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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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Ty Cobb
Ty Cobb played 22 seasons for the Detroit Tigers, including six as player-manager, before closing out his career with two seasons in Philadelphia — and across that span he set or held roughly 90 different MLB records, an almost absurd number for a single career, many of which stood for decades after he retired in 1928. His career batting average of .366 to .367 (sources vary slightly on the exact figure) stood as the highest ever recorded for nearly a century, until MLB's 2024 decision to formally incorporate Negro Leagues statistics into its official records. Cobb also finished with 4,189 or 4,191 career hits depending on the source, a total that held as the all-time record until Pete Rose passed it in 1985. Cobb's 12 career batting titles remain the most by any player in MLB history, and he hit .300 or better in 23 consecutive seasons, another all-time record. His base-stealing was just as relentless — 897 career steals, a modern-era record that stood for 49 years, including 54 career steals of home, still the record today. Cobb was inducted into the inaugural Hall of Fame class in 1936 with 98.2% of the vote, the highest percentage of any player until Tom Seaver surpassed it in 1992 — a fitting first-ballot honor for a player whose statistical dominance across two decades of Deadball Era baseball has rarely been matched since.
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