Streak

by Seidel, Michael; Siegel, George ;

  In an interview about the streak with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, DiMaggio compared the games around the time of his pursuit of the Sisler and Keeler records with the open-ended nature of his record-a-day pace now. He still felt pressure each game, but not each at bat. The distinction may seem a fine one, but it had tactical repercussions. When he was shooting for the Sisler record—the one he had had in his sights for a couple of weeks—he got edgy about walks and consequently became a less patient hitter; now on almost every trip to the plate he waited for a pitch he felt he could drive. As much as he still wanted to beat his own minor league record of 61 straight, set for the San Francisco Seals in 1933, he openly admitted that he had another goal: to catch “that Williams” for the batting title by the homestretch of the season. After this day, DiMaggio was at .375 for the year and Williams was at .395. The prospect of catching Williams was not improbable under these circumstances. DiMaggio had after all outhit him for average during the previous two seasons. The competition between these extraordinary hitters was as intense as it was professional.

  At the end of 56 games DiMaggio’s streak average moved up to .408 (91 for 223). Moreover, in the 11 games to date since breaking Keeler’s record, DiMaggio was hitting .545 (24 for 44). He had been driving in runs so consistently that he now led the major leagues with 76, and his 20 home runs tied him with teammate Charlie Keller for the major league high. Williams, at present nursing a sore ankle, ended up 4 points ahead of DiMaggio at .412 for the span of the streak games. During one run of 21 games within the streak (May 17 to June 7) Williams hit .506, and this yeoman work helped carry him to his .406 overall season’s average.

  DiMaggio’s torrid pace near the end of his record was in marked contrast not only to Williams’s brief fade-out but to his own Pacific Coast League record of 61 with the Seals. In the last several games of that streak the young DiMaggio had been so exhausted that he could barely hit the ball beyond the infield. Perhaps this is the place for a bit of comparative streak morphology. The result says something about the way the younger DiMaggio and the more mature one carried themselves under the pressures of record hitting streaks.

  In a doubleheader victory for San Francisco over Portland on May 28, 1933, a rookie Seal right fielder with just a couple of months’ experience under his belt banged a double in the nightcap after going hitless in the first game. The San Francisco Chronicle couldn’t decide whether they wished to spell the fellow’s name DiMaggio, de Maggio, or De Maggio, and it seemed the mere whim of the day’s copy editor how the name actually showed up in the daily sports section. The day DiMaggio’s minor league streak began, Babe Ruth hit three home runs and went 5 for 7 in a doubleheader win against the White Sox as the Yankees went a game up over the Senators in the American League race. Al Simmons lead the league in hitting at .361; Jimmy Foxx, then playing for the Philadelphia A’s, was second at .354.

  In May 1933 Roosevelt’s brain trusters had brewed up the National Recovery Act as a depression-era potion. During the course of DiMaggio’s 61 games Mahatma Gandhi ended a hunger strike on behalf of India’s untouchables; California became one of the many states to vote “wet” and align itself with others for the override of the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution; San Franciscans watched in awe as construction proceeded on two massive projects, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge; aviator Wiley Post broke the record for around-the-world flight, despite crashing in Russia and Alaska; the marriage of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford went belly up; and Clark Gable and Norma Shearer starred in Strange Interlude, Edward G. Robinson in The Little Giant, and Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell in Gold Diggers of 1933. The first all-star game would be played at Comiskey Park on July 6, and Babe Ruth would hit one out in the American League’s 4–2 win. Barney Ross took the lightweight title on June 23, and Primo Carnera, to the delight of Mussolini, won the heavyweight title on June 29 by knocking Jack Sharkey silly in the sixth; after the fight the newly appointed prizefight commissioner personally jumped into the ring to examine Carnera’s gloves for lead pipes or slugs.

  DiMaggio’s hitting streak did almost nothing for the Seals in 1933. San Francisco was in last place when it began and was still in the cellar 34 games later when the Chronicle first noticed that “Joe de Maggio, the San Francisco right fielder, hit safely in his thirty-fourth game, beating a close throw to first on his fourth trip.” By game 40 the streak story had reached boldface print status in the sports section, and by game 49, with the challenge to the old Pacific Coast League record set by Jack Ness in 1915, the streak became headline news in the sports pages.

