TED WILLIAMS

He came out of San Diego in 1939, a tall kid with a swing like a gate swinging shut, and for the next two decades Ted Williams did the one thing nobody in the American League could stop: he got on base. Boston was his only address. The Red Sox never traded him, never wanted to, and he never gave them reason — except for the years he traded the batter's box for a cockpit, flying for the Marines from 1943 to 1945, and came back like he'd only stepped out for coffee.

The numbers don't argue. A .344 average across 2,292 games. 2,654 hits. 521 home runs. 1,839 runs batted in. And 2,021 walks — more than a thousand times a pitcher looked at him and decided somebody else could take the blame. .482 on-base, .634 slugging. In 1941 he hit .406, the last man to do it, and did it on the final day of the season when he could have sat and protected it. In 1942 he won the Triple Crown. In 1947 he won it again. He came back from the war in 1946 and hit .342 with 38 homers, as if the layoff were a rumor.

They put him in Cooperstown in 1966. The Kid, Teddy Ballgame, the Splendid Splinter — call him whatever fits the day. He was, mostly, the best hitter alive, and he knew it, and he was right.