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Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth started his career as a genuinely dominant left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox — a 94-46 record with a 2.28 ERA — before the Red Sox sold him to the New York Yankees in 1920 and his career pivoted almost entirely to hitting. That pivot changed the sport itself: Ruth broke the single-season home run record repeatedly through the 1920s, capping it with 60 home runs in 1927 as the anchor of the legendary "Murderers' Row" Yankees lineup. He finished his career with 714 home runs, a .342 batting average, and a .690 slugging percentage, numbers that look enormous even by modern standards and were simply unprecedented in a dead-ball era most of his contemporaries were still playing in. Ruth won seven World Series titles across his Red Sox and Yankees years and picked up the 1923 American League MVP award along the way. Ruth was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, receiving 95.1% of the vote — early, overwhelming recognition for a player who'd fundamentally changed what the sport's offense could look like. The shift from a pitching-and-contact game to a power-hitting one is directly traceable to his Yankees years. Ruth's move from ace pitcher to full-time power hitter remains one of the most unusual career arcs in professional sports — most Hall of Famers built a reputation doing one thing exceptionally well, while Ruth built two separate, individually Hall-of-Fame-caliber careers inside a single one, then chose to walk away from the mound almost entirely once his bat made it clear which version of him the game needed more.
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Ted Williams
Ted Williams played his entire 19-year career with the Boston Red Sox, with his prime years split by two separate stretches of military service during World War II and the Korean War — service that very plausibly cost him several additional peak seasons of production on top of an already historic career. His signature achievement came in 1941: a .406 batting average, the last time any MLB player has hit .400 or better across a full season. The story behind it has become baseball legend — with his average sitting at .39955 (which would have rounded up to an official .400) before a season-ending doubleheader, Williams chose to play both games rather than sit out to protect the milestone, reportedly saying he wanted more than his toenails on the line if he was going to be a .400 hitter. He went 6-for-8 on the day and finished at .406. Williams closed his career with a .344 batting average, the highest of any player whose career was primarily played after World War II, along with 521 home runs and a .482 on-base percentage — still the highest career OBP in MLB history. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 1966 with 93.4% of the vote. Nicknamed "The Splendid Splinter" and "Teddy Ballgame," Williams is still widely regarded as the purest hitter the sport has ever produced — a reputation built almost entirely on plate discipline and swing mechanics rather than the power-numbers spectacle that defines a lot of modern offensive stardom.
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