Quote:
Originally Posted by GasHouseGang
I'm surprised Ted Williams is falling in popularity. He was iconic in the 1950's. He was nicknamed "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived", that certainly sounds iconic. Williams was a seventeen-time All-Star, two-time MVP, a six-time AL batting champion, and a two-time Triple Crown winner. His numbers are pretty darned good too. He had a lifetime .344 batting average, with 521 home runs, and a .482 on-base percentage, the highest of all time.
Another player who's card values always surprised me though, was Stan Musial. His card values never seemed to line up with the legend that he was in the Midwest where I grew up. I guess if he had played on the Yankees for instance, his card values would be higher. But that just means I can afford to collect them.
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IMHO, Williams is just out of vogue/focus at the moment. A couple of years ago, before the current speculative boom in '50's and 60's material, his 1939 R303A rookie was very, very hot (one in SGC VG went for just under $1700 in 2014, a sale I quite vividly recall because I was sniped out of it in the last seven seconds or so. Only one I am aware of has popped up since, and I bought it, later happily adding the '39 V351 to keep it company).
He is, by the way, the greatest hitter of all time by the best yardstick I know: runs created versus the league average runs created per 27 outs over the course of a career. This is a Bill James statistic, the ultimate sabermathematician who has shown that runs scored versus runs allowed, when subjected to the proper formula, will yield quite precise estimates of a teams' won lost record over a season (generally within 2-3 games). Williams was No. 1 in this category, creating an astonishing 250% of the runs a league average player would create over the course of his entire career, while Ruth was second at 240% (Ruth created more total runs, but the conditions of his era made it easier to score runs, hence Williams' greater percentage in comparison to the league average player of his own era). Select others in the over 200% group would seem to confirm the complete legitimacy of this stat as a valuable yardstick, evening out conditions from era to era: Mantle (around 215%, as I recall), Gehrig, Cobb, Jackson, Hornsby and at least one other whose name does not immediately come to mind. Musial was quite good, by the way, at 193%, a figure topping Aaron, Mays, Foxx, Speaker, and Wagner, who were all in the 180% range.
Highest regards,
Larry