Now, no one on or off that club, inside or outside of baseball, could imagine the Yankees making any move to dislodge or disquiet their center fielder. DiMaggio had led the league in batting with an average of .352. He’d hit thirty-one home runs, and knocked in a hundred thirty-three. It was a measure of how Joe saw himself that he felt his job was on the line. The Yanks were paying him thirty-five thousand dollars a year—to win. If they didn’t play better in ’41, if they finished another year out of the money, who could tell what that bastard Barrow would do . . . or what McCarthy would do? It seemed, these days, a couple of losses could drive the old man around the bend. There were days (no one talked much about this) that the Skipper wouldn’t show up until game time—coaches ran everything till then. And when McCarthy did show, he might be (as the players whispered) “a little shaky today,” or more aptly, “riding the White Horse.” That was the name of his scotch.
By mid-May ’41, the whole team felt shaky: the Yanks had sunk to third, then fourth place—and falling. “A non-stop flight toward the second division,” the Herald Tribune called it, after the Yanks lost five in a row. The reasons, as with all losing clubs, were depressingly various: Gordon was a mutt around first base. The pitching staff could be good one day and monstrous the next; no one knew if Jekyll or Hyde would show up. Henrich was supposed to be the everyday right fielder, but he looked so lost at the plate McCarthy had to sit him against left-handers. Rizzuto started out fine, but then he stopped hitting, like someone had flipped his switch to off. Priddy never hit at all. And worst of all, DiMaggio was in a slump like he’d never known. It started April 22, against the Philadelphia A’s junk-baller, Lester McCrabb. Joe had some bad swings, lunging for balls he could never reach, and started pressing. Then he couldn’t get back on track. His average for the young season dropped two hundred points in three weeks. In those twenty games he was batting .194—and living under a cloud.
The sporting press also offered multiple explanations for the Yankees’ and Joe D.’s swoon. Maybe the Jolter had a case of nerves about impending fatherhood. (There was his gorgeously swelling bride in the club seats, every home game.) Or maybe the Big Guy was bothered by the unsettled lineup around him. (Now, McCarthy shook it up again, benching the rookies Rizzuto and Priddy, restoring Gordon and Crosetti to second and short. Another rookie, Johnny Sturm, would take over first base—unless he caught the bug and stopped hitting, too.) Some writers insisted the Yanks were simply mediocre without Lou Gehrig. Others, of a more psychological bent, said the Yanks were dealing with their grief over Gehrig’s illness and his certain demise. (One writer, Jimmy Powers, suggested in the Daily News that Gehrig had spread his disease to other Yanks—for which accusation Powers was widely reviled, frozen out in the clubhouse, shouted down by rival writers, and finally sued by Gehrig. Actually, it was Lou’s lawyers who spurred the suit: at that moment, as the papers revealed, Gehrig lay so near death, he couldn’t even hold a smoke for himself.)
And one way or another, every analyst (in print or at the corner tavern) had to gauge the unsettling effect of the news from the wider world. Hitler had already gobbled up Europe—save for some out-of-the-way bits of gristle, like the Balkans, or Portugal; now, with Nazi bombs raining on London and U.S. ships dodging U-boats across the Atlantic, no one could be sure next September would bring a pennant race. Maybe all these Yankees would become Bombers for Uncle Sam, or trade in their bats for GI rifles. Surely the fans could feel the war coming, a chill breath of dread. The Sporting News offered a new baseball feature: “From the Army Front.” There were strange new statistics to keep track of: Bob Feller’s low draft lottery number; Hank Greenberg’s new salary (a lousy twenty-one bucks a month) as the Army’s newest buck private at Fort Custer, Michigan. The Yanks’ GM, Ed Barrow, was already wailing about the draft: it would decimate his roster, and ruin baseball! But for the most part, the Baseball Nation wrapped itself in the red-white-and-blue and leapt to voice support for America’s martial honor, for the armed forces, for FDR and his war aims against the fascist bullies. Here, for example, was the Secretary of State, that Yankee Doodle Dandy Daniel, writing of his thoughts as the National Anthem echoed over the diamond, and into the press box: “ . . . ‘Whose broad stripes and bright stars’ . . . The stars are blacked out over there, and the broad stripes are the lash-marks on the backs of men in Poland. Starvation stalks and children die where the waltzes of Strauss used to be the theme song of gemütlichkeit which has fled the world . . . . ‘And the home of the brave.’ . . . The Yankees take the field and the first batter comes to the plate. They are dropping bombs again over London . . . . ‘Protect us by thy might, great God, our King.’ . . . ‘Play Ball!’ ”
(Jeez, and we weren’t even in the war, yet!)
