“…The greatest hitter that ever lived.” – Ted Williams Rookie Year - 1939

.406 in1941 – the last man to hit .400

Williams was the second-youngest player ever to lead the majors in runs batted in (only Ty Cobb was younger) and the oldest to win a batting title. As a 21 year old rookie he drove in 145 runs. Ted was 40 in 1958 when he hit .328 for the last of his six American League batting championships.

"All I want out of life," Williams once told a friend, "is that when I walk down the street folks will say, 'There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived.'"

In 1941, The Kid hit .406 in his third season in the big leagues. Williams was able to grab the spotlight away from Joe D for just one afternoon, the All-Star Game in Detroit on July 8. In the bottom of the ninth with two on and two out, the American League trailing by two runs, and a full house at Briggs Stadium clamoring for a three-run homer, Williams leaned into a belt-high fastball from Claude Passeau of the Chicago Cubs and drove the ball off the right-field parapet to win the game. He would later call it, "the most thrilling hit of my career" and never was Teddy Ballgame more of a kid as he bounded around the bases, clapping his hands in childish glee.

In 1947 Ted Williams offered a welcoming handshake to Larry Doby, the first time the Red Sox met the Cleveland Indians. Larry Doby joined the Indians just eleven weeks after Robinson made his debut with Brooklyn.

On April 15, 1947 Jackie Robinson took his place at first base at Ebbets Field. Many of the 26,633 at the tiny ballpark on that chilly spring day were not even baseball fans, but had come to see “the one” who would break the sport’s age-old color line.

Just as Ted offered a welcoming handshake to Larry Doby in 1947, Ted wrapped a welcoming arm around Jackie Robinson shortly before William’s was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In his 1966 Hall of Fame Induction Speech, Williams stepped out of the spotlight to call attention to an issue that left members of the American Baseball league divided. “Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as anybody else, but to be better. This is the nature of many and the name of that game. I hope that someday Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren’t given the chance.”

Five years later, Williams’ wish became a reality when Satchel Paige became the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame from the Negro League.

Paige would be joined by the legendary Josh Gibson the following year.

"He was a man who spoke the truth from his heart as he saw it," recalled Stanley Glenn, a former Negro leagues ballplayer and president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Players Association. "America needs an awful lot more men like Ted Williams. No one galvanized baseball and America more than Ted Williams."

Dr. Lawrence Hogan, one of 12 members of the voting committee for the special election of Negro leagues and pre-Negro leagues candidates, lauded Williams for his effort.

"He was ahead of the curve," stated Hogan, a primary author of Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball. "We all carried his words with us..."