There are thousands of baseball players nationwide. Every player in T-ball to seniors leagues has a different swing. Most are a dime a dozen, while a select few have prestige. These players who had the sweetest swings in baseball history made their mark.
Willpower: Ted & Billy Williams
Ted Williams is one of the greatest hitters the sport has ever seen. He was the last player to hit over .400 in a season, and his career .482 on-base percentage sits atop the records. After his age-41 season in 1960, “Teddy Ballgame” passed the torch to another Williams for the game’s best swing.
If your nickname is “Sweet-Swinging,” odds are that you have one of the smoothest strokes in the game, and Billy Williams lived up to the moniker. Ernie Banks was a fixture in the Chicago Cubs lineup for decades, but for the longest time, Banks didn’t have a running mate to terrorize National League pitchers, with Billy joining him full-time in 1961. Billy was the model of consistency, going 14 straight seasons with a batting average above .275. He ended his career with a .290 batting average and 426 home runs.
Chasing .400: Tony Gwynn & Chipper Jones
Tony Gwynn and Chipper Jones reached great heights because of their picture-perfect swing. Gwynn was the poster boy for hitting in the 1990s, particularly because he knocked on Ted Williams’s door as the last player to hit .400, finishing the strike-shortened season at .394.
After Gwynn flirted with the illustrious .400 mark, everyone believed that no one could come close to it again. Certainly, no one would think that a 36-year-old Chipper Jones could do it. Nevertheless, Chipper scoffed at the naysayers going as far as June 20th with a .400 batting average. What makes Chipper’s swing more beautiful is that the only player on this list did it from both sides of the plate.
The Emerald Duo: Ken Griffey Jr. & Ichiro Suzuki
To round out the players who had the sweetest swings in baseball history, we go to the team in Seattle and two players everyone wanted to emulate when they picked out their bat. The undisputed sweetest swing in the game’s history is Ken Griffey Jr’s. Even someone who has never seen a second of baseball could tell you “The Kid’s” swing was flawless.
The other Mariner that’s hard to duplicate is Ichiro Suzuki’s. Despite not playing his first MLB game until he was 27, Ichiro eclipsed the 3,000-hit threshold in his career. The Mariners’ legend also used his “hit it where they ain’t” philosophy when he broke the single-season hits record with 262 of them in 2004.
The game has some incredible talent now, but it’s hard to imagine that any of them will be as graceful as these remarkable players.