One explanation that no one could offer was DiMaggio’s own. Even by DiMaggio standards, Joe was hard to talk to that May. He’d slipped into Sicilian-fisherman mode, asking nothing, asserting nothing, warding off inquiries, well wishes, and any chance of advice. In the clubhouse, no one would say a word, except for quiet greetings, as they padded by the stool where he smoked and stared.
“Hiya, Joe.” “Howsa goin’, Daig?”
“Fine,” DiMaggio would answer. “Fine.”
What was he going to say? That someone got him with the evil eye? That no matter what he did, it came out wrong? Take, for example, the May 15 game—he finally got a hit, a solid single, drove in a run. But the Yankees lost again, lost hopelessly, 13–1. And who opened the gates to let the White Sox score? Joe D. He tried to throw out a ChiSox runner, little Billy Knickerbocker, racing for third. But Joe’s throw hit Knickerbocker on the arm, and of course he scored. Joe got charged with the error—unfairly—his throw was straight to the bag. But he wasn’t going to whine, or curse his luck aloud. That would sound like an alibi.
So, the next day, against the White Sox again, DiMaggio made a statement his way: he smashed a drive so deep into the left field bleachers that only one man (Private Hank Greenberg) had ever hit one there before. In the ninth, Joe hit another shot that banged off the left field wall for a triple, started a rally that gave the Yanks a 6–5 comeback win. That made two games in a row Joe got a hit—though no one said a word about it. It was more than a month, nearly two months later, when people tried to remember that game back in May, those two cannon shots Joe hit to beat Chicago. By that time DiMaggio had hit so many shots, in so many games, that all the players, writers, fans—all the Baseball Nation, and most of the American nation—were listening every day for news of him, or grabbing newspapers to read about him, or crowding into ballparks to scream his name, to be there as he made history, or simply to get a look at the man of the hour. By that time, it had become a giddy national derangement, DiMaggio-mania . . . . Joe gave America just what it needed: something apart from woe and war to talk about—a summer craze.
It was only after the fact that The Streak shone as portent of America’s brilliant rise to superpower, and made DiMaggio her poster boy for valor, victory, and God-given grace. Through World War II, and the Cold War that followed, as America bulked up on her mythos and missiles, DiMaggio was said to exemplify the great melting pot, which turned immigrants from a hundred lands into one unbeatable nation. Here was the son of an impoverished fisherman, from a country we fought in war. And yet (by the miracle of our society), Joe was as American as ice cream on the Fourth of July. And with freedom, ambition, aspiration—those blessings bestowed by his new land—he could shoot for the stars (and get there). In history’s foreshortened rearview mirror (with The Streak and Pearl Harbor clumped together in ’41), DiMaggio showed up as more than our diversion from war: he seemed our answer to war. He steeled the nation for its greatest test! He stood, he persevered, he excelled, even as the shadow of Hitler drew nigh! . . .
The funny part was, if DiMaggio had been forced to carry, or had even been aware of one tenth of, this grand historical baggage, he’d never have made a streak of ten days. But in the event, he knew one thing:
he had to hit for the Yankees to win. He was acting like a real immigrant’s son. He was trying to keep his head down and do his job.
WITH A STREAK, it’s the length that makes it a record. We venerate Joe’s feat today for its fifty-sixhood: that is, for the amazing number of times (two full months of games) that the same thing happened: Joe got a hit. But in the doing, it was nothing like the same thing over and over. In 1941, The Streak was formed not of months or weeks, but moment to moment—this at bat, that pitch, this swing . . . and every instant, every instance, with its own fingerprint, unique.
Take, for one instance, the fourth game. The White Sox had left town (after spanking the Yanks two out of three), and the visitors’ dugout was taken over by the St. Louis Browns. Before a festive crowd of more than thirty thousand who showed their colors at the Stadium for “I Am an American Day,” the Yankees walloped the Browns 12–2, and DiMaggio posted a perfect afternoon: three-for-three, with three runs scored. It would seem natural to regard this as a continuation of the hard-hitting heroics Joe had flashed in game two against the White Sox. But that was far from true. The first time he came up, Joe hit a dribbler to third base, where the Browns’ Harlond Clift nudged the ball around for a while. The official scorer, Dan “I Am an American” Daniel, made all his compatriots happy by giving the Jolter a base hit. In the second inning, DiMaggio came up again, and launched a languid pop fly into the right field corner. Chet Laabs was the Brownie in charge of that real estate; he ran under the fly ball but, unluckily, it hit him in the glove. Laabs dropped the ball and Daniel credited DiMag with a double. Joe came to bat again in the fourth and popped up again, this time toward third base, where Clift actually caught the ball. But Joe’s bat had nicked the glove of the catcher, Hans Grube. Interference was called and, by rule, Joe was awarded a single.
