Streak

by Seidel, Michael; Siegel, George ;

  Before the beginning of the night’s game, former Washington great Walter Johnson threw the ceremonial first pitch past an electric beam at home plate, tripping the switch that flooded the park with lights. It took “Big Train” three tosses to trip the switch. His first two hard ones were wild—perhaps he was simply setting the beam up for the strike that eventually did the trick. The Griffiths paid $120,000 to install the lights, and their park now took its stand along with others equipped for night ball: Crosley Field (1935), Ebbets Field (1938), Shibe Park (1939), and the Polo Grounds, Comiskey Park, Municipal Stadium, and Sportsman’s Park (1940). The Senators drew 25,000 fans, 10 times the attendance of the previous day’s game. Counting the usual take on peanuts and Cracker Jacks, libations, and all other baseball paraphernalia, the Senators on May 28 probably made back half what the lights had cost before the evening was out. But the specialness of night baseball in 1941 was still such that Washington officials had to request permission to raise the flag after sundown in order to play the national anthem.

  The game to inaugurate Clark Griffith’s new attraction was a good one. Washington took a 3–1 lead into the eighth inning but not out of it, as the Yankees erupted for five runs, having little difficulty in that one inning, at least, seeing the nighttime ball. Joe DiMaggio got his first and only hit of the day to knock the Senator starter, Sid Hudson, out of the game with one gone in the eighth. He tripled off the right field fence. An error by Cecil Travis at short and two walks loaded the bases and allowed DiMaggio to score. Then George Selkirk, pinch-hitting for Crosetti, blasted one far into the night air for a grand slam home run. The Senators scratched for a couple of runs in the last two innings but came up shy, 6–5.

  Around Washington, D.C., and throughout the rest of the country on May 28, Roosevelt’s speech of the previous evening evoked a tremendous reaction. The pace of things all across the land appeared heated and accelerated. At a press conference, the President explained that the new powers he sought in his speech would give him the right to commandeer industrial plants and transportation systems, take over communication resources, requisition vessels for sea duty, and monitor all the workings of the financial sector, industry, and labor. He reserved the right to initiate armed convoys whenever he deemed it appropriate, without notifying the Nazis.

  Noninterventionists throughout the land fumed. Lindbergh literally wished to make a federal case of the President’s speech. An entry in his journal for the date reads, “I must find out exactly what is involved in this proclamation—and that requires specialized legal advice.” The rabidly isolationist Chicago Tribune printed an editorial accusing Roosevelt of conspiracy and “secret actions” to alter our naval policy—our “Jap policy” as the Tribune’s lead so eloquently put it—and move our entire Pacific fleet to the Atlantic. Had the President done so, the Japanese might have found fewer targets at Pearl Harbor later in the year.

  A curious announcement came from the British regarding Crete on May 28, as the evacuation of thousands of exhausted troops proceeded over 30 miles of treacherous terrain on the Askifou plain. The Foreign Office was sorry to report that the former heavyweight champion of the world, Max Schmeling, the only man to defeat Joe Louis in his prime, had been killed in action on Crete while trying to flee from captors on the second day of the invasion. No one took the time to check these facts, and obituaries for Schmeling appeared throughout the west. Buddy Baer, recently battered into a state of semiconsciousness by Joe Louis, said he hated war and was certain that Schmeling felt the same way. Jack Dempsey claimed that Hitler had forced Schmeling into the Cretan fracas as a Nazi publicity stunt. The very next day, the British somewhat abashedly retracted their previous bulletin on Schmeling’s death. He was indeed a casualty on Crete, but far from dead. The nature of his condition, for which he was now in an Athenian hospital, turned out to be a severe “tropical” infection rather than a fatal British bullet.

  GAME 14: May 29

  Attendance slipped to a paltry 1,500 on May 29 in almost unbearably humid 97-degree heat as the Yanks and Senators played to a 2–2 tie. This inconspicuous and dreary game was one of the closest calls for DiMaggio during the course of the streak, though no one remembers its details with the exception of Johnny Sturm, who had good reason. With the skies threatening thunderstorms from the opening inning, the game was an uncomfortable ordeal for everyone. Tommy Henrich’s home run in the top of the fifth put the Yankees ahead 2–1, but Senator first baseman George Archie singled home the tying run in Washington’s half of that inning. In the top of the sixth, with the heavens about to burst, the Yankees scored five times, though they would dearly have liked to cut their rally short and give the Senators time to bat, therefore getting the win on the record as official.

