At least among Red Sox fans, Ted Williams .406 season is the stuff of legends. I’m sure I’m not breaking news to you when I write that Ted Williams was the last man to hit .400 in the major leagues. You already know that he entered the last day of the season hitting .3996, and told Joe Cronin that he wanted to play the last doubleheader of the season because he didn’t want to get .400 by rounding. You know he went 6-8 on September 28th, 1941 at Philadephia’s Shibe Park to finish the season at .406.

But did you know that if the game was scored then the way it is today, Williams would have finished the 1941 campaign with a batting average of .413.

Why .413?

Because there was no sacrifice fly rule in 1941. So a batter hitting a fly ball that scores a runner was counted as an at-bat, lowering their average. From 1908-31, a batter who hit a fly ball that scored a runner was credited with a sacrifice. They brought the scoring rule back for 1939 but abolished again for 1940. During those periods, it was lumped in with sacrifice bunts. It was brought back in 1954, and for the first time, sac flies were recorded in their own right.

So I went back and looked at each game of the 1941 season in which Williams was credited with an RBI. I reviewed the play-by-play for those game and found eight instances in which he would have been credited with a sacrifice fly under modern scoring rules.

Here are his eight sacrifice flies.

1. May 23rd at New York, in the top of the 8th; Williams flies out to center, scoring Frankie Pytlak.
2. June 1st, game two at Detroit, in the top of the 7th, Williams flies out to center, scoring Lou Finney.
3. June 1st, game two at Detroit, in the top of the 9th, Williams flies out to left, scoring Dom DiMaggio.
4. June 5th at Cleveland, in the top of the 1st, Williams flies to center, scoring DiMaggio.
5. June 29th, game two at Philadelphia, in the top of the 1st, Williams flies to center, scoring DiMaggio.
6. June 16th at Chicago, in the top of the 8th, Williams flies to center, scoring Pytlak.
7. August 22nd at Chicago, in the top of the 3rd, Williams flies to center, scoring Pete Fox.
8. September 1st, game one vs. Washington, in the bottom of the 6th, Williams flies out to right scoring Pytlak

When we subtract eight at-bats from The Kid’s 1941 total of 456, we get 448. Dividing Williams 185 hits by 448 we come up with .4129. This rounds up to .413.

Historical Context

There have been 14 hitters to top the .400 mark since 1901, and only two of them: Ted Williams and Napoleon Lajoie did so without the benefit of the sacrifice fly. This does make Lajoie’s 1901 season even more incredible. He had only one sacrifice in 1901, and we know it was a bunt. In 1908, the first year sacrifices flies were counted, he hit 30 sacrifices.

Unfortunately, play-by-play isn’t readily available for most of these seasons in question. Since sacrifice flies and bunts were lumped together from 1908-31, it’s impossible to know exactly how many of each these hitters had. But we can guess that since these were the best hitters on their teams, they probably weren’t trying to sacrifice bunt very often. So for argument’s sake, I’m going to assume that all of these were sacrifice flies, admitting that this is impossible to know.

Then we’ll adjust for the sacrifice hits, and treat them as outs against the applicable batting averages. Our number of .400 seasons drops by half.

What about the Post-Ted Williams Challengers?

Since Ted Williams 1941 season, several players have flirted with .400 seasons. All of them had the sac fly rule, and each had at least five sacrifice flies. Scoring them by the 1941 rules, nobody has even hit .390.

It’s been now 77 years since someone hit .400 in the Major Leagues. And it’s all the more incredible to now know that the guy who did it did last did so without the benefit of the sacrifice fly rule.