For the majority of Red Sox fans, Ted Williams stands alone. He is not only the greatest hitter in team history, he is arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived. It is a goal he once set for himself, one many in baseball believe he achieved. Who would quarrel with that?

Perhaps the newest generation of Sox fans, the millennials, for whom 10 years ago is considered the Pleistocene Epoch? To them, no one ever has swung the bat or ruled the Sox like David Ortiz. He is their Ted, with better jewelry.

For them, Ted Williams is a grainy, black-and-white image of a man with a perfect swing but no rings. He is a myth they are not quite sure about. Big Papi, on the other hand, is the real deal. The greatest clutch hitter in Red Sox history, someone for whom no stage was too big, no moment too daunting.

ORTIZ SPECIAL SECTION: More from our 2016 Red Sox preview

Game 2 of the 2013 ALCS vs. Detroit: Down 6-2 in the eighth inning, and 0-1 in the series, with Justin Verlander looming in Game 3. BANG! Grand slam.

Return of Marathon Day? “This is our (expletive) city!” BANG! Grand slam.

It’s easy to see how fans of a certain generation look at Ortiz and forget a surly someone and his remarkable feats. After all, which would you rather be called, Big Papi or Tackless Ted?

David Ortiz is no baseball historian. He concedes he doesn’t know everything about Williams, who won six batting titles, including one at the age of 40, two Triple Crowns, two MVPs and led the American League in on-base percentage 12 times in 19 seasons. He knows he went to war on the field and the battlefield, but a lot of the rest is mystery.

Still, ask him about a comparison and he smiles broadly. To be compared to the man who literally wrote the book on hitting (“The Science of Hitting”) means something to Big Papi.

“People think because we’re ballplayers we know everybody who played the game,” Ortiz said. “It isn’t true. You hear how good a player he was, but you’re not studying history. You’re out there studying today’s pitchers so you can hit them. So I don’t know everything about Mr. Ted Williams, but there’s not anybody who plays for the Red Sox who doesn’t know of Ted Williams.

“I always say it’s great to be part of that conversation. You don’t find your name in there with Mr. Ted Williams just because.”

An ‘amazing’ feat

When Ortiz learns Williams missed nearly five full seasons to military service (in World War II and Korea), rather than the three he thought, his eyes widen. It was, he said “amazing” Williams could twice wear a Marine flight uniform and come back both times with the same results, which is to say hitting like no one ever has.

Williams missed 1943-45, played only six games in 1952 and only 37 games in 1953. One measure of his greatness is this: He hit a home run in his final game before going back to war in 1952. After 10 days taking batting practice upon his return in August 1953, he homered in his first game back. He also hit .407 with 13 home runs and 34 RBI in 37 games, meaning he jumped out of a cockpit, flew halfway around the world, took some BP and raked. To Ortiz, nothing says more than that.

“He did that two times and came back and raked the way he did?” Ortiz said. “Oh (expletive)! How do you boo that man, Mr. Ted Williams? How do you not look up to a guy like that?

“You got to have some real guts to be a guy like that. I heard he didn’t like the media and the fans got on him. How is that? If I was a fan in that era and I know you were a pilot in World War II and some other war and you’re at the plate, I’d be proud of that. I don’t care if you hit or not. That’s like going from hell to paradise.

“To be honest with you, man, I’ve probably been one of the luckiest players to play here in terms of that. I’ve maybe been booed a few times, but mostly I get the respect of the fans. Fans get frustrated. They want to see results. This year if I get booed, I’ll just tell myself, ‘Papi, I think you made the right decision (to retire). The fans ran out of patience.’

“I heard the story how Ted Williams didn’t tip his cap. My last game, for them who cheered for me, I’ll tip my hat regardless. He hits a home run in his last at-bat (Sept. 28, 1960) and doesn’t tip his cap? I can’t believe that.

“But I remember watching him on television in 1999 at the All-Star Game when all the players came around him and he was in that cart at Fenway and he waved his cap. So he didn’t take that to the grave. That’s good.”

What Williams did take to his grave were numbers like no others. Consider this: After 13 seasons in Boston, David Ortiz has hit .288 with 445 home runs (503 total, counting 58 with Minnesota) and 1,403 RBI. His 162-game averages here: .288 average, .385 on-base, .566 slugging, with an OPS of .951. Then there’s those three World Series rings and his remarkable postseason hitting.

One can see why the millennials might put his face on the Mount Rushmore of Boston sports heroes. But then we go back to those grainy black-and-white days and see a tall, lithe man with the most perfect swing ever created, and we see numbers that make you blush.

When Williams retired, his career batting average was .344 with 521 home runs and 1,839 RBI. He failed to reach 3,000 hits (2,654), but think what might have happened if he had those five years back from his prime.

Ted Williams’ career 162-game averages were .344, 37 homers and 130 RBI. By contrast, Ortiz’ are .284, 36 and 118. Williams’ 162-game slash line is .344/.482/.634, meaning he reached base, on average, nearly 50 percent of the time. Most remarkably, five seasons he reached base more than half the time, and five other times his OBP was .496, .497 (twice) or .499 (twice). In other words in 10 of his big league seasons, Ted Williams basically reached base half the time he came to the plate. Oh, by the way, his OPS was a ridiculous 1.116.

