“Each time he came to bat the crowd roared, and when he went back to left field each inning the bleacherites gave him added applause,” wrote the Evening Bulletin. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).

Hornsby could have done it a fourth time, if one applied rounding. 17 hits shy of .400.T6. This is the year,’ ” Garciaparra said. Rod Carew, one of the few to make a serious run at .400 since Williams, has studied the .406 season and contends that Williams’s absences were a blessing. They pitched, and hit as few others can hit.

Teddy Williams was the reason! Tony Gwynn, 1994: .394Many who watched Mr. Padre during the 1994 season will still argue that he could have topped .400 if his season hadn't been cut short by the players' strike in mid-August. “All were slashing drives that whistled through the infield or fell far out of reach of the outfielders.”, After the game, Ted said he’d never felt nervous in baseball before. On the first one, he hit off a curve ball. The fans cheered and called for him but Williams still refused to come out of the dugout and recognize them (an incident that author John Updike famously described with the line “gods do not answer letters”). But .39955 was not .400. It's hard to knock him for effort, however, seeing as collected 262 hits to break George Sisler's 84-year-old record that season.Last day at .400: N/A.How short was he?

When Nomar Garciaparra was hitting .403 for Boston in late July 2000, he had frequent conversations with Williams. Ted Williams, American professional baseball player who compiled a lifetime batting average of .344 as an outfielder with the Boston Red Sox from 1939 to 1960. According to “Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero” by Leigh Montville, Williams would rise at 6 a.m. and, with his teammate Charlie Wagner, drive 20 minutes west of Boston to Sunset Lake, where they fished undisturbed for a couple of hours. Without looking up, he said, ‘To hit .400 a batter has got to be loose.

Over time, Williams’s .406 season earned a different, almost backhanded distinction. It was almost sure to be too dark to complete the second game and that was true. It was close to first base. Acclaim for Williams’s feat increased each decade as no other hitter reached .400, but the attention rarely reached the awe and veneration attached to, say, Babe Ruth’s home run records.

Learn more about Williams’s life and career. “I had practiced and practiced. Adding to his comfort, he was familiar with most of the pitchers in the American League and had memorized their tendencies and pitching repertories. He won the American League batting title in 1958 (at age 40) with a .328 average, the oldest player ever to do so.

Todd Helton, 2000 .372One year after Walker ignited the Rocky Mountains with his .400 chase, teammate Helton gave it a try.

$899.00. I know one changeup I threw him he hit—in Shibe Park there was a kind of a megaphone that sits up on top of the wall, and that ball went on a line right into that megaphone and fell back into the park for a double. Phoenix, AZ 85004

That’s the gist for another story, but a good place to start would be pages 77–132 in Stephen Jay Gould’s Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York: Harmony Books, 1996), an expansion of his essay “Entropic homogeneity isn’t why no one hits .400 any more,” which appeared in the August 1986 issue of Discover.

Bill has been vice president of SABR since 2004. Today: Ted Williams wanted to be known as the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, and he made an excellent case to own that moniker. By the end of the first game, Williams was batting .40397.

He could dig in to his memory bank, and pull out all sorts of stuff. Watch. Nomar Garciaparra, 2000: .372Four players posted a .372 average in their chase of Williams from 1997-2004, one of the best offensive eras in baseball history. "If I'm going to be a .400 hitter, I want more than my toenails on the line," Williams famously said at the time.Sure, if he had sat 75 years ago, Williams would still be the last man to hit .400 or better over a full season.

Ted did not so desire.

It was not true, but Williams and biographer John Underwood apparently believed it was. Helton's average remained at .390 all the way through Sept. 3, but a .284 average over Helton's final 26 games dropped him off the historic pace.Last day at .400: June 10How short was he? In 1994, Gwynn had 419 at-bats in 110 games and was hitting .394 on Aug. 11; then the players went on strike and the rest of the season was canceled. In 1952 he was once again called up for military service, and for most of the ’52 and ’53 seasons he served as a pilot during the Korean War, this time in combat. Beyond his average, he led the Majors in home runs with 37, as well as on-base percentage, slugging percentage and runs scored.• Look back at the record-breaking summer of 1941The Red Sox wanted Williams to sit out their last three games, ensuring he would finish the season above .400.

Teddy saw knuckle-balls every time he went to bat and the best he could get was one hit in four times at bat. [/fn], Williams was 4-for-5 in the first game with two RBIs and two runs scored. But Williams recognized several distinctive circumstances about the 1941 season.

He decided to enlist in the U.S. Navy and entered active duty in November 1942. He played Ted in the hole between second and first. 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 .401.” This is when Ted could have sat out the final three games. He “singled sharply to right” according to the Inquirer’s Stan Baumgartner. Since batting averages are rounded to the next decimal, Williams could have sat out the final two games and still officially crested baseball’s imposing .400 barrier. “All were slashing drives that whistled through the infield or fell far out of reach of the outfielders.” Cronkite School at ASU On the 2–0 count, Ted was ready and he swung at Fowler’s next pitch. He was just as likely to mention 1957, when at 39, he led the league with a .388 average (with 33 intentional walks). At season's end, Walker stood nine hits shy of history.Last day at .400: May 26How short was he?

The doubleheader marked his 49th and 50th multi-hit performances.

He would stay in the game and in the lineup to the bitter end, even if his last couple of times at bat dropped him to .398.

After many games, he took extra batting practice. I tossed and turned and finally went to sleep, still thinking about that .400 average.”[fn]John Holway, The Last .400 Hitter (Dubuque: William C. Brown, 1992), 282. 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. So he made doubly sure of his position. Nicknamed "Teddy Ballgame", "The Kid", "The Splendid Splinter", and "The Thumper", Williams is regarded as one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. He was officially 6-for-8, hitting .40570, or, when rounded up: .406. He’d be facing Dick Fowler in the first game–a rookie like Wolff, pitching in only his fourth big-league game.

— Though the Red Sox long since has clinched second place and could not go any higher, interest in the final week of the scheduled games was as keen as it had been in any week of the season.

¶ Sacrifice flies were counted as at-bats. He was officially 6-for-8, hitting .40570, or, when rounded up: .406. But then he flied out to Eddie Collins Jr. in right, fouled out to first baseman Bob Johnson, and struck out—the only man Wolff whiffed.

“That was big because I missed the cold weather, when most hitters can’t hit anyway,” said Williams, who could accurately recall details of his baseball career well into his 70s.

In eight at-bats of a doubleheader against the Athletics at Shibe Park that day, he cemented his legend. It did not take long after the first game of the double-header started to relieve everybody’s mind.

As delighted as Ted was, Tom Yawkey was equally pleased.