By Brett Stayton
“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…” — Ted Williams.
When you’re named after Theodore Roosevelt, you’re bound to dream big. While those are tough shoes to fill, it’s safe to say Theodore Samuel Williams lived up to the hype. Unlike Teddy Roosevelt, though, Teddy Ballgame didn’t speak softly and carry a big stick. Instead, he talked a big game and let the big stick back it up, and Ted Williams successfully etched his name as arguably the greatest hitter in Major League Baseball history.
But baseball isn’t even the most fascinating chapter of his life story. He was also an accomplished military pilot who served in two major wars and then later signed an endorsement deal with Sears, where his name and image were leveraged to brand the retail empire’s baseball gear and outdoor adventure equipment, including this batch of shotgun shells that still worked decades later.
The Greatest Hitter That Ever Lived
After debuting in 1939, he spent his entire baseball career playing left field for the Boston Red Sox and shooting pigeons in Fenway Park. He finished the 1941 season with a batting average of .406. No one big leaguer has hit over .400 for a full season since then, and there’s also a decent chance no one ever does it again. He hit a home run in the last at-bat of his major league career in 1960, finishing his career with 521 home runs, 1,839 RBIs, and a .344 career average. He retired as a 17-time All-Star, six-time batting champion, and two-time MVP.
It is also important to note that Williams also compiled those historic numbers while taking roughly five full seasons off from baseball to fly for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War. But those are stories for another day, because even Ted Williams himself would have rather talked about fishing than any of those accomplishments.
Teddy Ballgame Hits the Water
Ted Williams achieved his dream of being arguably the greatest hitter of all time; meanwhile, even he would probably have told you that fishing was his real passion. From targeting muskie and northern pike every chance he could get while playing minor league ball in Minnesota, to catching tuna off the coast of Cape Cod while playing in Boston, he managed to fish as much as he could during his playing days.
After he retired, though, he would then go on to become one of the greatest fishermen in history. Though some of his more notable fishing adventures around the world include catching marlin off the coast of South America and tigerfish deep in Africa, he would devote his life after baseball to pursuing what he considered to be the triple crown of saltwater angling.
Winning baseball’s triple crown requires leading the league in three key stats: batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. It’s one of the most difficult accomplishments in sports, and Ted Williams won it twice. However, once he retired from baseball, Williams focused his new pursuit of a triple crown on what he believed were the three pinnacles of sportfishing: tarpon, bonefish, and Atlantic salmon.
He built his life around fishing for tarpon and bonefish in Islamorada—a saltwater angler’s paradise in the Florida Keys and spent his summers chasing Canada’s famed salmon runs on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick. By the 1980s, it was well documented that Ted Williams had caught and released more than 1,000 of those three species on a fly rod. The same sixth sense he had in the batter’s box helped him sight-cast for hidden fish that other anglers missed, and he cast a fly rod, a baitcaster, and a spinning reel with the same power he had with a baseball bat and the precision of a fighter pilot.
Inducted Into Two Halls of Fames
His baseball achievements were cemented forever with his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. In 2000, his lifetime of fishing accomplishments was enshrined in the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame. Though he passed away in 2002, his legacy lives on through two books he wrote that perfectly represent his legendary accomplishments on the field and on the water. His book about catching the triple crown of sportfish is aptly titled “Fishing the Big Three: Tarpon, Bonefish, and Atlantic Salmon.” His other, more notable book, “The Science of Hitting,” continues to inspire and educate young baseball players today and is still considered gospel by modern pro hitters.
So even if you can’t hit a 95-mph fastball, just read a book, crack a beer, and catch a fish in honor of one hell of an American legend. With both the MLB All-Star Game and iCast going on this week, it seems like a great time to make a toast to Ted Williams—probably the greatest hitter who ever lived, and maybe the best saltwater fisherman ever, too.
