A Quote by Richard Ben Cramer

Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those. — © Richard Ben Cramer
Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those.
When I was a kid, man, my dad used to buy me the Ted Williams glove at Sears with the Ted Williams shoes with the eight stripes on 'em. I used to play Little League, and I was Ted Williams-ed out.
The best hitter I ever saw was Ted Williams.
One guy that I wish was here right now, Ted Williams, helped me so much, our long talks, not about hitting but about fishing, one of Ted's passions, and I wish he was here today to share this with me because I owe so much to Ted Williams.
Ted Williams is one of the best hitters ever to play the game, and I didn't get a chance to see him play, so all I could do was read books and look at pictures.
A man has to have goals - for a day, for a lifetime - and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.'
Ted Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but DiMaggio was the greatest all around player.
The way those clubs shift against Ted Williams, I can't understand how he can be so stupid not to accept the challenge to him and hit to left field.
In those stupid online polls to find the best sitcom ever, 'Father Ted' never gets the credit it deserves.
We try to exert a Ted Williams kind of discipline. In his book The Science of Hitting, Ted explains that he carved the strike zone into 77 cells, each the size of a baseball. Swinging only at balls in his "best" cell, he knew, would allow him to bat .400; reaching for balls in his "worst" spot, the low outside corner of the strike zone, would reduce him to .230. In other words, waiting for the fat pitch would mean a trip to the Hall of Fame; swinging indiscriminately would mean a ticket to the minors.
Personally, until Mike Trout came into the league I thought I would be in the conversation for best player in the game. Then he screwed that up for everybody - Babe Ruth and Ted Williams included. He has ruined it for everyone.
Can you sacrifice a few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top--and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shriveled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe [Andrei] your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't trust them as if they were.
When I came back from my first TED, very few people knew what it was. But around the time I was sitting down to write 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' in 2010, TED was exploding.
THERE are no wise few; for in all men rages the folly of the Fall. Take your strongest, happiest, handsomest, best born, best bred, best instructed men on earth and give them special power for half an hour and because they are men they will begin to [perform] badly.
I think Serena Williams is the best tennis player of this generation, if not the best ever. It is amazing for her to be playing as well as she is at the age of 31.
A whole big, giant world full of men. Men with blue eyes. Brown eyes. Green eyes. And indescribable shades in between. Tall men. Short men. Skinny men. Built men. And all combinations thereof. Nice men (so I've heard, but never really seen). Mean men. Decent men, indecent. And who knows which is the best kind to have, to hold, to love? I'd say, with so many men in the world, it would pay to sample a few. Scratch that. More than a few. Lots and lots. And then a few more. And maybe, after years of research, you might find one worth not throwing back. But hey, the fun is in the fishing.
When I think about athletes, probably my favorite guest of all time among baseball players was Ted Williams.
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