85 Facts About Ted Williams

Theodore Samuel Ted Williams was an American professional baseball player and manager.

Ted Williams played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball career, primarily as a left fielder, for the Boston Red Sox from 1939 to 1960; his career was interrupted by military service during World War II and the Korean War.

Ted Williams was a nineteen-time All-Star, a two-time recipient of the American League Most Valuable Player Award, a six-time AL batting champion, and a two-time Triple Crown winner.

Ted Williams followed this up by winning his first Triple Crown in 1942.

Ted Williams was returned to active military duty for portions of the 1952 and 1953 seasons to serve as a Marine combat aviator in the Korean War.

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Ted Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 25 of 1966, in his first year of eligibility.

Ted Williams was selected for the Major League Baseball All-Time Team in 1997 and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999.

The maternal, Spanish-Mexican side of Ted Williams's family was quite diverse, having Spanish, Russian, and American Indian roots.

Ted Williams played back-up behind Vince DiMaggio and Ivey Shiver on the Pacific Coast League's San Diego Padres.

Unknown to Ted Williams, he had caught the eye of the Boston Red Sox's general manager, Eddie Collins, while Collins was scouting Bobby Doerr and the shortstop George Myatt in August 1936.

Ted Williams stood out like a brown cow in a field of white cows.

In 1938, the 19-year-old Ted Williams was 10 days late to spring training camp in Sarasota, Florida, because of a flood in California that blocked the railroads.

Ted Williams had to borrow $200 from a bank to make the trip from San Diego to Sarasota.

Also during spring training Ted Williams was nicknamed "the Kid" by Red Sox equipment manager Johnny Orlando, who after Ted Williams arrived to Sarasota for the first time, said, "The Kid' has arrived".

Ted Williams remained in major league spring training for about a week.

Ted Williams collected his first hit in the Millers' first game of the season, as well as his first and second home runs during his third game.

Ted Williams received the American Association's Triple Crown and finished second in the voting for Most Valuable Player.

Ted Williams said he would buy Orlando a Cadillac if this all came true.

Ted Williams was then switched from right field to left field, as there would be less sun in his eyes, and it would give Dom DiMaggio a chance to play.

Finally, Ted Williams was flip-flopped in the order with the great slugger Jimmie Foxx, with the idea that Ted Williams would get more pitches to hit.

Ted Williams made his first of 16 All-Star Game appearances in 1940, going 0-for-2.

Ted Williams later said that that game-winning home run "remains to this day the most thrilling hit of my life".

Ted Williams said that "just about everybody was rooting for me" to hit.

Ted Williams placed second in MVP voting; DiMaggio won, 291 votes to 254, on the strength of his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak and league-leading 125 RBI.

In January 1942, just over 2 years after World War II began, Williams was drafted into the military, being put into Class 1-A.

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Ted Williams was the third Red Sox player to hit 100 home runs with the team, following his teammates Jimmie Foxx and Joe Cronin.

Ted Williams felt that he should have gotten a "little more consideration" because of winning the Triple Crown, and he thought that "the reason I didn't get more consideration was because of the trouble I had with the draft [boards]".

Ted Williams played on the baseball team in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, along with his Red Sox teammate Johnny Pesky in pre-flight training, after eight weeks in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Civilian Pilot Training Course.

Ted Williams was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii awaiting orders as a replacement pilot.

Ted Williams was immediately taken out of the game, and X-rays of his arm showed no damage, but his arm was "swelled up like a boiled egg", according to Ted Williams.

Ted Williams won the Triple Crown in 1947, but lost the MVP award to Joe DiMaggio, 202 points to 201 points.

Ted Williams thought it was Mel Webb, whom Ted Williams called a "grouchy old guy", although it now appears it was not Webb.

Ted Williams became just the second player to hit 200 home runs in a Red Sox uniform, joining his former teammate Jimmie Foxx.

Ted Williams played the rest of the game, and he even singled in a run to give the American League the lead in the fifth inning, but by that time Ted Williams's arm was a "balloon" and he was in great pain, so he left the game.

When Ted Williams took his cast off, he could only extend the arm to within four inches of his right arm.

Ted Williams played in 148 games, 60 more than Ted Williams had played the previous season, 30 home runs, two more than he had hit in 1950, and 126 RBIs, twenty-nine more than 1950.

Ted Williams led the league in base on balls with 136 which kept him from qualifying under the rules at the time.

Ted Williams sat out the first month of the 1955 season due to a divorce settlement with his wife, Doris.

Ted Williams lost the batting title to Mickey Mantle in 1956, batting.

Ted Williams refused to salute the fans as he returned the dugout after he crossed home plate or after he was replaced in left field by Carroll Hardy.

Ted Williams is one of only 29 players in baseball history to date to have appeared in Major League games in four decades.

Ted Williams famously used a lighter bat than most sluggers, because it generated a faster swing.

