Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio

[pherbener]

Originally Posted by Jobu

I've always thought that Williams doesn't get his due - either in the hobby or overall.

I crunched some numbers on the time he missed for his war service - where he didn't have a cushy gig, he was actually flying planes instead of entertaining troops. For his two tours, I took the season before the tour and after the tour and averaged the stats, including the games played, and then added those stats to his career totals. And note, the missing seasons from the 1950s assume a reasonable number of games played for a guy who was getting a bit older but still had a lot left in the tank. If we assume would have played closer to 150 games those two years, these totals would have been a bit higher.

The career ranks listed below are based on current totals. If we look at the leaders at the time he retired, he would have been #2 in HR and #1 in hits in addition to still being #1 in all of these other stats. In other words, Ted would definitely be held in much higher regard today and for the last 70 years.

Thanks Bryan! This is the first thing I thought of when considering this post. Great work putting the numbers together! Also, as Steve mentioned, as a guy in his late fifties, my only real memory of Joe D is some old baseball player selling coffee machines. Not that DiMaggio wasn’t one of the greats. BTW figured I’d share one of my favorite photos of those two here from 1941.