  Try as they might, the Yankees couldn’t kill themselves off in the top of the sixth. Johnny Sturm slashed a clean single to extend his hitting streak to 12, or so he hoped. He even tried to steal on a halfhearted hit and run play, recalling, “I wasn’t exactly running at top speed.” He was out by so ludicrous a distance that the Washington manager, Bucky Harris, protested to the umps on the field that the Yanks were intentionally giving themselves up in order to get to the bottom of the inning before the rains came. As Harris ranted, the downpour began. The umps, players, and fans left the field so fast that only the echo of Harris’s lament sounded round the ball park. Mother Nature made the day’s final call.

  Johnny Sturm lost his streak. The inning reverted to the fifth, the Yankee runs ebbed down the drain, and Sturm’s single was declared unfit for the record books. But Joe DiMaggio, who also lost a solid single to the rains in the canceled sixth, had singled earlier off righty Steve Sundra in the fourth inning to continue the streak. Sturm paid attention to this play because he wondered at the time how long the ball game would go and what would happen to his own streak, to Crosetti’s, and to DiMaggio’s. Fortune smiled on the veterans in the fourth. Sturm remembers: “DiMaggio hit it down on the plate. It bounced straight up, and the fellow at third—Archie, or maybe he was at first—had to wait until it came down. Joe just beat the throw to first.” DiMaggio scored that same inning on Crosetti’s base hit. Both Italian streaks were sitting pretty.

  With Dan Daniel keyed to Sturm and not to DiMaggio, mention was made about the loss of one streak but not about the continuation of two others. Instead, Jack Smith of the New York Daily News became the second baseball writer to pick up DiMaggio’s trail, still 4 days before traditional lore has it that the streak was noticed by anyone. Smith reported that “Crosetti was up to eleven straight and Joe DiMaggio to fourteen.” Along with his lucky streak hit, DiMaggio did something else this day he had done only twice before so far in the season—he struck out. The New York Times saw fit to report this rare event, as yet unaware of the streak: “It was the third time this year that Joe went down on strikes. He fanned twice on April 25. In the interim he went to bat 113 times.” DiMaggio would whiff an unusual four times in the next week and then, in an astounding statistic for a power hitter, would not strike out again until July 26. Making perpetual contact had one drawback. Sometimes DiMaggio hit a pitch poorly for an out that mere mortals would have missed entirely. But for a hitter like DiMaggio, keeping the ball in constant play during the streak proved crucial to its longevity. In a phone conversation, DiMaggio agreed emphatically, “That’s the one thing I always tried to do, and early in the count: hit the ball hard somewhere.” One of the reasons the 56-game record is so tough to approach has to do with the subtle relation of bat contact and defensive positioning. A streaking slap hitter can be defensed by ignoring the power alleys. Not so for a streaking power hitter who hits the ball consistently and with authority.

  Around the league on May 29, Bobby Feller won his tenth game of the young season, shutting out the Detroit Tigers 9–0. The Cleveland Indians had been struggling a bit of late, losing even to the lowly St. Louis Browns, but Feller remained on top of his game; the day’s shutout gave him a string of 29 scoreless innings
. Ted Williams, still on fire, collected six hits in nine at bats against the Philadelphia A’s. He now led the league with a .421 average. His own hitting streak moved one ahead of DiMaggio’s 14 straight (the Red Sox played a doubleheader on May 27), and Williams’s average since May 15 stood at .500 (29 for 58) to DiMaggio’s .375 (21 for 56). A Sporting News story at the end of this week had the real scoop on hitting during these wartime days: “The war in Europe has nothing on the bombardments being staged almost nightly in the Cotton State League. Two official scorers resigned in succession as the Hot Springs Bathers lost a series to Texarkana. There were 94 hits in three games, 44 in the third alone as 112 batters came to the plate in Texarkana’s 25–12 win.”

