This is a wonderful article. Thank you for posting. Ted Williams has been my all-time favorite position player, even though I am a die-hard NY Mets fan. (Yes, Seaver is my favorite player.). I read My Turn At Bat 2-3 dozen times growing up. In fact, this is the only Williams book I’ve read. You and others reference many others. Where do you rank MTAB amongst these and what are your top 2-3 books that you’d recommend?
PS - it’s posts like this one that make me appreciate social media in general and Substack specifically. Thank you.
I really like your analysis. Of course Ted would utilize data to help his hitting just as defenses do to help their positioning. I think it’s likely Ted would have adjusted to higher velocity pitching as well. A couple things you did not mention that also favor Ted as potentially successful in the modern era: Batting equipment. Modern hitters are decked out like hockey goalies. Ted stood in with bare hands, short sleeves, and a cloth cap. Try controlling the inner half against Bob Feller or Bob Gibson with no protective gear. Good luck!
Another thing Ted did not have is a modern physical training and nutrition regimen. Today hitters have strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, massage therapists, the whole program. Can you imagine a lean and flexible Ted at 6’3” and 230lbs?
True. Great point. The overall athleticism has improved. The skill level, however, isn’t as developed as it should be because these guys are rushed to the majors. I went to a Twins-Guardians game last August and there were at least five plays in the first four innings that should have been made that weren’t.
I’ll bet that’s true. We get a filtered view through the highlight reels. By the way, did watch the Dodger Brewers game last night. I mean…what the hell?
Pedro Martinez said “we’re watching the greatest baseball player of all time”.
I was not familiar with his pitching arsenal. He’s got more breaking pitches than some entire staffs. And they are all very good. Not to mention great location with his 100 mph fastball. To think he can command all those pitches in the big moment with so little time to develop and refine them is amazing. I think he only threw about 45 innings this year. Oh yeah, not to mention the 3 dingers.
Yes, and dotting the edges and corners with 100. Some of the Brewers swings were emblematic of just how good the pitches were ( desperate flailing attempts to get some contact).
You're right. I did mention the advances in bats and training methods. And facing Feller or Gibson with no protection, exactly. But there is so much that's improved, I think it's interesting to speculate...Thanks for the nice comment..
You bet. One thing you mentioned that cannot be overstated is the athletic ability and skill of the defenders. Almost every position in every team is manned by a freak athlete with consummate skills.
I watched Brooks Robinson dropping jaws in the World Series in ‘68. Watching replays of those plays today they look nice, but…in today’s game that’s called “Tuesday”, or “business as usual”.
I remember Williams as the manager of the Washington Senators and how he got Eddie Brinkman (a notable good glove, no bat SS) to actually become a decent hitter by chocking up on the bat snd just putting the ball in play. I think that pine tar on the bat anecdote was from spring training in 1968 or 69.
Ted wasn’t a great manager, but he got the Senators to their best record ever at 10 games over .500.!
You’re right! Good memory. And Ed Brinkman was the guy who we used as a reference point to describe an awful hitter. “Who are you, Eddie Brinkman?” Pete Rose, apparently knew Brinkman from high school and I seem to remember Pete’s quote - Pete had a lot of ‘em - “I don’t get that. In high school, Eddie used to hit the long ball for us.” Something like that. Williams helped Frank Howard, too. But the other part of managing - running a bullpen, infield defense, that wasn’t his thing. Great comment. Thanks!!🙏
Ah yes, Frank “Hondo” Howard. 17 year old me’s favorite player. Whenever he played deep in LF, Brinkman would play on the outfield grass to cover short flies as Frank couldn’t get in on bloopers. Eddie also took relay throws from Frank.
Ken McMullen at 3rd, Mike Epstein at first, Bernie Allen at 2nd, Unser in CF and Paul Casanova behind the plate. Joe Coleman and Dick Bosman on the mound. Man, I ❤️ that team, senior year in HS and a decent ball club. Two years later it all went to shite for 34 years 🙁.
