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Ted reports his reaction: “Well, God, that hit me like a goddamn lightning bolt! What do you mean I don’t have to play today?”Ibid.Īt some point, the subject had been raised. 400.”Ted Williams with David Pietrusza, My Life in Pictures (Kingston NY: Total Sports Illustrated, 2001), 43. In his autobiography, My Turn At Bat, Williams recalls Joe Cronin telling him, “You don’t have to be put in if you don’t want to. In fact, Foxx did bat and was 3-for-4 on the final day. It was not true, but Williams and biographer John Underwood apparently believed it was. Ted said that his own teammate Jimmie Foxx had once lost a batting title to Buddy Myer by sitting out the last day of the season in 1935. Hornsby played that game, failed to get a hit in four at-bats, and saw his final average fall to. Entering the last game of the 1921 season, he was hitting. Hornsby could have done it a fourth time, if one applied rounding. 400 batting average in 1941 was still a major mark of distinction. 400 hitter in the twentieth century, but a. He had no way to know that he’d be the last. 400 if he had sat out the two Sunday games. It was Ted’s last strikeout of the season, number 27.īy batting 1-for-4, Ted’s batting average dropped to. in right, fouled out to first baseman Bob Johnson, and struck out-the only man Wolff whiffed. But then he flied out to Eddie Collins Jr. Williams drew a walk from Wolff his first time up and then doubled to right field. On Saturday the Athletics rookie pitcher Roger Wolff was pitching in only his second-ever major league game (he had lost a tight 1–0 game in Washington the previous Saturday, allowing just three hits). Yeutter mentioned to readers a couple of obstacles Williams would face: “the lengthening shadows of autumn afternoons, and facing strange young pitchers getting the usual end-of-the-season tryouts.” The advantage, he said, was in the pitcher’s favor. Indeed, the Bulletin reported, “There was a rumor that Manager Joe Cronin would let Ted spend the rest of the year on the bench to protect his batting mark.” Williams took “a special session of batting practice at Shibe Park” during the day on Friday, after the Red Sox arrived in town, and Ted told the Bulletin’s Frank Yeutter, “I either make it or I don’t.” If this had occurred, it would have been Friday night, before the Saturday game. There’s a longstanding legend that Sox manager Joe Cronin had gone to Ted on Saturday evening and told him he could sit out the game to preserve his average, and nobody would have blamed him. 401.” This is when Ted could have sat out the final three games.

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On the morning of September 27, the Philadelphia Bulletin headline noted what Williams faced: “Williams Risks Batting Mark” with a subhead showing his determination to play out the full season: “Boston Star Refuses to Protect his Season’s Record of. There was a lot on the line, and the team had two days off, the 25th and 26th. The weather was turning colder–not good for Williams. He’d gone 2-for-10 and seen his average plunge to a perilous. Ted was 1-for-3 on the 23rd, and then in a doubleheader on the 24th, he was 0-for-3 and 1-for-4. There were six games left in the season three in Washington and three in Philadelphia. 400 since May 25.Īfter closing out Boston’s final home game at Fenway Park on September 21, Williams was batting. Except for a stretch from July 11–24, when his batting average dipped as low as. Young Ted Williams, who had turned 23 less than a month earlier, woke up that morning hitting. But these were professionals and there was something else at stake. These were meaningless games in the standings the Red Sox were in second place but 17 1/2 games behind the Yankees and the Athletics were dead last, 37 1/2 games out of first. The Red Sox split a Sunday doubleheader with Connie Mack’s Athletics on the final day of the 1941 season. In eight at-bats of a doubleheader against the Athletics at Shibe Park that day, he cemented his legend. Young Ted Williams woke up on the morning of September 28, 1941, in Philadelphia hitting.

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