Ted Williams helped pass his expertise of playing left-field in front of the Green Monster to his successor on the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski.

Ted Williams was on uncomfortable terms with the Boston newspapers for nearly twenty years, as he felt they liked to discuss his personal life as much as his baseball performance.

Ted Williams maintained a career-long feud with Sport due to a 1948 feature article in which the reporter included a quote from Williams's mother.

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Insecure about his upbringing, and stubborn because of immense confidence in his own talent, Ted Williams made up his mind that the "knights of the keyboard", as he derisively labeled the press, were against him.

Ted Williams had an uneasy relationship with the Boston fans, though he could be very cordial one-to-one.

Ted Williams felt at times a good deal of gratitude for their passion and their knowledge of the game.

Ted Williams bowed three times to various sections of Fenway Park and made an obscene gesture.

Ted Williams struck out, and as he stepped from the batter's box swung his bat violently in anger.

Ted Williams was especially linked with the Jimmy Fund of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, which provides support for children's cancer research and treatment.

Ted Williams's name is synonymous with our battle against all forms of cancer.

Ted Williams maintained this policy up to and including his swan song in 1960.

The Red Sox played three more games, but they were on the road in New York City and Ted Williams did not appear in any of them, as it became clear that Ted Williams's final home at-bat would be the last one of his career.

Ted Williams once had a friendship with Ty Cobb, with whom he often had discussions about baseball.

Ted Williams often touted Rogers Hornsby as being the greatest right-handed hitter of all time.

Once during one of their yearly debate sessions on the greatest hitters of all time, Williams asserted that Hornsby was one of the greatest of all time.

Ted Williams served as a Naval Aviator during World War II and the Korean War.

Ted Williams had been classified 3-A by Selective Service prior to the war, a dependency deferment because he was his mother's sole means of financial support.

Ted Williams made a public statement that once he had built up his mother's trust fund, he intended to enlist.

Ted Williams did not opt for an easy assignment playing baseball for the Navy, but rather joined the V-5 program to become a Naval aviator.

Ted Williams was first sent to the Navy's Preliminary Ground School at Amherst College for six months of academic instruction in various subjects including math and navigation, where he achieved a 3.

Ted Williams was in Pearl Harbor awaiting orders to join the Fleet in the Western Pacific when the War in the Pacific ended.

Ted Williams had not flown any aircraft for eight years but he turned down all offers to sit out the war in comfort as a member of a service baseball team.

Nevertheless, Williams was resentful of being called up, which he admitted years later, particularly regarding the Navy's policy of calling up Inactive Reservists rather than members of the Active Reserve.

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Ted Williams flew 39 combat missions in Korea, earning the Air Medal with two Gold Stars representing second and third awards, before being withdrawn from flight status in June 1953 after a hospitalization for pneumonia.

Ted Williams might have set the record for career RBIs as well, exceeding Hank Aaron's total.

Ted Williams served as executive assistant to Tom Yawkey, then was named a team vice president upon his election to the Hall of Fame.

Ted Williams resumed his spring training instruction role with the club in 1978.

Fellow manager Alvin Dark thought Ted Williams "was a smart, fearless manager" who helped his hitters perform better.

Ted Williams was named to the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame in 2000.

Ted Williams was known as an accomplished hunter; he was fond of pigeon-shooting for sport in Fenway Park during his career, on one occasion drawing the ire of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Ted Williams continued his involvement in the Jimmy Fund, later losing a brother to leukemia, and spending much of his spare time, effort, and money in support of the cancer organization.

The younger Ted Williams provided structure to his father's business affairs, exposed forgeries that were flooding the memorabilia market, and rationed his father's public appearances and memorabilia signings to maximize their earnings.

Ted Williams proudly waved his cap to the crowd—a gesture he had never done as a player.

Ted Williams married Dolores Wettach, a former Miss Vermont and Vogue model, in 1968.

Ted Williams lived with Louise Kaufman for twenty years until her death in 1993.

Ted Williams had a strong respect for General Douglas MacArthur, referring to him as his "idol".

Politically, Ted Williams was a Republican, and was described by one biographer as, "to the right of Attila the Hun" except when it came to Civil Rights.

Ted Williams supported Nixon again in 1968, and as manager of the Senators, kept a picture of him on his desk, meeting with the President several times while managing the team.

Ted Williams had a pacemaker implanted in November 2000 and he underwent open-heart surgery in January 2001.

In Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, author Leigh Montville claims that the family cryonics pact was a practice Ted Williams autograph on a plain piece of paper, around which the agreement had later been hand written.

In 1954, Williams was inducted by the San Diego Hall of Champions into the Breitbard Hall of Fame honoring San Diego's finest athletes both on and off the playing surface.

At the time of his retirement, Ted Williams ranked third all-time in home runs, seventh in RBIs, and seventh in batting average .

In 1999, Ted Williams was ranked as number eight on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, where he was the highest-ranking left fielder.

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