  As the Yankees left Washington by train on the evening of May 29 and sped past Philadelphia on their way to play a Memorial Day doubleheader in Boston, they crisscrossed with Charles Lindbergh, who got his first chance to react publicly to Roosevelt’s “unlimited emergency” speech. Lindbergh spoke at an America First rally distinguished by Philadelphia’s reluctance to hold it. The aviator seethed at the President’s actions. By calling the war in Europe or on the high seas “our” emergency Roosevelt had out-Hitlered Hitler: “Roosevelt, not Hitler, seeks world domination by one power.” The very idea of rearranging our border to suit the defenses of Europe exasperated Lindbergh: “If we say our frontier lies on the Rhine, they can say theirs lies on the Mississippi.” Lindbergh alluded to what he knew of the interview conducted by his friend John Cudahy with Hitler at his Berghof: One of Hitler’s attempts at wit in the interview disclaimed Germany’s interest in western borders marked by the Mississippi River. Despite Lindbergh’s and Cudahy’s efforts, the noninterventionists were losing ground fast. The majority still opposed, as did Roosevelt, an open declaration of war, but a Gallup Poll recorded that 85 percent of the American public expected war by year’s end and that nearly 80 percent agreed with Roosevelt’s current policies in staking out the terms under which we would fight it.

  As postlude to Roosevelt’s toughening policy, the State Department ordered a German official, Dr. Kurt Heinrich Rieth, whom they called the number one Nazi in America, out of the country. Rieth claimed he was here on business, but immigration officials, distrustful of both his claim and his business, whisked him to Ellis Island and took the liberty of packing his bags for him. Meanwhile, in an action unrelated to war, another set of federal officials on May 29 nabbed the famous Hollywood and Las Vegas gangster Bugsy Siegel and escorted him to Brooklyn to face a federal indictment for conspiring to harbor Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, the notorious industrial racketeer. The end of the second week of DiMaggio’s hitting streak was not a good time for undesirables of international or domestic coloring.

  GAMES 15 and 16: May 30

  The Yankees traveled to Boston for a Memorial Day double-header on May 30, and the Red Sox management had to turn away 25,000 fans at the gate. Fenway was already bulging with a capacity crowd of 34,500. Tens of thousands also showed up for Memorial Day in Indianapolis and the 1941 version of the 500. Driver Mauri Rose, a toolmaker in a defense factory, won an unusual Indy in a car different from the one in which he had started. Rose got 177 miles into the race before he retired the sleek pole position Maserati he was driving because of what the newspapers charmingly described as “carburetor catarrh.” Since Rose had made no other plans for the afternoon, he took over driving duties from Floyd Davis, by then hopelessly off the pace in the same car Rose had driven to a third-place finish the year before. Rose drove like a souped-up demon until he caught the man who had won the last two Indy 500s, Wilbur Shaw.

  About 150 miles from the finish, Shaw’s car threw a tire, skidded toward the wall, and smashed, although Shaw managed to escape with minor injuries. Meanwhile, Mauri Rose ended up in first place with Davis’s car. His average of 115 miles per hour clocked in at 2 below the Indy record of 117 set by Floyd Robert. A Hollywood stunt driver, Cliff Bergere, drove to a fifth-place finish, but did so in a fashion that had been accomplished only once before in the history of the race: he completed the 500 without making a single pit stop. The last racer who had managed this drove a diesel and finished far out of the money.

  The holiday ball games at Boston were the first of six doubleheaders for the Yankees during DiMaggio’s streak, and New York would sweep all of them but this one. In a tense first game, Boston lefthander Earl Johnson took a 3–1 lead into the last inning, a lead Joe DiMaggio helped build when he dropped a fly in center, allowing a Boston run to score. But trouble arrived in the ninth for the Red Sox. Red Ruffing began the inning for the Yanks pinch-hitting for Tommy Henrich. He slammed a long single off the green monster in left field. DiMaggio followed Ruffing to the plate; so far he had no hits, two walks, and only one official at bat. Johnson took a look at Frenchy Bordagaray at first, running for Ruffing; then he let go with a fat pitch that DiMaggio drilled to right field for a clean single. The streak was alive at 15 and breathing again. An out and an error later, Charlie Keller walked with the bases full to force in the first Yankee run of the inning. Crosetti then lined a single to drive in two more and extend his own hitting streak to 12 straight. The Yankees held in the bottom of the ninth to win this tight game 4–3.

