Unless you're a diehard baseball historian, chances are you don't know off the top of your head which player had the highest batting average in either league those years.
But if you're even a slightly more-than-casual baseball fan, you know Ted Williams won the American League batting title in 1941 and that his batting average was .406.
You know this not only because Williams is the last player to finish a season with a batting average above .400, but because of the manner in which Williams did it 70 years ago Wednesday.
The story has been recounted through generations. On the final day of the 1941 season, Williams was given the option not to play and preserve his .39955 average, which would have been rounded up to .400. The Splendid Splinter instead played, went 6-for-8, and finished with a .406 mark.
With all due respect to Williams, the batting title is a meaningless accomplishment. Teams don't hang banners for batting championships like they do for pennants or World Series; that's why Yankees fans smirk, shrug their shoulders and refrain from bringing up Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle when Red Sox fans call Williams "The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived" — the Yankees fans are too busy counting their 27 world championships to care to argue. The Kid's accomplishment stands apart from every batting title in baseball history, though, because of the way it was done.
That was why the decision Wednesday to remove New York Mets shortstop Jose Reyes from Wednesday game, clinging to a slim lead in the NL batting race, is so glaringly cowardly.
Reyes exited Wednesday's game in the first inning after a bunt single pushed his league-leading batting average to .337, two points higher than Brewers right field Ryan Braun's. Boos were reportedly heard from the stands at Citi Field, where the few fans in attendance surely came solely to see the soon-to-be-free-agent shortstop play in what might be his last game as a Met.
The reaction from New York sportswriters was swift and critical. The connection to Williams' acheivement was not lost on ESPN New York's Andrew Marchand.
"Don't the Mets understand that Ted Williams is so legendary because he played that day?" Marchand tweeted.
It was not immediately clear whether the decision to leave the game was the Mets' or Reyes'. It doesn't really matter, really. Even if the Red Sox had posted armed guards at the dugout steps that day in 1941, nothing would have stopped Williams from getting onto the field. If the Mets told Reyes he was leaving in the first inning, he could have sat down in the infield and made them drag him off, kicking and screaming.
Then again, perhaps the whole reason we remember Williams' actions on Sept. 28, 1941 so fondly is because they were so rare. There are few stories before or since of such an uncompromising, noble refusal to accept a title that is tainted. If Reyes did as Williams did — if everyone did as Williams did — the legend wouldn't inspire the same awe.
That doesn't make Reyes right. It merely makes him normal — boringly, underwhelmingly normal.
