Chipper Jones Statistics - Baseball-Reference.com

Baseball trivia: Chipper Jones has an outside chance to hit .360 this year. How many other switch-hitters have done so?

Only one! Mickey Mantle. Switch-hitters could manage only three seasons of .350 or more in the 20th century. Mantle had two, back to back, and the other was accomplished by Willie "E.T." McGee in 1985, when he set the modern National League Record at .353, which Chipper could challenge this year! (He was at .347 about a week ago.) Frankie Frisch's .348 was the highest in the 20th century for 33 years until Mantle beat it with .353 in 1956, then raised the bar to .365 in 1957. Frisch's National League record of .3479 held for 62 years until McGee beat it, although Pete Rose came heartbreakingly close with .3477 in 1969. (He would have set the record with one less at-bat.)

Surprisingly, Mantle's .365 in 1957 is the highest batting average ever accumulated by a switcher. Mantle's only real competition for the "best switch hitter" title is a guy who never played in the majors, James "Cool Papa" Bell of the Negro Leagues, who batted .429 in 1946 - at age 43! Bell didn't have Mantle's power, but was even faster and could hit the ball exactly where he wanted to. He was essentially Ichiro, except from both sides of the plate. His most famous feat occurred in 1948 when, at age 45 and having been retired for two years, he scored from first on a sacrifice bunt in an exhibition game against Bob Lemon of the Cleveland Indians. Unlike many Negro League yarns, that was no legend. (Bell's 1991 New York Times obit.)