>>>I don't think I would go that far. Babe Ruth? Ted Williams?
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>>I said it before. Ted Williams was, hands down, the finest pure hitter ever to play the game. He left a little to be desired in the field (and most everywhere else), but once he stepped into the batters' box, he was the epiptome of what hitting a baseball is all about.
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>Great story about this: Quite a few years after Ted Williams retired (I think he was in his late fifties at the time), he made the claim that he could actually see the ball hit the bat. One of the pre-eminent baseball men of the day (some say it was Leo Durocher of the Cubs, others say it was Earl Weaver of the Orioles, still others say it was Bill Veeck, the owner of the White Sox) challenged him to prove it.
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>They covered a bat with pine tar and recruited a hard-throwing rookie to pitch. Ted rocketed the first fastball straight back over the rookie's head into center field and yelled "One (expletive deleted) seam" (if you knew Ted and Ted knew you, every fourth word out of his mouth was a cuss word). They retrieved the ball -- sure enough, one seam covered with pine tar. Second pitch, another smash -- "about a quarter-inch above the ******* seam". Right again.
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>He called five out of seven perfectly.
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>As good as Barry Bonds is at hitting home runs, naming the best pure hitters to ever play the game boils down to three players, in this order: Ted Williams, Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn. Everyone else is far, far behind, including Ruth (who, in all fairness, was the best of his time).

Mmmm... I kind of think Ty Cobb ought to be in there ahead of Carew and Gwynn.

Ted Williams once said that he had a lot of respect for umpires. He said that most of them could call a ball or strike within a half inch. The problem, according to him, was that he could see it within a quarter of an inch.