  Dominic DiMaggio remembers what it was like for his brother during the increasingly tense and exhausting days of the streak. The DiMaggio boys still lived at home on Taylor Street near Fisherman’s Wharf. Even with the headlines in the papers every day as the streak hit 50 straight, the talk at the dinner table was not about the ball games. “Joe was just off the sandlots,” Dominic recalled, “and the streak was a strain on him. Toward the end he needed some rest. The Seals played so many games—way over two hundred a year counting spring training. Nobody at home wanted to make the strain any worse by talking about it. Anyway, my father got his biggest kick out of the streak when it was over—he got his picture taken with the mayor. That really meant something to him.”

  The last several days of DiMaggio’s streak were sheer torture, very different from the 1941 streak, during which he grew stronger toward the end. Most of his hits were infield singles, including a solo hit to Ray French at deep short against Sacramento in game 57, another just off French’s glove in game 58, and two more scratch hits, again involving French, in both ends of a doubleheader in games 59 and 60. These last games were strange phenomena. The first was played the morning of July 26 in Stockton, and DiMaggio dribbled one past the pitcher in the ninth inning that French couldn’t play. The official scorer was roundly booed. In the afternoon game, played 40 miles up the road in Sacramento, with talk still fresh about the suspect call in the ninth to preserve the streak, DiMaggio again hit one right at a charging French on his last at bat of the game. French grabbed it and juggled it, not bothering to throw to first. When the hit signal went up in the press box, the Sacramento crowd screamed at the call, with several of them frantically charging the official scorer. A police escort was necessary to steer the stunned newspaperman through the mob to a private room off the clubhouse.

  DiMaggio appeared about ready to fall from weariness. A staff writer for the Chronicle, Ed Hughes, wrote, “Joe De Maggio is only a kid, playing his first year in professional baseball, and he plainly shows the strain.” The next day, back home, DiMaggio struggled with no hits until a strong rally by the Seals in the eighth got him another at bat. He lined one over the second baseman’s head for what was to be his last hit during the record streak of 61 straight. In his shot at 62, pitcher Ed Walsh for Oakland, son of Ed Walsh, the great Chicago White Sox knuckleballer, retired him on routine plays, one of which was a force to Cookie Lavagetto, with whom an older Joe DiMaggio would again hook up when the Yankees played the Dodgers in the 1941 and 1947 World Series. DiMaggio came up for his last at bat in the bottom of the ninth with one out, the game tied at 3–3, and runners on first and third. The man before him, Jimmy Zinn, had been intentionally walked to set up a double play. DiMaggio swung at a high outside pitch and connected soundly to send a long fly to right, sufficient to drive in the game-winning run on the tag-up but not sufficient to continue his streak. In all this time the Seals had edged up to seventh place, two games out of the league cellar.

  During DiMaggio’s 1933 streak reporters went scurrying for information on Joe Wilhoit’s all-time record 69-game streak for Wichita of the Western Association in 1919, though there seemed to be considerable dispute about whether 69 was the correct number rather than 67 or even 65. In any event, Wilhoit had accomplished his feat from June 14 to August 20, 1919, during the time when the Chicago White Sox—later that year besmirched to black—were inching their way
to the American League pennant. When Wilhoit’s streak began, Ty Cobb was leading the American League at .377, with Joe Jackson comfortably behind at .338. The American cavalry at the time was chasing Mexican bandits over the Texas border, occupational therapy for some hundred years by that time, and Woodrow Wilson was fighting Congress tooth and nail over specific covenants and articles for the proposed League of Nations. Wilhoit hit a remarkable .505 during the run of 69 games (151 for 299), which says something about the pitching in that circuit, not to mention the fielding. For the entire 1919 season he hit .422; the next year he was slated to move up to the Boston Red Sox, but he never made their roster.

