Ted Williams was a two-time American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) winner, led the league in batting six times, and won the Triple Crown twice. He had a career batting average of .344, with 521 home runs, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

He is the last player in Major League Baseball to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941). Williams holds the highest career batting average of anyone with 500 or more home runs. His career year was 1941, when he hit .406 with 37 HR, 120 RBI, and 135 runs scored. His .551 on base percentage set a record that stood for 61 years.

Ted Williams was born in San Diego as Teddy Samuel Williams. His paternal ancestors were a mix of Welsh and Irish and his maternal ancestors were of Mexican descent. Ted Williams lived in San Diego's North Park neighborhood and graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego, where he played baseball. Though he soon had offers from the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees, his mother thought him too young to leave home so he signed with the local minor league club, the San Diego Padres, while still in high school. He also had a minor league stint with the Minneapolis Millers.

Ted Williams moved up to the major league Red Sox in 1939, immediately making an impact by leading the American League in RBI and finishing 4th in MVP balloting. Williams quickly became known as one of the most potent left-handed hitters in MLB. A myth that developed was that his eyes were the best in history, being able to read the words on a record album while it was spinning.

In 1941, he entered the last day of the season with a batting average of .39955. This would have been rounded up to .400, making him the first man to hit .400 since Bill Terry in 1930. Manager Joe Cronin left the decision whether to play up to him. Williams opted to play in both games of the day's doubleheader and risk falling short, explaining that "if I can't hit .400 all the way, I don't deserve it." He singled in his first at-bat, raising his average to .402, and followed it with a home run and two more hits in the first game. Williams went 2 for 3 in the second game, for a total of 6 hits in his last 8 at-bats, for a final average of .406. No player has hit .400 in a season since Williams. (Williams also hit .407 in 1953 (just 37 games), and in a six-game cameo in 1952.)

In his book, Williams acknowledges that "There was some great batting done that year [1941]" and mentions Joe DiMaggio and Cecil Travis, who hit .359. At the time, Williams' achievement was overshadowed by Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in the same season. Williams also set a major-league record in 1941 for on-base percentage in a season at .551. That record would last until surpassed by Barry Bonds in 2002. In 1949, Williams reached base in 84 consecutive games, the most ever. In addition, Williams holds the third longest such streak of 69, in 1941. In 1957, Williams reached base in 16 consecutive plate appearances, also a major league record. Williams ended his career dramatically, hitting a home run in his very last at-bat on September 28, 1960.

Williams was an obsessive student of hitting. He famously used a lighter bat than most sluggers, because it generated a faster swing. In 1970 he wrote a book on the subject, The Science of Hitting, which is still read by many baseball players. Williams was known to discuss hitting with active players enthusiastically until very late in his life.