Article:Ted Williams and the Second World War what if!

I wrote something a while back about Ted Williams and the years he lost to the Second World War and the Korean War. If he had gone where would he be in the record books today. Ted and I first met in Pesicola Fl, during his Marine fighter pilot training and when I was transferred to San Diego we got together again for a while and then again in the Pacific on Wake Island and Guam where he was stationed in the last years of the war. Sometimes we got time off and we got to fish around the islands and during this time it was great to listen to him talk about the game and all the different situations that you can have batting. Who it was sometimes he would say made a difference but by and large it really didn't matter who was on the mound. When they started doing the Willliams infield switch he just started hitting it where they weren't. During the last part of the war before I was moved closer to Japan, I got to pitch batting practice to him almost on a daily basis. It didn't matter where I put the ball he would hit the living you know what out of it and in some cases it would end up in the Pacific Ocean. He never tired of talking baseball or hitting in all the years I knew him it was something that he truly loved to do. That and talk fishing. I got to fish with him in the Pacific and then again after war after and before each new season until 1960 then we got to do more fishing during the spring times when the fishing was at its best in the places that he and I liked to fish. Florida Keys and off the coast of southern Virgina and North Carolina. Sometimes we would talk about the war time and what the fishing was like in that part of the Pacific that we were in for over 3 years. The fishing off Guam was so unbelievable it couldn't be explained without sounding like we were on something. Some times the fish would almost jump into the boat and the sizes were beyond description. But baseball was until he retired his first and only true love. I never met anyone with the exception of ShoeLess Joe who loved baseball as much as Williams. Teds said he only got to see Joe after he left baseball and was an old man playing in the dirt leagues, he use to call them because they were being played always in the dirt and in small towns all over the south or literally 5 or 10 dollars a game. I asked Ted on more than one occasion what he liked about Joe's swing, considered by Hornsby and Ruth as one of the greatest hitters they ever saw. Ted agreed with them because even as a old man Joe could swing a bat like no one else. He was overweight and slower but when he would hit the ball Ted would say it would just leap off his bat like a rocket leaving the pad. Ted was very opinionated, as am I, and about baseball players ever more so but there was always something about Joe Jackson and Hornsby and Ruth that Ted loved to watch. I don't think anyone has ever had a better eye for the ball and his swing was as good as anyone to ever play the game but he told me once just after Casey Stengal died that Shoeless Joe Jackson had to his mind the sweetest and most level swing he had ever seen in over 50 years of watching the game. More me that is the greatest compliment anyone could give Joe. He use to laugh at my swing because I was always so far back from the plate but he did always say because of my hands and arms being so strong that was why I always hit the living he would tell me   "crap out of the ball"  I don't know if that was a compliment or he was just saying it to be nice to an old war buddy. About the only thing I could do close to him was fish. There were times that I loved to really stick it to him when I would caught the most  and largest fish and it did happen more often than not, especially when we fished in my territory. What if theory about Ted is something that can never be settled but looking at the years taken away you could honestly add about another 200 homer, at least 500 RBI and another maybe 1000 hits and that alone puts him into a class with Ruth. His lifetime batting average is .344 and he hit in a park that wasn't lefthander friendly. Well that is another question all to itself...