1992 Upper Deck - Ted Williams - Boston Red Sox - great condition

As a teenager, Williams learned not to swing at balls that were out of the strike zone. Try as they might, pitchers could never get him to chase bad pitches. "Getting on base is how you score runs," Williams explained. "Runs win ball games. I walked a lot in high school, and in the minors I walked 100 times.… You start swinging at pitches a half-inch outside, the next one's an inch out and pretty soon you're getting nothing but bad balls to swing at."

Williams began his professional career with the San Diego Padres, then a minor league team, in 1936. In December 1937 the Padres sold him to the Boston Red Sox. "The Red Sox didn't mean a thing to me," Williams wrote in his autobiography. "A fifth-, sixth-place club, the fartherest [sic] from San Diego I could go." Yet Williams would become synonymous with Red Sox baseball.