Editor’s note: This is an article that was sent to recruits at basic training in the “Scoreboard” section of our weekly newsletter, which also includes scores, standings and statistics from major American sports, updated weekly. If you want to know more about “The Dispatch” click here. Information on how to order it for your recruit is available here.
As the NBA moved into the offseason and free agency there were plenty of storylines to follow. Kevin Durant came out and topped them all, though, as news broke late last Wednesday that he was requesting a trade from the Nets, turning the NBA upside down.
A player that many (though certainly not this writer) argue is the best player in the league, available by trade? After the haul the Jazz just got for Rudy Gobert, surely moving him would take a historic trade package. The Nets have made it clear they won’t just give him away, and since they have essentially dealt away their draft for the next five years, they have no incentive to tank. ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins and Chris Broussard question if the Nets really even intend to trade him, considering the almost impossible bounty they are seeking.
Essentially every player in the NBA being tossed around in trade scenarios is enough of a story, but talk of Durant’s legacy as a mentally soft front runner will only intensify, especially if he gets dealt to a team on his wish list, which includes Miami and Phoenix, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. If you’ve been reading this section recently, you can probably guess my opinion on Durant and all of the NBA drama.
Looking at it from the perspective of the other 29 NBA general managers, I don’t think I’d give up a whole lot for a player that is going to be 34 this season, missed almost half of the Nets’ games these last two seasons, and won one playoff series the last two seasons. I’m on record as saying Durant’s two rings with Golden State come with an asterisk, and I’m not backing down from it. Culture matters in building a team, and Durant doesn’t bring the element you want if you’re looking to go deep in the playoffs, especially as his athleticism is bound to decline.
Anyway, if Durant does get moved, we’ll revisit it then, but for now, I’d like to end the speculation on trade rumors there. Frankly, I’m tired of it. I’ve never been one for soap operas- I’m ready to move on.
Related: After another NBA title for the Warriors, here’s what the league should have learned
It is baseball season, after all. So to cleanse my palette from this NBA primadonna-fest, I’d like to tell the story of a man who I consider to be the anti-Durant. A man that never jumped ship, and stayed loyal to the same team for his entire career that spanned 21 years, only interrupted by a calling to serve a very different employer: the United States Marine Corps. That man? Ted Williams.
Ted Williams wanted to be known as the greatest hitter ever to play the game. It is safe to say that he, even 61 years after his retirement, put himself very squarely in the conversation. He worked tirelessly at it. He had a passion and an understanding for it that most around the game had never seen before. He’s been described as a hitting genius.
“Ted Williams was to hitting what Einstein was to mathematics,” as MLB.com’s Jim Street put it.
“Greatest hitter ever” can be a very subjective concept, even with statistics to help make the case. After all, baseball was a very different game when Williams played compared with the Barry Bonds and Mike Trouts of the league. Strategy, training methods, and rules have all evolved. So what we are left with is to see how dominant a player was in their own era–and that’s where one could make a strong case for William’s greatness.
Williams played in 19 Major League seasons from 1939 to 1960, putting his baseball career on hold for a three-year stint during World War II, and again for almost two full seasons to fly combat missions in Korea (more on that in a moment). Over those 19 seasons, he was named an All-Star every year except as a rookie in 1939.
Williams is the last player in baseball history with a .400 batting average for an entire season. As far as “unbreakable” sports records go, this one is on a short list. Hall of Famers Tony Gwynn (.394 in 1994) and George Brett (.390 in 1980) both came within just a handful of hits. Williams himself hit .388 again in 1957.
WillIams joked in an interview in 1991: “If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal, I would have done it again.”
Legend is that Williams’ manager, Joe Cronin, told him that he could stay out of the lineup through the last couple of games to protect his batting average, which sat at .39955 and would be rounded up. The Red Sox were 17.5 games out of first place and had nothing to play for, but Williams refused to play it that way.
“If I’m going to be a .400 hitter, I want more than my toenails on the line,” he said to his manager.
He went six for eight in the doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics and finished the season at .406.
His career batting average was an absurd .344 (6th all-time), while still having the power to hit 521 home runs. His 6’3”, 205-pound frame that earned him the nickname the “Splendid Splinter” was not the traditional build of a guy that routinely sends balls out of the park, but he had a sweet left-handed swing and a meticulous, scientific approach at the plate.
Hall of Fame pitcher Ted Lyons said, “Williams was a Ty Cobb as far as being an intelligent batter. He wouldn’t hit at a bad ball. All he’d want to talk about was hitting.”
That discipline at the plate is a big part of why Ted Williams isn’t part of the prestigious 3,000-hit club. Ahead of his time, in that regard, he was content to draw a walk if he got nothing to hit. He had 2,021 walks to go with his 2,654 career hits. His base on balls: strikeout ratio was nearly 3:1, his .634 slugging percentage (the average of how many bases a player earns each trip to the plate) is second only to Babe Ruth, and his .482 on-base percentage is tops all-time. Yes, Ted Williams got on base almost half the time he stepped to the plate!
Williams enjoyed talking hitting so much, that it would get him into trouble with his own managers, because he would help players on opposing teams during batting practice. He just loved it that much. He carried that love and ability to teach over to his first stretch of military service in World War II, where he opted to be a pilot over the cushier assignment of playing baseball for the Navy, received a Marine Corps commission in 1944 and became an instructor. Williams returned to baseball at the end of the war when he was 27 and didn’t miss a beat, having one of his strongest seasons.
He was recalled from the inactive reserve for service in the Korean War in May of 1952. He was assigned to VMF-311 and flew 37 combat missions in the Grumman F9F Panther, some of them as a wingman to future astronaut and senator, John Glenn. Unlike most athletes and celebrities during their military service, Williams was in some very dangerous situations.
“Once, he was on fire and had to belly land the plane back in,” Glenn said years ago in an interview with MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo.
“He slid it in on the belly. It came up the runway about 1,500 feet before he was able to jump out and run off the wingtip… Another time he was hit in the wingtip tank when I was flying with him. So he was a very active combat pilot, and he was an excellent pilot and I give him a lot of credit.”
Ted Williams was welcomed back to the United States as a hero in July of 1953, but like many veterans, wasn’t comfortable with the praise.
“Everybody tries to make a hero out of me over the Korean thing,” Williams once said. “I was no hero. There were maybe 75 pilots in our two squadrons and 99 percent of them did a better job than I did.”
His friend, John Glenn, however, saw it a little differently:
“Some people came back in from the sports world who were put to work as coaches for the baseball teams or something like that. Ted was not that way. Ted fit right in. He was a Marine pilot just like the rest of us and did a great job.”
“(As) Much as I appreciate baseball, Ted to me will always be a Marine fighter pilot. He did a great job as a pilot. Ted was a gung-ho Marine.”
Pretty high praise from a very accomplished pilot and an American hero himself.
Read more from Sandboxx News
- After another NBA title for the Warriors, here’s what the league should have learned
- The ‘Wide Receiver Boom’: How the NFL has lost its collective mind
- Pat Tillman: The legacy of an athlete, patriot and Soldier
- A look ahead after US Men’s National Team qualifies for World Cup
- 3 reasons Washington’s football team should be called The Redtails
This article was originally published 4/8/2021
Feature image: Sandboxx composite. Photos both public domain
Leave a Reply