The kid

Ted Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than five hundred home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in World War II and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him, and traveled a long way himself, as this biography reveals. Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. During his twenty-two years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified crowds across America, and shocked them, too. His notorious clashes with the press and fans threatened his reputation. Yet while he was a god in the batter's box, he was profoundly human once he stepped away from the plate. His ferocity came to define his troubled domestic life. While baseball might have been straightforward for Ted Williams, life was not.