I hope you have read John Updike’s wonderful essay on Ted Williams that I believe appeared in the New Yorker magazine soon after Williams retired. It’s an appreciation of his total career.
I remember reading his book on hitting. He diagrammed the strike zone by showing the “batting averages” of imaginary baseballs in each area of the zone. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I seem to recall that a low outside pitch in the strike zone had a .220 average where a pitch centered in the zone had a .385 average. He stated that if a pitcher could consistently find that low outside corner very few people would hit as high as .200. He also estimated how much a batter’s average would decline if he swung at pitches an inch outside the strike zone.
I saw Williams hit the last four years of his career. Specifically I remember Mickey Mantle having the highest batting average in his career, .365. Williams only beat him by 23 points, .388! Given how he was so particular in choosing a particular pitch’s location I have to believe the smaller strike zone of today would have made his accomplishments even better.
Jeff: Your comments are right on and I wish I would have had a chance to meet and chat with your Dad. Walking away after a .340 season is tough. I was a sportswriter for 25 years, my son is a baseball player raised on Ted Williams’ Science of Hitting, who starred all the way through high school - started in the state championship as an 8th grader, starred at Florida State and drafted by Oakland, got into the Cardinals’ system and climbed quickly, making the majors in 2020 and 2021 with the Cardinals and Pirates. The reason was John understood the strike zone, as Ted advocated and for the past several seasons is one of the very players in all of organized baseball to have more walks than strikeouts. Ted was a scientific hitter who, I think, would have used the overwhelming amount of available data to his advantage.
I’m not surprised that Gilliam and many other big-leaguers including Mantle had no idea of the strike zone and how to use the count. I remember Mantle talking about a conversation he had with Ted at an All-Star game “and, man, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.” I’ve written eight books, including two about baseball - Last Time Out (about MLB greats final game, including Ted’s farewell HR) and my new one, Diamond Duels, about some of the game’s great historic matchups - Hank Aaron was 1-for-23 against Don Drysdale to start his career, then he hit 17 HRs against the guy once he figured him out. Thanks for thoughtful comment. I invite you to check out my Substack.
Thanks for the great comment, Jeff. Not only have I read Updike on Ted, I met him. Updike came to Florida State years ago and I worked for the newspaper and managed a brief interview with Updike and all we talked about was Ted. And the amazing thing was, on the way home, I started thinking “Gee, what did other great players do their last at bat? That might be a great book idea. So I called a guy I’d just met at the Hall of Fame, Bill Guilfoile, the former Pirates’ PR guy and asked him “Bill, is this a good idea for a book - What did all these great players do in their final games?” And he said, “ John, that’s a great idea. Call Jill Langford in Indiana. She’ll get you a book deal. She’ll love this. So I called her and immediately said “Yes! What players do you want to do?” And the result was my baseball book “Last Time Out” - available on Amazon…hahahaha. Cool, huh? Thanks for the great comment, Jeff.
Thank you. You and I must have more in common than John Updike. I’m married to a journalist who covered state politics for many years in New York. Not that you need more information about Ted Williams or baseball but I think you might be interested in an observation from my father about Ted Williams and hitting.
My father was part of that generation of baseball players who lost potential major league careers to World War II. He played one season in the St. Louis Browns farm system before the war, hit about .340, and then was in the army until the end of the war. When the war ended the NY Giants acquired his contract and wanted him to go to their double AA farm team in Hartford, Connecticut. He decided not to go.
In that era the only players who would jump from class A to the majors were men like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. What’s more, baseball players in the 1940’s made very little money. Most major leaguers held second jobs in the off season. He was looking at two years in AA, followed by three years in AAA if he made it to the majors. And then starting at age 29 or 30 have a two or three year major league career.
So he left baseball, went to college on the GI Bill, got married, and had a successful business career.