  The second game turned into an absolute nightmare for the Yankees and their star center fielder. DiMaggio almost scratched himself from the lineup, suffering the pain of a miserable stiff neck and sore shoulder, but finally kept mum because manager Joe McCarthy already had his own list of woes. The day before Bill Dickey had hurt his knee on a foul tip—his shin guards were too small—and he sat out the Boston games awaiting special delivery of a new pair. DiMaggio steered clear of sick bay and an anxious McCarthy. Instead, he warned the Yankee infielders about coming out to help him with the cutoff throws. Johnny Sturm remembers DiMaggio telling him before the games that his neck and shoulder were so sore that he wouldn’t even risk warming up. He hoped he could get by in the games without throwing. No such luck.

  DiMaggio’s horror show included a muffed ground ball single through the middle by Ted Williams, then two balls heaved against the box seat railings. All in all Joe chalked up four errors for the doubleheader—the worst fielding day of his career. The large Boston crowd experienced a rare kind of delirium. Chants of “Meatball” greeted the Yankee center fielder in his later at bats, which, during an epoch freer with ethnic epithets, seemed appropriate for Italian errors. A Gene Mack cartoon in the next day’s Boston Globe offered up a little drawing of a forlorn DiMaggio and a balloon caption: “Seldom on any field has anyone equalled his wild throwing.”

  If DiMaggio’s sore-necked fielding was atrocious, his hitting fared better only through the good graces of the elements. In the fifth inning, batting against Mickey Harris, he poked a windblown high fly into right that looked like a duck soup out. But right is a particularly brutal sun field in Boston later in the afternoon, as many can still attest from the famous 1978 playoff game between the Yankees and Boston when Lou Piniella almost lost a line drive in the sun. On DiMaggio’s fly, Pete Fox circled around helplessly but couldn’t accommodate sun and wind at the same time. The ball fell near him, untouched. A newly installed HIT sign on the scoreboard at Fenway flashed HIT, and the crowd groaned. Only a few parks around the league relayed such information; usually it was between the official scorer and a select few who could see him in the press box. The same Gene Mack cartoon that had DiMaggio throwing the ball all over Boston also depicted Pete Fox running himself dizzy under DiMaggio’s fly, with the caption “Not since Snodgrass in 1912 has a muff at Fenway caused such a furor as Fox’s of Joe DiMag’s.” Mack’s reference was to the famous incident in the 1912 World Series when Fred Snodgrass dropped a pop fly and lost the series for Christy Mathewson and the Giants. In any event, DiMaggio stood at second, rubbed his neck, and savored his streak hit for a fortunate sixteenth straight.

  The New York Times commented on the 13–0 humiliation of the Yankees in game 2: “To say that their first shut-out of the
year was the worst beating of the campaign for the Yanks doesn’t begin to tell how bad they looked.” With the Red Sox ahead 10–0 in the fourth, both managers began replacing their regulars. In this comedy of Yankee errors, the Red Sox pulled a startling triple steal in the sixth, with Skeeter Newsome dashing for the plate as his teammates headed for third and second, respectively. Newsome had already stolen second that inning. Reserve Yankee catcher Buddy Rosar must have thought he was at a penny arcade.

  DiMaggio’s windblown, sun-drenched double was the only Yankee hit of the second game until rookie Jerry Priddy got another late in what by then was a fruitless cause. Jim Tabor, Boston third baseman, led the Red Sox 16-hit attack with two doubles and a home run. Ted Williams got two hits in the nightcap to extend his streak to 17 (one ahead of DiMaggio), but Frankie Crossetti lost his 12-game hitting streak by taking an “ofer” in the Yankee defeat. With his 3 for 5 on the day, Williams stayed ahead of DiMaggio for the streak games .510 to .377. Overall at this point in the season, Williams was hitting .429 to DiMaggio’s .331.

  In addition to the indignity of the doubleheader’s nightcap this Memorial Day, the Yankees had to share a train out of town with the Red Sox, at least as far as Buffalo. The teams thankfully rode in different cars which would then make different hookups. From Buffalo, the Yanks headed to Cleveland, the Red Sox to Detroit. In New York on Memorial Day the Dodgers and Giants played two at the Polo Grounds in front of a packed house of 59,487 fans. Brooklyn took both games to gain ground on the surging St. Louis Cardinals, who had won 11 straight in the National League before losing this day to Cincinnati.