They say the hardest thing in sport is using a round bat to squarely hit a round baseball.
Ted Williams could do that.
In fact, when the baseball great died last week, he took with him one of the most extraordinary swings the game of baseball has ever known.
He also took with him the intense pain of being probably the greatest player ever to be booed by his own fans.
The Splendid Splinter, as he was often called, laid claim to the distinction of being the last man in baseball to hit .400 in a season. He also was one of the most prolific, ending his career with a .344 lifetime average and 521 home runs.
In an era before the invention of the shin guard, elbow protector, steroids or even the batting helmet, Williams cranked out monster bombs and slashing singles with such ease that opposing teams had to shift their fielders when Williams came up to bat.
But Williams wasn't a man obsessed by the long ball. Nor was he a particularly adept defensive ball player. As Williams was coming of age in the big leagues, players, writers and fans would all chastise him for his seemingly lazy play in the outfield, just the first of many criticisms leveled at the slugger.
It was true that the greatest player never to win a World Series was often slow in the outfield, his tall, lanky frame making him look like a man slowly sauntering to the baseball rather than giving the pop fly or base hit his full attention.
What wasn't true was that Williams didn't care what others thought. A sensitive man, it was said that Williams could pick out two or three boos from a crowd of 30,000. And when fans weren't voicing their displeasure, the media would take Williams to task.
People questioned whether or not he could win the big games, falling short in the only World Series he ever played in, but no one could ever question Williams' sincerity when he stepped into the batter's box.
A master of his craft, Williams could speak at great length of the numerous theories he had developed while honing that elusive skill of hitting a round ball with a round bat.
Intensely shy as child, the man who would go on to lead the league in on-base percentage 12 times was not shy about his disdain for the Boston press and the many Sox fans who unfairly felt Williams should have played more of an active role in ending Boston's championship drought.
It wasn't enough for many fans that Teddy Ballgame hit .406 for the Red Sox in 1941.
It also wasn't enough that one year later – in the prime of his career – Williams joined the war movement, becoming as good of a pilot as he was a hitter.
When he returned, he was just as much of a threat at the plate, homering in his first game back from the war in 1946 before ending the season with a .346 average.
Yet, all the fans wanted to focus on was the Splendid Splinter's very un-splendid 5-for-25 average in the '46 World Series.
And even though he would play for 14 more seasons, Williams was always haunted by the boos, the lost years given to the war and the unrelenting press that always wanted to paint him as baseball's dark side, the devil to Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio's angelic legend.
When he ended his career in 1960, with a home run in his final at-bat, Williams trotted around the bases with his head down, refusing to acknowledge the Boston fans.
He would later regret that decision.
Just as any remaining fans fortunate enough to see Williams play probably regretted last week ever having booed the greatest hitter of all time.
Reach Al Stevens at al.stevens@asu.edu.
