New book...."56" by K. Kennedy....70 years since DiMaggio's hitting streak

[ls7plus]

Ted, I don't know if you've read any of Bill James' stuff, but he was able to work out a formula, taking into account events like singles, doubles, triples, homeruns, walks, stolen bases, etc. produced for any given team over the course of an entire season to calculate the number of runs that team would be expected to score for the season. As I recall, it would generate a runs scored figure that would correlate with well over 95% accurracy with the number of runs any given team actually did score in the course of that season. James then applied the same formula to individual players to calculate the number of runs they had personally created versus the number the league average player created over the same time period. Anyway, I did some research in James' writings several years ago, and it turned out that Ted Williams had created approximately 250% of the runs an average player would have been expected to create over the course of Ted's entire career.

Where did this place Williams? Precisely in the number one slot of all time. The Babe was second, with something like 229% of the average league player over his career. Although Ruth actually produced more runs, the league average was also higher, indicating conditions favored the hitter more so than in Williams' era. Old Teddy Ballgame may just actually have achieved his dream of being remembered as the greatest hitter who ever lived!

Incidently, he and the Mick are probably two of my three or four all-time favorites. As I remember, Mantle was either 3rd or 4th of all time by that same measure, with about 215%. It is indeed no coincidence that both of them drew a tremendous number of walks. As much as a negative it is when the pitcher for the team we're rooting for walks a hitter, the converse is that its a big plus for the offense. As James also showed, the number of runs a team scores is directly proportional to the number of base runners it generates.

Thanks for giving me an avenue to talk about my all-time favorites.

By the way, what do you guys think is Williams' toughest card? 1939 R303-A premium? 1952 Star-Cal cards (2)? I'm sure some might think the '54 Wilson's Franks would be up there, but PSA has graded 113 of them--not so far ahead of the 1952 Red Man Tobacco with tabs (125). And I'm sure Leon will come up with one or more to top them all!

Best to everybody,

Larry