Quote:
Originally Posted by shaft88
i saw a ton of average joes at sluggers in wrigleyville not able to make contact on 10 straight 70mph pitches so im gonna go with teddy on this one
Good info, and glad to see this thread developing a bit. Wherever it goes, it goes. I don't think ole Ted was even thinking about average Joe's hitting major league pitching. I just think that he was trying to say something smart, since he is indeed the player people mention most when talking about the greatest hitter of all time.
So, not sure if he offered any context at all, which really makes it a lame saying. In almost all contexts (if not all) it logically fails, and doesn't offer any insight into the game at all, and since it is coming from Ted Williams, that makes it worse. It doesn't add any insights to the game, and furthermore, how would Ted Williams know about the difficulty of all other sports? At least Yogi Berra sayings make sense, even if ironically, and if they don't make logical sense, at least they make you laugh.
Someone like Jack Nicklaus will add some insights about his success, like saying that when he arrived at a major, and he heard players complaining about the course, he used that as an advantage, and figured it would be one less person to worry about. And he would generally play safe, to the middle of the green, so that if he missed, he was still in decent shape to get up and down for par, but if he was on target, he would get a good shot at birdie. Whereas other would shoot for all of the pins, and risk getting bogey or worse way more than Nicklaus. Nicklaus stated that because of this, he walked into many majors and won them by default, as opposed to winning them. Other players would usually lose them, and Nicklaus was always there to clean up their mess.
Ted Williams saying "the hardest thing to do in all of sport(s)" just sucks.
Last edited by bgrif; 08-15-2018 at 08:15 PM.