I mention this because he retained his interest in baseball and had some ideas about hitting. He felt good hitters looked for counts that favored the hitter; two balls and no strikes, three balls and one strike. In those types of situations a disciplined hitter (like Ted Williams) can afford to only swing at a pitch in his high average zone. Williams clearly would not swing at a strike that was not in that zone; the odds weren’t in his favor.
I think this quality is what separates him from two much beloved Hall of Famers, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. I saw much more of Mantle than Mays but I never felt they approached hitting like Williams did. They struck out so much more than Williams.
Many years after leaving baseball my father attended a business conference where the former Dodger Jim Gilliam was a featured guest. Not to dump on him but my father talked about hitting and Gilliam had no idea about using the count to your advantage. He clearly used only God-given ability to hit.
I don’t watch that much baseball today. I watch more in October than the entire rest of the year. My suspicion is that very few players approach hitting like Ted Williams did. They look like they have been seduced by the home run!
John- I love sports and am a very accomplished golfer (played in three US Amateur Championships; played over my head in one of them reaching the quarterfinal round). Golf is a very precise game and requires much of the analysis that Williams brought to baseball. I think that’s why I have always admired his approach.
It sounds like you have written about other topics than baseball. What are they?
Well, Jeff, I’ve covered everything you can think of. My favorite sports are baseball, boxing, football and basketball. Haven’t covered much hockey and don’t play golf, though I do know how to swear. Ha ha..https://johnnogowski.substack.com/p/and-then-i-wrote
I’m currently reading an anthology of A.J. Liebling’s writing. It includes his classic The Sweet Science (which I presume you have read; great boxing writing). It also contains his book The Earl of Louisiana which I’m currently about halfway through. The Earl of Louisiana is about Earl Long who was governor of Louisiana in the 1950’s and was the brother of Huey Long. It’s a fascinating look at the politics of the Old South.
A little trivia. About 45 years ago I played golf with Billy Graham’s opponent in the Syracuse fight, Chico Vejar. I was living in Stamford, Connecticut at the time, showed up at the local municipal golf course and was paired up with him (he lived in Stamford) and a couple of friends. He was a nice guy but was a terrible golfer. Come to think of it I saw Sugar Ray Leonard take a golf lesson on the Golf Channel and he looked to be as bad as Vejar! I guess throwing a knockout punch requires a different talent than hitting a 300 yard drive.
That’s cool. I taught Liebling’s story about Donnybrook in an FSU class years ago. My son, maybe 5 or 6, sat in. I don’t think he was listening, of course. But years later, we’re driving home and we go by “Donnybrook” and John says “Dad! Donnybrook!” Stunned, I asked how do you know that? That was the story you taught about that guy who covered the fight. So Liebling gets through! Love him. Sweet Science is one of my all-time favorites.
Great article. Living in Seattle, where today’s pitchers get pulled if velocity drops to 94, I can’t help but wonder how Jamie Moyer would fare against modern hitters. I think some of these guys would hurt themselves going after that changeup
This is very interesting given its applicability to other sports (notably cricket where the data goes back to the nineteenth century). There the question is how would Bradman (the greatest player who ever lived and a statistical freak who averaged almost twice as much as almost everyone else) fare today. Again, players are fitter, perhaps stronger and have a wealth of information, but there will always be the truly exceptional.
Pitch velocity is possibly offset (modestly) by today's body armor. Who remembers Kruk bailing against Randy Johnson - and that was with a helmet.
Strike zone seems smaller top to bottom today. Seemed to have flattened out and elongated during the Maddux era. It's been reined in horizontally but still smaller vertically. Imagining Ted having to cover 80-90 percent of the area he did in his era.
The one benefit that Ted would NOT have today is pitcher familiarity. So many fewer games against the same teams. Of course this would be offset by today's video tech - but that's not the same as experiencing a guys "stuff" first hand.
