Ted Williams
Baseball Player — born 1918
Ted Williams was an American baseball player.
Ted Williams was an American Major League Baseball left fielder whose 19-year career with the Boston Red Sox across 1939–1960 produced two American League MVP Awards (1946, 1949), two American League Triple Crown Awards (1942, 1947), and his 1941 batting average of .406 — the last MLB player to bat over .400 in a single season. He was born Theodore Samuel Williams on August 30, 1918, in San Diego, California. His father Samuel Stuart Williams was a U.S. Cavalry veteran and photographer, and his mother May Venzor was a Mexican-American Salvation Army volunteer.
His 1939 MLB debut with the Boston Red Sox at age 20 launched his 19-year Red Sox career. His 1939 rookie season produced 31 home runs and 145 runs batted in — leading the American League in RBIs as a rookie. His 1941 batting average of .406 — produced through his 6-for-8 final-day-doubleheader performance on September 28, 1941, against the Philadelphia Athletics, after refusing manager Joe Cronin's offer to sit out the doubleheader to preserve a .39955 average that would have rounded up to .400 — has been continuously cited as one of the foundational achievements of 20th-century American Major League Baseball.
His U.S. Marine Corps service across two wars — World War II (1943–1946, as a U.S. Naval flight instructor) and the Korean War (1952–1953, as a F9F Panther fighter pilot, including 39 combat missions, his February 16, 1953 emergency-landing of his battle-damaged plane after taking ground fire over North Korea) — shaped his subsequent later biographical narrative. The five-year combined wartime absence cost him a substantial portion of his career-peak prime statistics.
His 1947 American League Triple Crown — leading the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in — and his second 1947 American League MVP runner-up finish (which he lost to Joe DiMaggio by one vote in one of the closest MVP votes in baseball history) shaped his later biographical narrative. He retired from MLB on September 28, 1960, with his 521 career home runs (eighth-most in MLB history at the time of his retirement). He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. He died on July 5, 2002, at age 83, in Inverness, Florida.
His name Ted is the English short form of Theodore or Edward. Ted has been a popular American boys' name across the 20th century.
About the name Ted
Gender: Male · Origin: English
Abbreviation Of Theodore.