Posted By:
howardA couple of things to keep in mind about why Williams might have played on the last day of the '41 season:
Batting .400 did not have quite the significance in 1941 as it would today. Bill Terry had batted over .400 as recently as 1930 and Joe Dimaggio made a serious run at it in 1939.
Ted was only twenty-three at the time and figured that he'd bat .400 in some other season.
He still had a chance to overtake Dimaggio as the RBI leader for the year which might have tipped the MVP voting in his favor.
Or maybe he just loved to play.
BTW, I would guess that had the Babe put his mind to it he probably could have batted .400 a time or two himself.