After Williams’s death I interviewed Bobby Doerr, a Hall of Famer himself, and he was almost breathless in his continued amazement about Williams’s hitting decades later. He talked about Williams stepping out of the box one time for what seemed to be no good reason—when asked Williams explained he was waiting for a cloud to move. Okay, the one instance of the modern game might not favour Williams, although he’d probably have an internal pitch clock more accurate than the time keeper’s.
Exactly. But the technology would be a godsend for him. DiMaggio didn’t have the faintest idea what his average was or any of that statistical stuff. He knew what pitchers gave him trouble as any hitter would. But he wasn’t into the specifics like Ted. He was really good but not as good as the New York press made him put to be.
I don't know, John. I think Ted would have trouble getting around on today's fastballs. After all, he would almost be 107! Couldn't resist the nod to Ty Cobb.
In all seriousness, I think you made great points backing up Mr. Williams. He also might be my second-favorite all-time player from before I was old enough to really watch, trailing only Bob Gibson. One of my favorite baseball books is "The Kid" by Ben Bradlee Jr.
The lifetime average against Feller is undeniable evidence that Williams could hit modern day heat. Feller was officially timed at 98mph, and with 3 no-hitters and 12 1-hitters(!), he was bringing the heat.
Interesting you bring up Trucks. Williams references him in his book as an example of hitting hard throwing pitchers. Science of Hitting was one of my favorite books as a kid...lost it in a move long ago.
This is a wonderful article. Thank you for posting. Ted Williams has been my all-time favorite position player, even though I am a die-hard NY Mets fan. (Yes, Seaver is my favorite player.). I read My Turn At Bat 2-3 dozen times growing up. In fact, this is the only Williams book I’ve read. You and others reference many others. Where do you rank MTAB amongst these and what are your top 2-3 books that you’d recommend?
PS - it’s posts like this one that make me appreciate social media in general and Substack specifically. Thank you.
I really like your analysis. Of course Ted would utilize data to help his hitting just as defenses do to help their positioning. I think it’s likely Ted would have adjusted to higher velocity pitching as well. A couple things you did not mention that also favor Ted as potentially successful in the modern era: Batting equipment. Modern hitters are decked out like hockey goalies. Ted stood in with bare hands, short sleeves, and a cloth cap. Try controlling the inner half against Bob Feller or Bob Gibson with no protective gear. Good luck!
Another thing Ted did not have is a modern physical training and nutrition regimen. Today hitters have strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, massage therapists, the whole program. Can you imagine a lean and flexible Ted at 6’3” and 230lbs?
True. Great point. The overall athleticism has improved. The skill level, however, isn’t as developed as it should be because these guys are rushed to the majors. I went to a Twins-Guardians game last August and there were at least five plays in the first four innings that should have been made that weren’t.
I’ll bet that’s true. We get a filtered view through the highlight reels. By the way, did watch the Dodger Brewers game last night. I mean…what the hell?
Pedro Martinez said “we’re watching the greatest baseball player of all time”.
He is phenomenal. Never was all that big a fan. Yeah, I know he’s great and all but didn’t do much for me, watching. But what a game! He’s incredible.
I was not familiar with his pitching arsenal. He’s got more breaking pitches than some entire staffs. And they are all very good. Not to mention great location with his 100 mph fastball. To think he can command all those pitches in the big moment with so little time to develop and refine them is amazing. I think he only threw about 45 innings this year. Oh yeah, not to mention the 3 dingers.
All true. They are some nasty pitches. And when you have 100 in your pocket, I mean, come on…
Yes, and dotting the edges and corners with 100. Some of the Brewers swings were emblematic of just how good the pitches were ( desperate flailing attempts to get some contact).
You're right. I did mention the advances in bats and training methods. And facing Feller or Gibson with no protection, exactly. But there is so much that's improved, I think it's interesting to speculate...Thanks for the nice comment..
