Claim: Ty Cobb was a baseball player.

In baseball , batting average -LRB- AVG -RRB- is a measure of a batter 's success rate in achieving a hit during an at bat . In Major League Baseball -LRB- MLB -RRB- , it is calculated by dividing a player 's hits by his at bats -LRB- AB -RRB- . In MLB , a player in each league wins the `` batting title '' each season for having the highest batting average that year . The American League -LRB- AL -RRB- winner is known as the `` Rod Carew American League Batting Champion '' , while the National League -LRB- NL -RRB- leader is designated the `` Tony Gwynn National League Batting Champion '' . Under current rules , a player must have 3.1 plate appearances -LRB- PA -RRB- per team game -LRB- for a total of 502 over the current 162-game season -RRB- to qualify for the batting title . However , if a player 's lead in AVG is sufficiently large that enough hitless at bats can be added to reach this requirement and the player still would have the highest batting average , he wins the title . Tony Gwynn , for example , had 159 hits in 451 ABs in 1996 -LRB- .353 average -RRB- but only 498 PAs . Gwynn 's batting average would have dropped to .349 -LRB- 159 hits in 455 ABs -RRB- with four hitless ABs added to reach the 502 PA requirement , but this would still have been higher than the next-highest eligible player -LRB- .344 average -RRB- , so he was awarded the 1996 NL batting title .   The first batting average champion in the NL was Ross Barnes ; in the league 's inaugural 1876 season , Barnes batted .429 for the Chicago White Stockings . The AL was established in 1901 , and Hall of Fame second baseman Nap Lajoie led that league with a .426 average for the Philadelphia Athletics . Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers , who also holds the highest career batting average of .366 , led the AL in average in 11 -LRB- or 12 -RRB- seasons . Honus Wagner and Gwynn are tied for the second-most titles , with eight apiece in the NL . It is unclear whether Lajoie or Cobb won the 1910 AL title , with some sources attributing the title to each man . If Cobb is credited with the 1910 title , he won 9 consecutive titles from 1907 to 1915 and 12 total titles for his career . Otherwise , Rogers Hornsby won the most consecutive titles , with six from 1920 to 1925 . Without the 1910 title , Cobb still led the league in five consecutive seasons from 1911 to 1915 . Cobb holds the record for highest average in two and three consecutive seasons -LRB- .414 from 1911 to 1912 and .408 from 1911 to 1913 -RRB- , but Hornsby holds the record for four and five consecutive seasons -LRB- .404 from 1922 to 1925 and .402 from 1921 to 1925 -RRB- . Wagner , Rod Carew , Wade Boggs , and Gwynn have each won four consecutive titles . Lajoie also had a streak of four league-leading seasons from 1901 to 1904 if he is credited with the contested AL title in 1902 . At the 2016 MLB All-Star Game in San Diego , MLB announced that the AL and NL batting champions would henceforth be named in honor of Carew and Gwynn , respectively . Gwynn won all eight titles in the NL with the San Diego Padres , while Carew was a seven-time AL batting champion .   Barnes ' initial NL-leading average of .4286 in 1876 set the single-season record which stood for a decade . Tip O'Neill topped this total with a .4352 average in 1887 -LRB- that batting average had to be calculated without counting walks as hits , because of the walk-as-base-hit rule being in effect that year only -RRB- , and Hugh Duffy set the current record mark in 1894 by posting a .4397 batting average . Under the current 3.1 PA qualification , players have posted a .400 batting average for a season 28 times . Ted Williams ' .4057 in 1941 the most recent such season , one of 13 to occur since 1900 . George Brett in 1980 is the only player to maintain a .400 average into September since 1941 . Additionally , only Brett and John Olerud in 1993 maintained such an average into August . With the modern scarcity of .400 hitters , recent players who have been above .400 early in the season , such as Chipper Jones in 2008 , have drawn significant attention in the media . Brett 's .390 in 1980 and Gwynn 's .394 in 1994 are the only seasons in which a player reached .390 since 1941 . Carl Yastrzemski 's .301 in the 1968 American League was the lowest batting average ever to lead a league . Willie Keeler 's 1897 and Zack Wheat 's 1918 are the only two title seasons in which the winner hit no home runs . Joe Mauer 's 2006 title made him the first catcher to ever win an AL batting title , and his third title in 2009 surpassed Ernie Lombardi 's previous record of two titles for a catcher in any league . The most recent champions are Miguel Cabrera , at .338 in the AL , and Dee Gordon , at .333 in the NL .   The closest finish in a batting race came in 1945 when Snuffy Stirnweiss batted .309 , topping Tony Cuccinello 's .308 average for the American League title by .00008 . George Kell beat out Williams in 1949 by .00015 . The closest race in the National League came in 2003 when Albert Pujols held off Todd Helton on the last day of the season by .00022 . The closest National League race before that was in 1931 with Chick Hafey edging out Bill Terry by .00028 . Lajoie 's .426 average in 1901 was 86 points higher than runner-up Mike Donlin 's .340 , the largest margin of victory for a batting champion . Cap Anson 's .399 in 1881 was 71 points higher than Joe Start in 1881 , the widest margin in the National League . No player has definitively won batting titles in both the American and National Leagues . However , Ed Delahanty has if he is credited with the disputed 1902 American League title , as he was also the 1899 National League champion . The only other player to win titles in multiple leagues was Pete Browning , who won American Association titles in 1882 and 1885 , along with the lone Players ' League championship in 1890 . Ross Barnes and Deacon White each won National Association and National League titles , but the National Association is not regarded as an official league .   In 1990 , Willie McGee posted a .335 average over 542 at-bats in the NL before being traded to the AL on August 29 . Although McGee finished the season in the AL , he had enough PA 's in the NL to qualify for the NL batting title , which he won narrowly over Eddie Murray 's .330 . However , McGee batted .274 that season in the AL , bringing down his overall average to .324 and allowing Murray to lead the majors in batting average .