In baseball, batting average (AVG) is a measure of a batter's success rate in achieving a hit during an at bat, [1] and is calculated by dividing a player's hits by his at bats. [2] The achievement of a .400 batting average in a season was historically recognized as the coveted "standard of hitting excellence", [3] in light of how batting .300 in a season is already regarded as very good. [4] [5] There have been 50 officially-recognized instances of a player have recorded a batting average of at least .400 in a single Major League Baseball (MLB) season, [upper-alpha 1] but none have done so since 1943, when Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays hit .466, the single-season record. In the National League, the last to do so was Bill Terry of the New York Giants in 1930. Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox is the last player to hit .400 in the American League. Four players – Ed Delahanty, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Oscar Charleston – have accomplished the feat in three different seasons, [6] [7] Ross Barnes was the first player to bat .400 in a season, posting a .429 batting average in the National League's inaugural 1876 season. [8] [9]
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In total, 36 players have reached the .400 mark in MLB history and seven have done so more than once. Of these, eighteen were left-handed batters, seventeen were right-handed, and one was a switch hitter, meaning they could bat from either side of the plate. Two of these players (Terry and Williams) played for only one major league team. The Philadelphia Phillies are the only franchise to have three players reach the milestone in the same season: Ed Delahanty, Billy Hamilton, Sam Thompson, all of whom Hall of Fame outfielders who attained a batting average over .400 during the 1894 season. The Homestead Grays are the only franchise with four players recording a .400 single-season batting average, albeit in different years: Joe Strong (1932), Josh Gibson (1937, 1943), Buck Leonard (1938) and David Whatley (1939) all hit .400 while playing for the Grays. Three players won the Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award in the same year as their .400 season: Ty Cobb (1911), George Sisler (1922) and Rogers Hornsby (1925). [10] Rap Dixon, Tip O'Neill, Nap Lajoie, Josh Gibson (twice), Willie Wells, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston (twice), Heavy Johnson and Rogers Hornsby (twice) also earned the Triple Crown alongside achieving a .400 batting average, leading their respective leagues in batting average, home runs and runs batted in (RBI). [11] Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Cleveland Naps hit .408 in 1911, the highest batting average ever recorded by a rookie in the American League. Joe Strong has the lowest career batting average among players who have batted .400 in a season with .266, while Gibson – with .372 – recorded the highest career average in major league history. [12]
Given the decades that have elapsed since Gibson became the last player to achieve the feat and the integral changes to the way the game of baseball is played since then – such as the increased utilization of specialized relief pitchers [13] – a writer for The Washington Post called the mark "both mystical and unattainable". [14] Consequently, modern day attempts to reach the hallowed mark by Rod Carew (.388 in 1977), George Brett (.390 in 1980) and Tony Gwynn (.394 in the strike-shortened 1994 season) have generated considerable hype among fans and in the media. [15] [16] [17] Of the thirty-six players who have batted .400 in a season, twenty-one have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, two of which on the first ballot. [18] Five players are ineligible for not having played 10 seasons in their major league career, leaving only nine eligible .400 hitters not elected to the Hall of Fame. Shoeless Joe Jackson remains permanently ineligible for the Hall of Fame due to his ban from organized baseball in 1921 for his involvement in the Black Sox Scandal. [19] [20]