You bet. One thing you mentioned that cannot be overstated is the athletic ability and skill of the defenders. Almost every position in every team is manned by a freak athlete with consummate skills.
I watched Brooks Robinson dropping jaws in the World Series in ‘68. Watching replays of those plays today they look nice, but…in today’s game that’s called “Tuesday”, or “business as usual”.
I remember Williams as the manager of the Washington Senators and how he got Eddie Brinkman (a notable good glove, no bat SS) to actually become a decent hitter by chocking up on the bat snd just putting the ball in play. I think that pine tar on the bat anecdote was from spring training in 1968 or 69.
Ted wasn’t a great manager, but he got the Senators to their best record ever at 10 games over .500.!
You’re right! Good memory. And Ed Brinkman was the guy who we used as a reference point to describe an awful hitter. “Who are you, Eddie Brinkman?” Pete Rose, apparently knew Brinkman from high school and I seem to remember Pete’s quote - Pete had a lot of ‘em - “I don’t get that. In high school, Eddie used to hit the long ball for us.” Something like that. Williams helped Frank Howard, too. But the other part of managing - running a bullpen, infield defense, that wasn’t his thing. Great comment. Thanks!!🙏
Ah yes, Frank “Hondo” Howard. 17 year old me’s favorite player. Whenever he played deep in LF, Brinkman would play on the outfield grass to cover short flies as Frank couldn’t get in on bloopers. Eddie also took relay throws from Frank.
Ken McMullen at 3rd, Mike Epstein at first, Bernie Allen at 2nd, Unser in CF and Paul Casanova behind the plate. Joe Coleman and Dick Bosman on the mound. Man, I ❤️ that team, senior year in HS and a decent ball club. Two years later it all went to shite for 34 years 🙁.
I hope you have read John Updike’s wonderful essay on Ted Williams that I believe appeared in the New Yorker magazine soon after Williams retired. It’s an appreciation of his total career.
I remember reading his book on hitting. He diagrammed the strike zone by showing the “batting averages” of imaginary baseballs in each area of the zone. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I seem to recall that a low outside pitch in the strike zone had a .220 average where a pitch centered in the zone had a .385 average. He stated that if a pitcher could consistently find that low outside corner very few people would hit as high as .200. He also estimated how much a batter’s average would decline if he swung at pitches an inch outside the strike zone.
I saw Williams hit the last four years of his career. Specifically I remember Mickey Mantle having the highest batting average in his career, .365. Williams only beat him by 23 points, .388! Given how he was so particular in choosing a particular pitch’s location I have to believe the smaller strike zone of today would have made his accomplishments even better.
Jeff: Your comments are right on and I wish I would have had a chance to meet and chat with your Dad. Walking away after a .340 season is tough. I was a sportswriter for 25 years, my son is a baseball player raised on Ted Williams’ Science of Hitting, who starred all the way through high school - started in the state championship as an 8th grader, starred at Florida State and drafted by Oakland, got into the Cardinals’ system and climbed quickly, making the majors in 2020 and 2021 with the Cardinals and Pirates. The reason was John understood the strike zone, as Ted advocated and for the past several seasons is one of the very players in all of organized baseball to have more walks than strikeouts. Ted was a scientific hitter who, I think, would have used the overwhelming amount of available data to his advantage.
I’m not surprised that Gilliam and many other big-leaguers including Mantle had no idea of the strike zone and how to use the count. I remember Mantle talking about a conversation he had with Ted at an All-Star game “and, man, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.” I’ve written eight books, including two about baseball - Last Time Out (about MLB greats final game, including Ted’s farewell HR) and my new one, Diamond Duels, about some of the game’s great historic matchups - Hank Aaron was 1-for-23 against Don Drysdale to start his career, then he hit 17 HRs against the guy once he figured him out. Thanks for thoughtful comment. I invite you to check out my Substack.
