Baseball has always lived and died by statistics. Newspapers everywhere replayed games with wins, losses and home runs. Simplicity of analysis, its roots in stats.

In the last forty or so years, organizations in every sport have learned how to quantify players to the next level. Figuring out the most efficient ways to purchase wins. Any business takes steps to better itself. Baseball has taken that step in kind.

Lost in the box scores in newspapers, baseball encyclopedias, Baseball Reference, and FanGraphs, are the stories and circumstances that made turned the story of a hitter on the Red Sox into the personification of a generation of ballplayers.

For example, the Boston Red Sox were always beneath their rivals, the New York Yankees, and could not seemingly find their way to the American League Pennant. Living in the “Curse of the Bambino,” not having the resources, assets, or plain money to keep up with the juggernaut dynasty in New York, the Red Sox lived perpetually in the shadow of the pinstripes.

After losing in the World Series in 1946. to the St. Louis Cardinals led by Stan “The Man” Musial, Williams became emotionally compromised. After a poor series showing, he felt somewhat responsible for his team’s short coming.

“The saddest part about the whole thing is that we never won the World Series,” said former teammate Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox legend. “I remember that last game in St. Louis — he was on the other end of the clubhouse — I look over there and he’s bent over backward weeping. He wanted to win one for Mr. Yawkey so badly.”

This also meant Ted Williams, one of the only men to have hit .400 in a season, remained overshadowed by the likes of Joe DiMaggio, the other legendary hitter of Williams’ generation. Since playoff success was out the window, Williams lost in many MVP races (his .400 season in particular) and especially lost in popularity and notoriety outside New England because he was not a member of the World Series New York Yankees franchise.

Nevertheless, Ted Williams was arguably the hardest working man of his era.

Williams would rise at 6 AM, and with his teammate Charlie Wagner, would drive 20 minutes west of Boston to Sunset Lake where they would fish quietly for a few hours. With the games starting at 3 in the afternoon, Williams arrived before noon to start swinging a bat or a broomstick in the clubhouse. Waving an object to mimic his baseball swing, even if it was a hair brush in front of a mirror, took up hours of Williams’s time on gamedays. He made a science of hitting, discussing its finer points with players and umpires. He practiced his famous swing for hours every day.

‘’I don’t care what it was, when he went after it he excelled at it,” said Williams’ friend, fishing buddy and former Red Sox broadcaster Curt Gowdy. “Why? Because he practiced, studied it, worked at it, and I never saw a guy work as hard at his craft as he did. … He was one of a kind.”

Former Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox has a Williams story as well.

He (Williams) told me, ‘You don’t even have a clue what makes a ball break, do you?’ I said, ‘The spin?’ ‘No, you idiot.’ He’d bring out the equations from his aviation terminology. He’d be screaming at you.”

Lost in his obsession with hitting, Williams was also an above average outfielder in his days. After switching from right field to left following his rookie season, Williams was top 5 in fielding percentage in left field for 11 out of his 17 full seasons. He would also lead Major League Baseball in outfield assists three times — The man was no slouch on defense.

The origin of the shift on lefty pull hitters began to combat a single hitter, and as we know today, was designed specifically for when Ted Williams came to bat.

Chicago Cubs fan favorite Mark Grace, once said “Have you seen the back of his baseball card? It’s ridiculous. He hit 521 home runs and he missed five years, for two different wars, in his prime. He was the original hitter that they put a shift on. He was a straight pull hitter. The fact that he could hit .400 or .344 when you’ve got seven fielders on one side of the field, and still find the grass, that’s amazing.”

Those are some stats for a man who begged teams to change they way the played defense, unheard of this time, because Williams was such a great hitter. His bat control allowed him to hit over .350 and win 6 batting titles as a left pull hitter facing a switch.

Expanding on what Grace said, those five years he missed for war in his prime has an effect on Williams. It wore him down earlier in his career, and he “only” was able to average 25 home runs, 80 RBI, with a .325 average his last few years in the Majors.

He spent those years in war as an American Hero, an unheralded pilot, a sacrifice that is worthy of our praise as Americans.

But out of that sacrifice for honor and country, the complete picture of who Ted Williams could have been in his now incomplete career has been lost forever. The legendary hitter of Fenway, and more importantly what could have been, has slipped into the annals of time — relegated to Boston pubs and baseball analysts to be argued and frustrated over for all time.