So let’s take that average year and add those numbers to his totals and see where he would stack up. This is a somewhat inexact science because injury can come into play, but it seems more feasible than with most players because Williams was a top-quality hitter even late in his career. Ortiz was astounded to learn Williams hit .388 when he was 39 and .328 when he was 40, winning batting titles both years with more than 500 plate appearances. Considering that, adding his average numbers to cover his five missing years isn’t unreasonable.

Williams would have hit an additional 171 home runs, bringing his career total to 692. He would have an additional 700 hits, upping his number to 3,354. And he would have driven in another 485 runs for a total of 2,324. That would have placed him first in RBI, fourth in homers and 10th in hits, had he not decided to play one more season in pursuit of Babe Ruth’s then-record 714 home runs.

One final note: In 1960, Williams’ last year, he was 42. He batted .316 with an OBP of .451, slugged .645 and his OPS was 1.096. Had he stayed and done something similar in 1961 (and there’s little reason, barring injury, to think otherwise) he would have passed Ruth as the all-time home run hitter, too.

Prolific pair

So who is the greatest Red Sox of all time? Even millennials would have a hard time arguing with those numbers. That’s no knock on David Ortiz. It’s simply that there’s a reason the guy had a sandwich — the No. 9 at DeAngelo’s — named after him.

“They’re two of the small group of position players who are forever going to create the face of the Red Sox,” manager John Farrell said. “David’s done so much in the postseason that October may set him apart from a group because of how many big at-bats, how many big moments that he’s meant to this team, this city, this organization.

“You could make the clear argument that longevity is possibly afforded more for the DH because you’re taking your at-bats and not having to deal with the defensive side of things, as Ted had to in left field. So the overall durability would benefit the guy who is only an offensive player. On the flip side, there’s a number of guys who have a hard time DHing because they don’t have that other side of the game to not think about the at-bats in between.

“David was a major part of three World Series teams but, of course, 2013 stands out to me because some things inside of that series with St. Louis — and, yeah the grand slam against Detroit off (Joaquin) Benoit, that’s a marquee moment in Red Sox history. But vs. St. Louis, I think he hit .700 or whatever the incredible number was (.688) when the rest of the team is hitting about .120. And the infamous dugout meeting in Game 5. Those things are not common, but then David Ortiz is not common.

“When I think of Ted Williams, I think picture perfect swing, and when you consider the dimensions of Fenway Park (380 to right-center), the power numbers are crazy. And the one thing even players from my generation I don’t think fully understand is the time missed and the obvious numbers that would correlate with that. . . . Williams’ performance on the field is historic. That will never change, and that will never be taken away.”

Certainly not, but Ortiz is a symbol to a younger generation who never knew the frustrations of their fathers and grandfathers, or those of Williams, who whiffed on one swing at the postseason.

Postseason prowess

In his one World Series appearance, in 1946, Williams hit .200, but in fairness, he was a ghost of what he’d been all season. That year, Williams’ first after World War II, he batted .342 with 38 homers and 123 RBI and led the American League in OBP (.497), slugging (.667) and OPS (1.164), as well as total bases (343) and walks (156). He was primed, but Red Sox club historian and long-time baseball writer Gordon Edes recalls luck was not on his side.

“Clearly Ted was the best hitter in Red Sox history and probably the best all-around hitter in baseball history,” Edes said. “He sustained the course of his greatness throughout his career, which few can do. His trajectory was remarkably consistent.

“However, when you take the postseason into the equation, and what Ortiz did on the biggest stages, you can at least have a conversation. You can’t discount what David has done in the most pressurized situations. Jim Leyland, the Tigers manager, says in every team meeting during the 2013 ALCS it was emphasized the one guy they could not let beat them was David. And he still hits that first-pitch grand slam in the eighth inning of Game 2. Contrast that to Ted’s one great chance on the big stage in 1946.

“The Red Sox had crushed the rest of the American League that season, but Brooklyn and the Cardinals tied so the National League had to have what became a two-game playoff. That delayed the start of the World Series, and in those days it was common to schedule exhibition games to make extra money. So (Sox owner) Tom Yawkey set up a three-game series between the Red Sox and a team of All-Stars, that included Joe DiMaggio, while they waited.

“The first game was unseasonably cold, and a left-handed pitcher from the Washington Senators, Mickey Hefner, couldn’t control his curveball and hit Ted in the elbow. In the final two games of the season against the Yankees, Ted was on base eight of the 10 times he came to the plate. After he got hit, Ted said his elbow ‘swelled up like a boiled egg.’

“He couldn’t swing a bat until the day before the Series began. His elbow was sore and he ended up hitting .200 (5-for-25) with no home runs and one RBI. It was the only chance he ever got, but his legion of critics used it against him for years.

“It’s raised because of David’s incredible postseason numbers (.455 in three World Series wins, 17 postseason home runs, 60 postseason RBI). David’s one of the great postseason hitters of all-time. Plus, Ted’s been retired 55 years. There are young Red Sox fans who don’t really know what he did. Picking him over David to them is like telling them the Everly Brothers were the greatest signing duo ever. Who?”

So after all the numbers have been crunched, the postseason factored in and long-faded memory jogged, where do they stand, David Ortiz and Ted Williams? Let’s leave that to Big Papi.

“I know one thing, bro,” Ortiz said. “Mr. Ted Williams is always going to be the No. 1 player in this organization. There’s not one player who disappears like that twice and comes back and does what he did.”