Nogo
Thanks for the great comment, Jeff. Not only have I read Updike on Ted, I met him. Updike came to Florida State years ago and I worked for the newspaper and managed a brief interview with Updike and all we talked about was Ted. And the amazing thing was, on the way home, I started thinking “Gee, what did other great players do their last at bat? That might be a great book idea. So I called a guy I’d just met at the Hall of Fame, Bill Guilfoile, the former Pirates’ PR guy and asked him “Bill, is this a good idea for a book - What did all these great players do in their final games?” And he said, “ John, that’s a great idea. Call Jill Langford in Indiana. She’ll get you a book deal. She’ll love this. So I called her and immediately said “Yes! What players do you want to do?” And the result was my baseball book “Last Time Out” - available on Amazon…hahahaha. Cool, huh? Thanks for the great comment, Jeff.
John-
Thank you. You and I must have more in common than John Updike. I’m married to a journalist who covered state politics for many years in New York. Not that you need more information about Ted Williams or baseball but I think you might be interested in an observation from my father about Ted Williams and hitting.
My father was part of that generation of baseball players who lost potential major league careers to World War II. He played one season in the St. Louis Browns farm system before the war, hit about .340, and then was in the army until the end of the war. When the war ended the NY Giants acquired his contract and wanted him to go to their double AA farm team in Hartford, Connecticut. He decided not to go.
In that era the only players who would jump from class A to the majors were men like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. What’s more, baseball players in the 1940’s made very little money. Most major leaguers held second jobs in the off season. He was looking at two years in AA, followed by three years in AAA if he made it to the majors. And then starting at age 29 or 30 have a two or three year major league career.
So he left baseball, went to college on the GI Bill, got married, and had a successful business career.
I mention this because he retained his interest in baseball and had some ideas about hitting. He felt good hitters looked for counts that favored the hitter; two balls and no strikes, three balls and one strike. In those types of situations a disciplined hitter (like Ted Williams) can afford to only swing at a pitch in his high average zone. Williams clearly would not swing at a strike that was not in that zone; the odds weren’t in his favor.
I think this quality is what separates him from two much beloved Hall of Famers, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. I saw much more of Mantle than Mays but I never felt they approached hitting like Williams did. They struck out so much more than Williams.
Many years after leaving baseball my father attended a business conference where the former Dodger Jim Gilliam was a featured guest. Not to dump on him but my father talked about hitting and Gilliam had no idea about using the count to your advantage. He clearly used only God-given ability to hit.
I don’t watch that much baseball today. I watch more in October than the entire rest of the year. My suspicion is that very few players approach hitting like Ted Williams did. They look like they have been seduced by the home run!
John- I love sports and am a very accomplished golfer (played in three US Amateur Championships; played over my head in one of them reaching the quarterfinal round). Golf is a very precise game and requires much of the analysis that Williams brought to baseball. I think that’s why I have always admired his approach.
It sounds like you have written about other topics than baseball. What are they?
Well, Jeff, I’ve covered everything you can think of. My favorite sports are baseball, boxing, football and basketball. Haven’t covered much hockey and don’t play golf, though I do know how to swear. Ha ha..https://johnnogowski.substack.com/p/and-then-i-wrote
I’m currently reading an anthology of A.J. Liebling’s writing. It includes his classic The Sweet Science (which I presume you have read; great boxing writing). It also contains his book The Earl of Louisiana which I’m currently about halfway through. The Earl of Louisiana is about Earl Long who was governor of Louisiana in the 1950’s and was the brother of Huey Long. It’s a fascinating look at the politics of the Old South.
https://johnnogowski.substack.com/p/my-great-traveling-partner?utm_source=publication-search
A little trivia. About 45 years ago I played golf with Billy Graham’s opponent in the Syracuse fight, Chico Vejar. I was living in Stamford, Connecticut at the time, showed up at the local municipal golf course and was paired up with him (he lived in Stamford) and a couple of friends. He was a nice guy but was a terrible golfer. Come to think of it I saw Sugar Ray Leonard take a golf lesson on the Golf Channel and he looked to be as bad as Vejar! I guess throwing a knockout punch requires a different talent than hitting a 300 yard drive.
