Ted Williams leads over Joe DiMaggio
TED WILLIAMS
Baseball's last .400 hitter, "The Splendid Splinter" finished his 19-year career with a .344 average for Boston. His .485 career on-base percentage is the best in major league history. Williams, a left fielder, is to the Boston Red Sox as Joe DiMaggio is the New York Yankees. "Teddy Ballgame" was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 93.4 percent of the vote in 1966 . . .
Credit: AP (May 23, 1941)
It's like the 1941 American League batting race again, where Ted Williams has a comfortable lead over Joe DiMaggio.
(Of course, Joe D. won the MVP that year with a 56-game hitting streak, beating out Williams' .406 average.)
Ted Williams has the early lead in sales of the new Forever stamps from the U.S. Postal Service honoring four MLB legends. The numbers so far, as released by USPS on June 13, 2012:
Ted Williams - 14,380
Joe DiMaggio - 10,100
Willie Stargell - 5,920
Larry Doby - 4,700
And for you baseball history buffs, after games of June 12, 1941, Williams was batting .410 compared to DiMaggio's .340. (DiMaggio finished the year at .357.)