Hank Aaron
Ted Williams
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Hank Aaron leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Hank Aaron at #4 and Ted Williams at #5.
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The case for Hank Aaron
Aaron is the sport's monument to sustained excellence. He never hit 50 home runs in a season, yet finished with 755 — breaking Ruth's record on April 8, 1974, while receiving nearly a million pieces of mail, much of it death threats — and he remains the all-time leader in RBI (2,297) and total bases (6,856, a full 722 ahead of second place). He hit .305 for a quarter century, collected 3,771 hits, made a record 25 All-Star selections, and posted 15 seasons of 30-plus homers. Remove all 755 home runs from his record and he would still have more than 3,000 hits. Aaron's 143.1 WAR understates the difficulty of his context: he began in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1952 and produced his greatest seasons through the pitching-dominant 1960s in Milwaukee and Atlanta, far from the media capitals that minted legends.
The case for Ted Williams
The purest hitter in history by nearly any rate measure. Williams's career .482 on-base percentage is the all-time record, his 1.116 OPS trails only Ruth, and his .344 average came with 521 home runs — power and discipline fused as no one has fused them since. He hit .406 in 1941, the last .400 season, famously refusing to sit on the final day and going 6-for-8 in a doubleheader to finish there. He won two Triple Crowns (1942, 1947) and somehow lost the MVP vote both times. The counterfactual defines him: he missed all of 1943-45 training as a naval aviator during World War II and most of 1952-53 flying combat missions as a Marine pilot in Korea, costing him roughly five prime years. Conservative projections put his career at 650-plus homers and near 3,300 hits. He hit .388 at age 38 and homered in his final at-bat in 1960.