Ted Williams was the top hitter almost every full season he played. Williams is the most recent and likely the last to have a .400 batting average for a qualifying season: .406 in 1941.
Joe DiMaggio had his 56 game hitting streak in 1941 and was voted MVP over Williams as DiMaggio's Yankees won the American League pennant. DiMaggio was regarded as the greatest all player of his era. In 1969 DiMaggio was voted the greatest living player.
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| Joe DiMaggio Sporting News, December 15, 1941 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Greatest living player: Mays, Bonds, Trout? Thursday, February 4, 2021
Willie Mays, who played almost all of his career for the Giants
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Stan Musial was the man in the National League. He hit five home runs in a doubleheader but never led the league in home runs.
All three played for only one team: Red Sox, Yankees, Cardinals respectively.
All three lost playing time due to World War II, although none were in combat. Williams flew combat missions for the Marines in the Korean War in 1952-1953 under the command of future astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn.
Hank Greenberg lost about the most time due to WWII. His Detroit Tigers signed Greenberg for $85,000 for the 1947 season but ...
January 18, 1947: Purchased by the Pittsburgh Pirates from the Detroit Tigers for $75,000.
September 29, 1947: Released by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
So Greenberg played his final season for Pittsburgh and was paid what may have been the highest salary in MLB history through 1947. Which brings us to the three players featured in this post, all of whom were probably paid at least $100,000 for multiple seasons. Much of the salary data for Williams and Musial is subject to multiple reports. Of these three, DiMaggio's salaries are the least challenged.
Review the matrix below and read more about the data below that.
Columns to the right contain their ages and the so far undefined asterisks (*). Salaries:
BOLD: highest
red: lowest
framed: one of the alternate salaries used because it seems to make more sense. Percent is the increase from the previous year. Read the first post in this series for more.
Williams 1952 salary: "2/20/57 TSN:25000.00,Amount received before joining Marines": baseball-reference.com
Salaries: sluggers before free agency 1920-1976. First of a series. Sunday, March 7, 2021
Annual salaries in this series are from https://www.baseball-reference.com/:
Salaries may not be complete (especially pre-1985) and may not include some earned bonuses ...
The Salary column contains some obvious mistakes. For instance, Willie Mays was paid $12,500 in 1954 after missing most of the previous two seasons in military service in the U.S. Army. Mays was NL MVP in 1954 but is shown for the next season getting the same salary: no raise. No way. The note for 1955 states that The Sporting News has Mays 1955 salary as $25,000, double his 1954 salary. That rings true.
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This link has complete data on the sluggers profiles in this series.
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