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Ted Williams

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Ted Williams was born on Friday, August 30, 1918 in San Diego, California. Williams was 20 years old when he broke into the big leagues on April 20, 1939, with the Boston Red Sox. His height is 6 feet 3 inches with a weight of 205 pounds. He batted in left hand and throws from right hand.

He was baseball's best hitter for two decades and one of the best who ever lived. No one loved hitting more than Williams, who called hitting a pitched baseball the hardest single feat in sports and no other baseball player spent more time at his craft. He had lost nearly five years of his career to military service in World War II and Korea but managed to hit 521 homers and average 0.344 for his career, only once hitting below 0.316. In 1941, he had one of the greatest individual seasons for any ballplayer in history.

At the age twenty three he has achieved an average of 0.406 and he was the last ballplayer to reach that magic figure. He has won his first home run crown and won the All-Star Game with the most dramatic hit of his career. At the age of 35, a veteran of two wars, he appeared finished, but he homered off Mike Garcia in his first Fenway appearance in 1953 and proceeded to hit 0.407 for his 37-game season. Included in his feat were 13 home runs and a 0.901 slugging average. Retired from the game, Williams became a full-time fisherman. He was easily elected to the Hall of Fame in 1966, his first year of eligibility.

Ted Williams was a player who was outspoken, immensely talented, patriotic, iconoclastic, demanding, larger than life. He was an instant star and was a beautiful hitter with a classic swing.

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