Overshadowed is Williams’s conquest, completed on an overcast, raw day — a last-day-of-the-season footnote. Even in Boston, where it made front-page news, the celebration was abridged. A day later, the sports headlines focused on the coming Yankees-Brooklyn Dodgers World Series. The front-page headlines involved war in Europe. In a short time, DiMaggio won the Most Valuable Player award with nearly twice the number of first-place votes as the runner-up Williams, who had led the league in home runs and missed the triple crown by five runs batted in.

Over time, Williams’s .406 season earned a different, almost backhanded distinction. It was used to illustrate the end of an era: before baseball was desegregated, before night games and before the advent of modern strategies like specialized relief pitchers. It was treated like a relic — amazing but artifact.

Seventy years, however, may finally be enough to view Williams’s season differently. It may be the most thorough reflection of a player often called baseball’s greatest hitter. Although Williams was just 23 at the end of the season, 1941 has become the calling card of his career, no small achievement considering he retired in 1960 standing third on the career home run list behind Ruth and Jimmie Foxx.

The 1941 season revealed in total the precision, the resolve and the potent mix of aptitude and ardor that exemplified Williams the hitter. It is a 20th-century baseball masterpiece unlike any other, carved not across one World Series, one month or even 56 games but from April 15 to Sept. 28. Every single at-bat figured in the outcome, unlike when a hitter chases home run records.

“It was something that required a kind of nonstop consistency,” Williams said on the 50th anniversary in 1991. “I never thought of it as going 2 for 5 every day, but that’s what it adds up to. I had to maintain my focus throughout. Although I never imagined that all these years later, no one else would do it again.

“If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal, I would have done it again.”

‘A Lesson to All’

Image Ted Williams, demonstrating his swing in the clubhouse, made a science of hitting, discussing its finer points with players and umpires. He practiced his famous swing for hours every day. Credit... Look Collection/National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

The steadiness of Williams’s season is best, and most appropriately, borne out in numbers.

¶ Begin with these: 185 hits, 147 walks, 27 strikeouts and a .553 on-base percentage in 606 plate appearances.