The Kid Who Batted 1.000
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The Kid Who Batted 1.000 is the name of two separate books, both juvenile baseball novels. The key plot device – the advent of a young batsman who is able to achieve a walk (base on balls) at every plate appearance – is identical in both novels.
"1.000" is a perfect baseball batting average – a hit for every at bat – and by convention is pronounced "a thousand" rather than "one point oh", so the title of the books is generally spoken as "The kid who batted a thousand". Achieving a base on balls at every plate appearance actually gives one an on-base percentage of 1.000 rather than a batting average of 1.000 (in fact one's batting average, if expressed numerically, would by convention be .000).
The Kid Who Batted 1.000 is a 1951 book by Bob Allison and Frank Ernest Hill with illustrations by Paul Galdone.[1]
The conceit is that the Chicks, a (fictional) last place team in the American League, discover Dave King, a teenage hick and aspiring chicken farmer in backcountry Oklahoma who is found to have the ability to hit any ball delivered by any major-league pitcher in the strike zone – but always foul. Eventually he receives four pitches out of the strike zone and draws a walk, every time at bat, thus leading the Chicks to the league championship (an on-base percentage of 1.000 would be the highest in major league history by a very large margin). In his final at bat, in the seventh game of the World Series, he hits a home run to win the game and series (thus achieving a lifetime batting average of 1/1, or 1.000, albeit in postseason play only). After the season, having earned enough money to set up a chicken farm, King does so and retires from baseball.[2][3]