The great thing about baseball is the arguments. Not with the umpires, but who is the greatest hitter, player etc. One of the greatest arguments relates to the American League MVP for 1941: Williams or DiMaggio?
Williams hit .406 that year, the last hitter to reach .400. He led the league in home runs. He would have won the Triple Crown but fell five RBI's short.
DiMaggio had the legendary 56-game hitting streak, and after the streak was broken, started a 16-game hitting streak. He led the league in RBI's and his team won the World Series.
Most disputants in this argument will concede that at the time Williams' feat was more common as several players had hit .400 in the previous forty years. DiMaggio, on the other hand, broke a record of over fifty years.
Instead of looking back from 1941, let's look back over the ensuing seventy years. The closest anyone has come to 56 occurred when Pete Rose hit in 44 games. Proportionately, that means he got eighty percent of the way there. Now look at batting averages. Eighty percent of .406 is .3215, say .322. How many hitters have reached that number since 1941?
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