  Both DiMaggio’s own 61-game streak in 1933 and Wilhoit’s 69-game record were still live issues after the Yankee game with Cleveland on July 16, 1941. As hot as DiMaggio was, writers had reason to think that with continued luck he might well mount a challenge not only to his Seal record but to Wilhoit’s as well. That possibility shared space in the day’s sports pages with a sadder piece of news, devastating in its way, having to do with a former big leaguer for the Giants and Braves, Eddie Mayo, who would later pull it together and return to the majors with the A’s and the Tigers. Mayo was then playing for the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels, and news came from the commissioner’s office that he was banned from baseball for a year, pending appeal, for an incident in which he had walked up to a surprised Pacific Coast League umpire and spit in his face. Mayo said at his hearing that he hadn’t known what he was doing—akin to pleading temporary insanity. His plea didn’t wash, if that’s the right phrase. For the moment, he packed his spikes and went home.

  Around the majors on the last day of DiMaggio’s streak, the Cards faced the Dodgers in an Ebbets Field showdown. St. Louis spotted the Dodgers four runs and came back to beat them anyway, 7–4. The Cards were now three out of first and closing, while the Yankees were six in front of the Indians in the American League and coasting. New York had won 20 of the last 22 and for the past month was playing over .850 ball. The next night DiMaggio and the Yankees would join the Indians in the cavernous Municipal Stadium for a historically dramatic game under the lights. The big stadium would be filled nearly to capacity for the occasion.

  If July 16, 1941, turned out to be a day of great consequence for DiMaggio without his knowing it at the time, it was also of great consequence for America without its government at the time knowing exactly why either. The cabinet of Prince Fumimaro Konoye resigned in Japan, and a heavily militarist regime formed a new cabinet. Intelligence and State Department analysts expected a major move in the Pacific theater but were unaware of the detailed plans for attacking Pearl Harbor that now moved to the top of the Japanese cabinet’s agenda. On the floor of Congress this day, elected officials began voicing their first public and serious concern about an imminent threat in the Pacific. Representative Vinson, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, said in response to military testimony on the adequacy of our defenses on Pearl Harbor, “If we have a powder keg there, maybe there is something we can do about it.” The matter escaped direct attention until December 7, 1941.

  There is one more item, elegiac in its way, that marks the last day of DiMaggio’s streak in the summer of a year at once energized and daunted by world war. On July 16 the New York World-Telegram ran a photo of Joseph Kennedy, Jr., in the cockpit of a Navy pilot trainer under the caption “A Kennedy Wants Wings.” The picture of the intense young man, nearly DiMaggio’s age, is tainted in retrospect only by what we know of Joe Kennedy’s subsequent death as a World War II Navy pilot. In a time excited by flight as the new frontier of achievement, it is fitting that DiMaggio’s streak opened on a day featuring a daring midair rescue and closed on a day that ran a simple news photo which symbolized the spirit of the era’s commitment—and, as it turned out, the immense toll that would be taken by our impending entry into World War II.

  Endgame

  July 17

  On a day that saw the European war break forth from a temporary lull with an incredible 9 million men clashing furiously on all three salients along the Russian front, 67,468 jammed Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium to cheer DiMaggio’s effort to extend his streak and watch the Indians make what could be their last serious run at the league-leading Yankees. The hostilities in Russia constituted the largest single day’s battle in the history of the world; the crowd in Cleveland that night was merely the largest of the 1941 baseball season.

  The game was among the most memorable ever played. Millions know the name of the two Cleveland pitchers, Al Smith and Jim Bagby, who shut down DiMaggio that night. Sportswriter Dave Anderson pointed out that head shots of Smith and Bagby appeared in newspapers all over the country the next day as if they had assassinated a king. In many ways, aided by the skullduggery of Ken Keltner, the Indian third baseman, they had. DiMaggio’s night at the plate in Cleveland remains one of those baseball moments that still fire the imagination; in recalling the two drives off his bat toward third, both potential hits converted into brilliant outs, one cherishes the hope that at least one will yet shoot past Keltner into the left field corner for a double. But neither did, and neither will.

