Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

Wild to see this on HN. I'm a huge baseball nut and Ted Williams was my father's hero so naturally I learned a lot about him as a kid.

I believe this image is from his book The Science of Hitting.

Williams has a fairly fascinating biography and I'd encourage people to browse his story a bit. A few interesting things about him:

- He served in both World War II and the Korean War. During the latter, he crash landed his plane after it took heavy fire.

- He was an amazing angler and at times held tarpon or bonefish records. I believe he's also in the fishing hall of fame.

- He was actually a terrible baseball manager. Most people attribute this to giving no attention to pitchers and not being able to handle that his players simply weren't as gifted or as disciplined as him.

- He was the last player to have a batting average > .400 for a full season [1] but amazingly did not win the Most Valuable Player award that year. It went to Joe DiMaggio.

[1] For those who don't follow baseball, this is calculated as (hits / at bats) and generally the modern-day leaders vary between .330 and .375 (see https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/batting_avg_top_t...).

And regarding his military service, he lost three years of his prime to World War II, and another two-ish years to Korea. He put up 11 WAR in the years before and after WW II. Had he kept that pace from '43-'45 and put up decent years in '52 & '53 he'd be in the argument for greatest of all time.

His career WAR was about 130. Ruth's was about 168. It's entirely possible he would have reached 168 had he not lost those years.

Well put. My dad would say (pre-WAR) that it cost him at least 100-150 home runs, likely putting him ahead of Willie Mays and behind only Ruth and Aaron (among pre-steroid era players).

>(among pre-steroid era players).

I find this unfair to Barry Bonds.

Yes, he was an asshole. Yes, he took steroids. But this idea that he suddenly became good (or that steroids make anyone "good" in baseball) goes too far. It certainly allowed him to stretch his career out, but as a guy who grew up cheering for Bonds since he was a young man playing for the Pirates, who wouldn't want that?

My point here is to have a look at some of his career in earnest. He was always a fantastic ball player (led the league in OPS from 1990-1994). His 28-year-old campaign in 1993 was one for the ages, long before the steroid controversies. But his record-setting seasons are video game level. He was intentionally walked 120 times in 2004!

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml

There is no way he should be left out of greatest-ever conversations.

I don't think anyone has ever argued steroids made Bonds good (IMHO he was already a first ballot HOFer). It's pretty well understood that they aid in recovery. Bonds' most transcendent stretch came when most ballplayer's production is falling off or completely disappearing.

He put up 47 WAR during his age 37-41 seasons. That's unheard of. Given those seasons coincide with when he was using the cream and the clear, it's fair to call into question some of his counting numbers.

Being charitable, let's say he would have put up 23 WAR during those seasons[0]. That would leave him about 140 career WAR and around 660 HRs. That's solid Mays territory.

He would still be in the conversation for best ever. Mays certainly is. So it comes down to how you value those steroid seasons. Some folks want to throw it all out. Some folks (HOF voters) want to subtract points. Some folks think it didn't matter. We can never know. Just like we can never know how Ruth would have done in an integrated league.

[0] Given what we know about aging curves this is unlikely. But Bonds was a special athlete and it's not totally unheard of for players that age to have really good seasons.

Last player to have a batting average >.400 is what he's famous for but in the last few decades (as "Moneyball"-style analytics took over the sport) "on-base percentage" is now generally considered a better measure. Ted Williams is the all-time career leader with .4817 and led the league in it a record twelve times (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_... )

> He was an amazing angler

Not the point of this post, but I may as well ask, what makes someone an "amazing angler"? I mostly associate Ted Williams with god-tier hand-eye coordination, which doesn't seem readily applicable to fishing?

Well fly fishing in general is an activity that requires a good amount of coordination and practice to do well.

For Williams specifically, I think it was essentially him applying the same perfectionism, discipline and scientific approach to it as he did to hitting a ball.

Back to your question, I think its about "sportfishing"–that is, going after certain fish with certain gear, fishing in tournaments, holding records, etc. It's a thing (see https://igfa.org/)

During his military service, he was a fighter pilot and, in Korea, John Glenn’s wingman. By all accounts he was extremely proficient at that, too.

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