That’s cool. I taught Liebling’s story about Donnybrook in an FSU class years ago. My son, maybe 5 or 6, sat in. I don’t think he was listening, of course. But years later, we’re driving home and we go by “Donnybrook” and John says “Dad! Donnybrook!” Stunned, I asked how do you know that? That was the story you taught about that guy who covered the fight. So Liebling gets through! Love him. Sweet Science is one of my all-time favorites.
Would’ve loved to see Ted vs JR Richard…best pitcher I ever saw in person
Great article. Living in Seattle, where today’s pitchers get pulled if velocity drops to 94, I can’t help but wonder how Jamie Moyer would fare against modern hitters. I think some of these guys would hurt themselves going after that changeup
This is very interesting given its applicability to other sports (notably cricket where the data goes back to the nineteenth century). There the question is how would Bradman (the greatest player who ever lived and a statistical freak who averaged almost twice as much as almost everyone else) fare today. Again, players are fitter, perhaps stronger and have a wealth of information, but there will always be the truly exceptional.
Pitch velocity is possibly offset (modestly) by today's body armor. Who remembers Kruk bailing against Randy Johnson - and that was with a helmet.
Strike zone seems smaller top to bottom today. Seemed to have flattened out and elongated during the Maddux era. It's been reined in horizontally but still smaller vertically. Imagining Ted having to cover 80-90 percent of the area he did in his era.
The one benefit that Ted would NOT have today is pitcher familiarity. So many fewer games against the same teams. Of course this would be offset by today's video tech - but that's not the same as experiencing a guys "stuff" first hand.
All good points, especially about the strike zone’s evolution. Thanks, Bill
After Williams’s death I interviewed Bobby Doerr, a Hall of Famer himself, and he was almost breathless in his continued amazement about Williams’s hitting decades later. He talked about Williams stepping out of the box one time for what seemed to be no good reason—when asked Williams explained he was waiting for a cloud to move. Okay, the one instance of the modern game might not favour Williams, although he’d probably have an internal pitch clock more accurate than the time keeper’s.
Plus, workouts and diet would be optimized.
Exactly. But the technology would be a godsend for him. DiMaggio didn’t have the faintest idea what his average was or any of that statistical stuff. He knew what pitchers gave him trouble as any hitter would. But he wasn’t into the specifics like Ted. He was really good but not as good as the New York press made him put to be.
Teammates and fans wouldn’t be smoking. No lead in gas today. Better air quality in general.
Hahaha. Yes did complain about the haze of smoke at Yankee Stadium. That’s one factor I never thought about. Thanks
I’m not sure about the effects of travel in Ted’s day. Fewer long trips but I suppose the planes, trains, and buses were not so comfortable.
I don't know, John. I think Ted would have trouble getting around on today's fastballs. After all, he would almost be 107! Couldn't resist the nod to Ty Cobb.
In all seriousness, I think you made great points backing up Mr. Williams. He also might be my second-favorite all-time player from before I was old enough to really watch, trailing only Bob Gibson. One of my favorite baseball books is "The Kid" by Ben Bradlee Jr.
Leigh Montville’s book is good, too. If you can find it, Ed Linn’s “Hitter” is interesting. He covered Ted’s career in person. Thanks!
The lifetime average against Feller is undeniable evidence that Williams could hit modern day heat. Feller was officially timed at 98mph, and with 3 no-hitters and 12 1-hitters(!), he was bringing the heat.
Interesting you bring up Trucks. Williams references him in his book as an example of hitting hard throwing pitchers. Science of Hitting was one of my favorite books as a kid...lost it in a move long ago.
There are quite a few books on Ted. Fascinating guy. Thanks