  Two left-handers were going at it in the night game before the huge, carnivalesque crowd: for the Yankees, DiMaggio’s roommate, Lefty Gomez; for the Indians, Al Smith. Gomez remembers getting his shoes shined in the hotel lobby and the shoeshine man telling him that the Indians and Smith were going to hang the collar on DiMaggio that night. Lefty just stared unbelievingly at the voice before him uttering such doom. Though variants of this story placed DiMaggio and Gomez together in a cab with an irrepressible cabby putting on the hex, Gomez in truth suffered the “truth” all alone. DiMaggio later suffered the consequences.

  On his first time at bat, DiMaggio pulled a low inside curve hard down the line at third and Keltner backhanded it deep behind the bag. When I recently asked DiMaggio how deep Keltner was playing him, he responded, “Deep? My God, he was standing in left field.” DiMaggio also reminisced about the play on a tape recording now housed at the Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown. He said he hit the ball on the nose right down the line, and Keltner stabbed it on the third or fourth hop, when it already appeared to be beyond him. His momentum carried him onto the grass well in foul territory. DiMaggio said, “I couldn’t get out of the box quickly because of the rains the day before, and Ken’s long throw just nipped me.”

  For the rest of the game DiMaggio noticed that Keltner’s positioning behind third was even more exaggerated: “He gave me almost the whole left side between the line and Boudreau at short.” When I asked Keltner recently how and why he had positioned himself as he had against DiMaggio, he responded that he figured to get an extra step’s worth of time because of the damp field; he also wanted to hold any hit that got past him to a single. He wasn’t thinking about DiMaggio’s streak but about the Indians’ attempt, perhaps their last serious one, to challenge the Yankees before New York made a mockery of the pennant race. Playing deep and near the line was in no way tentative; it was tactical. Keltner knew DiMaggio rarely if ever bunted, and he knew the Yankee slugger often hit shots right down the line when a lefty was on the mound. I asked Keltner what he thought generally when DiMaggio stepped up to the plate: “Joe was the greatest ballplayer I ever saw—the most complete ballplayer.”

  Al Smith walked DiMaggio his next at bat, and the big Cleveland crowd, pulling so hard for its team to make a run at the pennant, actually booed. If ever 67, 468 people were confused, this was the night. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that DiMaggio was taking it all gracefully, but the fans were deeply conflicted: “Only a psychologist could tell how they felt.” First they cheered DiMaggio for what he had done already during the streak; then they cheered Keltner for preventing him from doing it again. The boos when Smith walked DiMaggio were deprivational.

  In the seventh Smith came right at DiMaggio, who hit another hard grounder deep to Keltner. The great third basema
n gloved it again, this time on a shorter hop and closer to him; the ball was in the same place, but Keltner was playing even closer to the line. The long throw to the bag beat Joe by a step. After the game Keltner was not happy about losing and snapped at reporters that DiMaggio hit ’em and he caught ’em, that’s all. But then he unwound a bit and mentioned the incident he remembered from back on June 1, the last time the Yankees had been in Cleveland, when DiMaggio had hit one off his glove as he moved to his right toward the line. “DiMaggio said something when the inning was over as he was leaving the bases near the foul line. I couldn’t hear what it was, but I remembered the ball he hit on the play. So I played him deep tonight, maybe a little closer to the line than usual.”

  Bobby Feller told me that “Keltner was simply the best in the American League. He could go to his right better than anyone and had a great, great arm.” Every Yankee I asked about the last game of the streak concurred. Johnny Sturm was the most expansive on the subject. He said that Keltner was simply a “hell of a ballplayer, with tremendous confidence in his arm. He played as deep at third as the situation allowed, whatever the situation was. Joe would never bunt, and Kenny knew it. Once he grabbed those balls, he still had to throw ropes to first. Best arm at his position in baseball.”

  To this day Keltner’s memory of the July 17 game is precise, though he has forgotten the earlier June 1 incident involving a similar smash to third entirely. When I asked him if it was true that of the streak-ending grounders the first was the tougher play, he said: “They were both pretty much in the same place. The throws were more difficult than the stops, and the throws were identical. I had to put something on them, and the plays at first were both very close.” Keltner remembers that when he left the park he didn’t want to run into any disgruntled fans, Yankee or Indian, so he had the police escort him to his car in the lot: “You know, Joe had lots of Italian friends in Ohio.”