Teddy Ballgame To Be Honored By USPS With Postage Stamp | Seamheads.com

Well deserved. The greatest hitter in baseball history. Sorry Babe.



Teddy Ballgame To Be Honored By USPS With Postage Stamp | Seamheads.com:

"Red Sox Hall-of-Fame OF Ted Williams was larger than life and possessed the stuff of legend. He was both a baseball hero and a war hero, serving as a naval aviator (USMC pilot) during WWII (1942-46) and the Korean War (1952-53). He was the last baseball player to hit .400 during the regular season while having enough at-bats to qualify for a batting title (.406 in 1941). He was famous for having a sometimes ascerbic personality, and for his battles with the press and the sometimes-unappreciative Boston baseball fans… and he was renowned for being an avid and skilled fisherman."

Legend has it Williams once told a friend, “All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, ‘There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived.’” That tale was woven into the fabric of the movie, “The Natural”, based on Bernard Malamud’s novel of the same name. There are many baseball aficionados, pundits and ballplayers who truly believe that Williams was, in fact, the greatest hitter who has ever lived. Williams’ contemprary and equal, NY Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio, once said: “He was absolutely the best hitter I ever saw.”

No other player visible to my generation has concentrated within himself so much of the sport’s poignance, has so assiduously refined his natural skills, has so constantly brought to the place the intensity of competence that crowds the throat with joy.

It was that single-mindedness that made Williams such an extraordinary hitter and has led many to wonder what kind of numbers he ultimately would have compiled if he had not missed more than five years – in his prime – to the cause of war. It was that greatness that led the baseball world to bestow a variety of nicknames on him: “The Splendid Splinter”, “Teddy Ballgame”, “The Thumper” and, simply, “The Kid”.

And now we learn that The Kid will be honored by the United States Postal Service in its upcoming “Major League Baseball All-Stars” collection, which will be sold at post offices next year. Williams is the fourth and final all-star to be included in the set (Joe DiMaggio, Larry Doby, and Willie Stargell were previously confirmed as subjects in the four-stamp series). It is art of a different milieu – stamps are widely considered the most available and easily afforded form of art available.