s history.

Photo by Adam Hamari/USA Today Sports Images

Johnson was 22 years old in late 1941, having just completed his second season on the Red Sox. He had a 4.52 ERA (and 3.97 FIP), started 12 games and, in 93.1 innings, had fewer strikeouts (46) than he issued walks (51) or allowed earned runs (47). He enlisted in December 1941 and return to the team in 1946 and stayed until 1951, bearing the nickname the “smiling Swedish southpaw.” After his playing career, he’d return to work in the Red Sox’ front office and would stay for there for three decades. He is as much of a company man as they’ve had.

For his service Johnson was given the Silver and Bronze stars and commissioned as a lieutenant for his service in the war. He was specifically cited for a moment during the Battle of the Bulge in which an Allied jeep with sensitive radio equipment was damaged by enemy fire. Under a heavy barrage, he returned to the burning jeep and removed the equipment.

He also had nine wins in relief in 1948 to lead the league.

Williams was a different story. Being Ted Williams came with its own set of rules, to which he almost always successfully bent the universe. He refused military service at first and sued the draft board twice for the right to continue playing baseball until he enlisted in the Navy reserve in May 1942 and was commissioned as a Naval Aviator for the Marine Corps in May 1944. Of Williams’ military experiences, Richard Ben Cramer wrote in the historic, hilarious, profanity-laden “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?”:

Ted loved the service, its certainty and ease. He never had a problem with authority. It was drawing his own lines that gave him fits. He had his fears about the mathematics, navigation problems, and instrument work. But at Amherst College, where the Navy started training, he found his mind was able, and he was pleased. And he loved the feel of an airplane. He was good, right from the start. [There was coordination to it], and care: those were natural to him. And he was a constant student, always learnings in the air. But he was proudest of his gunnery, the way he could hold back until the last pass, then pour out the lead and shred the sleeve. That wasn’t study, that was art. He got his wings near the top of his class and signed on as an instructor in Pensacola, Florida. He was happy, and good at his job. Strangely, he was freer than before.

He wouldn’t see action, though. He arrived in Hawaii just as Japan surrendered in 1945, and would go back to the Red Sox and win the 1946 MVP after posting a 10.5 WAR season, his third in a row after 10+ win seasons in 1941 and 1942. He would continue to put up monster numbers until 1950, when he suffered a broken elbow just after North Korea invaded South Korea. In 1952, he played six games for the Red Sox, homering in his last at-bat (foreshadowing!) before heading off to war.

In Korea, Williams was a member of the fantastically named “Willing Lovers” squadron, and was given the intentionally grating nickname “Bush,” for Bush League, by superiors including future astronaut John Glenn. Williams probably hated it as much as he hated being hit by enemy fire three times and for being sent home for, of all things, a severe ear infection.

In 1952, Williams returned to the Sox and put up a 7.8 win season with which he probably wasn’t satisfied, either. He’d play, and play well, until 1960, when he homered his final at-bat, befitting what Cramer called one of the few men who try for best ever. If Williams was freer than he had been in years in the military, he was free of this obligation, for maybe the only time in his amazing life.

Whatever you think of Ted Williams now, if you think of him on Memorial Day, think of Earl Johnson, too. Free from the context of baseball, they’re both war heroes.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports Images