Ted Williams 1966 Hall of Fame Induction Ring

Three minutes in Cooperstown

Ted Williams retired after the 1960 season and became eligible for the Hall of Fame five years later. When the writers' vote was announced on January 20, 1966, he was the only player elected, named on 282 of 302 ballots, 93.4 percent, well over the 227 needed. He went in on his first try. The Veterans Committee picked the former Yankees and Mets manager Casey Stengel to go in with him.

The two drew what the Hall's director, Kenny Smith, expected to be the biggest crowd Cooperstown had seen. On July 25, 1966, Williams gave a speech that lasted less than three minutes. 'Ballplayers are not born great,' he said. 'No one has come up with a substitute for hard work.' He called the election the greatest thrill of his life.

Then he said something no inductee had said before. He hoped, he told the crowd, that someday the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson could be added 'as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here only because they were not given a chance.' Paige was inducted in 1971 and Gibson in 1972, after the commissioner set up a committee to elect Negro League stars. Williams later told broadcaster Bob Costas that nobody had prompted him to say it, and he called it one of the proudest moments of his baseball life.

The greatest hitter who ever lived

Williams was born in San Diego on August 30, 1918, and played his whole career for the Boston Red Sox, from 1939 to 1960. He was the last major leaguer to hit .400, batting .406 in 1941, a mark he secured by going 6-for-8 in a doubleheader on the season's last day.

He won six batting titles, two Triple Crowns (1942 and 1947) and two MVP awards (1946 and 1949), and finished with 521 home runs, 2,654 hits, 2,021 walks and a .344 average. His career .482 on-base percentage is the highest ever. He did it while missing the 1943 to 1945 seasons to serve with the Marines in World War II, and more time later in Korea, nearly five full seasons in all. In Korea he flew 39 combat missions and once brought a damaged jet down on its belly.

He played his last game on September 28, 1960, against Baltimore, and died in Inverness, Florida, on July 5, 2002. His Hall of Fame plaque sums him up in one line: 'Ted Williams wrote the book on hitting.'

What the ring looks like

The ring is 10K gold, stamped 'LGB 10K' on the inside of the band. The top carries a baseball motif set in a black field ringed by the raised words 'Baseball Hall of Fame.' One side panel shows the Hall of Fame building above a nameplate reading 'Outfielder.' The other has a 'Williams' nameplate over crossed bats with 'Elected 1966' below.

It still sits in its original Balfour case, and the outer box carries a handwritten note in Williams's own hand: 'Hall of Fame Ring.' That box is a big part of its appeal: it shows that the ring stayed with Williams, not that it was a later copy or a duplicate made for someone else.

When it was first offered in 2012, the auctioneer ranked it with Joe DiMaggio's induction ring, sold in 2006, as one of the two most significant Hall of Fame induction rings ever offered to collectors.

From Claudia Williams to Dallas

The ring stayed with the Williams family for a decade after his death. In 2012 his daughter Claudia Williams, then a physical therapist in Florida, put his personal collection up for sale for the first time. The auction, held at Fenway Park on April 28, 2012, marked both the 10th anniversary of his death and the ballpark's 100th season, and some of the proceeds went to the Jimmy Fund, the cancer charity Williams had raised money for during his life.

Nearly 800 items sold that day. His 1949 MVP plaque brought $299,000, his 1957 Sultan of Swat award $230,000, a ball Babe Ruth signed to him $195,500, and a 1955 road jersey $126,500. The induction ring, estimated beforehand at $30,000 to $50,000, went for nearly $110,000, according to ESPN's report of the sale.

Eleven years later the ring came back to market at a three-day sports auction in Dallas, May 11 to 13, 2023. It came with the original box and a letter of provenance from Williams's daughter. It sold for $444,000, the top lot of a sale that totaled $17.9 million. A game-used bat from his 1946 MVP season sold in the same auction for $96,000.

Why this ring outranks his trophies

Williams won more than his share of hardware, but most of it rewards a single season. The induction ring marks the whole career, and it is tied to the most consequential thing he ever said in public.

Within six years of the speech, Paige and Gibson were in Cooperstown. The Hall now honors more than 30 Negro League and pre-Negro League players and executives, and historian James A. Riley has said the speech opened people's eyes to the other half of baseball history.

That is the story the ring carries, and the 2023 price reflects it: more than four times what it had brought in 2012.

The numbers

Hall of Fame vote

282 of 302 ballots, 93.4 percent (227 needed); first ballot, only player elected by writers in 1966

Induction

July 25, 1966, Cooperstown, with Casey Stengel

Career

2,292 G, 2,654 H, 521 HR, 1,839 RBI, 2,021 BB

Career rates

.344 BA, .482 OBP (all-time best), .634 SLG, 1.116 OPS

Honors

2 MVPs (1946, 1949), 2 Triple Crowns (1942, 1947), 6 batting titles, 19 All-Star selections

1941

.406, the last .400 season in the majors

Timeline

1. Aug 30, 1918

   Theodore Samuel Williams is born in San Diego.

2. 1939

   Williams debuts with the Boston Red Sox.

3. 1941

   Williams hits .406, the last .400 season in the majors.

4. 1943

   Williams begins three years of World War II service with the Marines.

5. Sep 28, 1960

   Williams plays his final game.

6. Jan 20, 1966

   Williams is elected to the Hall of Fame with 93.4 percent of the vote.

7. Jul 25, 1966

   Williams is inducted in Cooperstown, receives this ring and calls for Negro League stars to be honored.

8. 1971

   Satchel Paige is inducted into the Hall of Fame.

9. 1972

   Josh Gibson is inducted.

10. Jul 5, 2002

    Williams dies in Inverness, Florida.

11. 2006

    Joe DiMaggio's Hall of Fame induction ring is sold at auction.

12. Apr 28, 2012

    Claudia Williams's sale of her father's collection at Fenway Park; the ring brings nearly $110,000.

13. May 2023

    The ring sells for $444,000 at auction in Dallas, with a letter of provenance from Williams's daughter.

The world in 1966

• Jan 12, 1966

  Batman premieres on ABC television.

• Mar 16, 1966

  Gemini 8 performs the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit.

• Jun 13, 1966

  The Supreme Court decides Miranda v. Arizona.

• Jun 30, 1966

  The National Organization for Women is founded.

• Aug 29, 1966

  The Beatles play their final concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

• Sep 8, 1966

  Star Trek premieres on NBC.

• Oct 9, 1966

  The Baltimore Orioles finish a World Series sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Ted Williams 1966 Hall of Fame Induction Ring is number 90 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (90 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Williams's induction speech lasted less than three minutes.
• Before the 2012 sale the ring was estimated at $30,000 to $50,000; it sold for more than double the top estimate.
• At the same 2012 sale, an 8-year-old Texas boy and his parents bought Williams's 1957 silver bat.
• A ball Babe Ruth signed 'To my pal Ted Williams' was stolen from the family's Florida home in the 1970s and not recovered until 2005; it sold in 2012 for $195,500.
• Quarterback Drew Brees bought Williams's wartime flight logs at the 2012 auction and planned to send them to the National WWII Museum.
• Williams flew 39 combat missions in Korea and was hit by enemy fire three times.