At that point, neither Joe nor the crowd cared if he got a few gift hits. The fans were only waiting, hoping, for DiMag and the Yanks to get going—consistency eluded them still. The next day, Joe got a double in his last at bat, but that was one of only four Yankee hits and the cellar-dweller Browns won the game 5–1. Day after that, the Pinstripes squeaked by 10–9 with the aid of six Brownie errors. DiMaggio got a single in the eighth—one-for-five for the long day’s doing. No wonder no one made much of Joe’s hit. Bill Dickey, the catcher, who was pounding the ball at a .391 clip, drove in three runs on three base hits, to extend his batting streak to twenty-one games.
The Yanks took two straight from Detroit after that. Joe hit safely in both of those games—though Bobo Newsom, who pitched the second contest, hypnotized DiMaggio through three at bats. Only after the other Yanks drove Big Buck from the mound did Joe awake to slap a seventh-inning single off the lefty reliever, Archie McKain. The next day, the Boston Red Sox came calling, and Joe wore the collar till the eighth inning—once again, his last at bat; once again, a paltry one-for-five. With one more game, May 24, DiMaggio’s streak would break into double figures. But in the Telegram, Daniel was still trying to elucidate the woes of the Yankees, their skipper, and their slugger.
“Joe McCarthy now is concentrating on the hope that Joe DiMaggio will snap out of his protracted and inexplicable slump . . . . DiMaggio has contributed only half a dozen hits in his most recent 21 trips to the plate, has seen his average whittled to .319.”
In later years writers would marvel at the way The Streak snuck up on the press: no one paid attention until Joe had pushed past twenty straight games. But Professor Michael Seidel, who wrote the definitive Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of ’41, noted that The Streak was mentioned in print as it passed a dozen games. More to the point, Seidel recounted the rataplan of world-shaking news that made Joe’s base hits seem like small potatoes. In the first weeks of DiMaggio’s streak, front pages featured (just to list a few stories): the mysterious flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer of the Third Reich; news that the Germans sank the Egyptian steamship Zamzam, with one hundred thirty-eight Americans aboard (thirty-five of them kids); the surrender of Italy’s Africa corps of thirty-eight thousand men to the British; the German conquest of Crete (and expulsion of the British); Roosevelt’s electrifying radio address, known as the “Unlimited Emergency” speech; and the British hunt for, attack upon, and triumph over the world’s greatest battleship: on May 27, they sank the Bismarck.
By the end of the month, the Yanks were in Boston for a return engagement with the Red Sox, and in the Memorial Day doubleheader, DiMaggio’s streak pushed past fifteen games. Even so, Joe wasn’t the headliner with the bat. That distinction belonged to the Bosox beanpole left fielder, Ted Williams, who improved (with a three-for-five afternoon) on his season’s average of .429 (almost a C-note higher than Joe’s measly .330). Williams was riding his own consecutive-games streak—one game longer than Joe’s—and during his streak, Ted was hitting over .500. Alas, that day, the news of Joe had nothing to do with his hitting. A stiff neck and shoulder changed him from the embodiment of grace into an outfield menace: he posted four errors, including two throws so exuberantly wild that they overflew every available fielder and rattled up against the Fenway box seat rail. Of course the crowd made known its derision—though finding the proper insult was a challenge: the Boston leatherlungs couldn’t imprecate Joe’s nationality (their own center fielder was Italian, too), nor even his parentage (their own center fielder had the same parents). Professor Seidel quotes the fans as yelling, “Meatball! Meatball! . . .” But it is also possible that this holiday twin bill marked the genesis of the Fenway grandstand anthem (sung to the tune of “O Tannenbaum”):
He’s better than his brother Joe . . .
Dom-i-nic Di-Maggio . . .
A failure in Boston was doubly galling, precisely because of brother Dom—and Ted Williams. Joe resented all comparisons to Williams, whom he thought of as a brat—Teddy Tantrum. And the way Ted played outfield! How could they be mentioned in the same breath? “He throws like a broad,” Joe said, “and he runs like a ruptured duck.”
Joe’s attitude toward Dominic was more complex—a changeable admixture of fondness, family loyalty, and resentment. Dominic maintained in his memoir, Real Grass, Real Heroes, that Joe was ever the loving big brother. “He called me ‘Min’ sometimes, for the three middle letters in my first name, and he told one of his friends in Boston, ‘Take care of Min—he’s my pet.’ ” But Joe was not above suggesting that Dom was too small to be a great player, and got to the big leagues on the strength of his name—that is, Joe’s name. Withal, when Min started stealing hits from big brother, well, that was not so amiable.
Joe often told the story of how Dominic almost stopped The Streak (and robbed him of a sure triple), when he flagged down a long drive in Yankee Stadium, and turned it into just another loud out. In point of fact, that never happened—or never happened during The Streak—but it satisfied Joe to think it did. The subtext of all his Streak stories was the same—no one was cutting him any breaks. The stories were fuel for his own performance. It was Joe, against all comers.
IRONICALLY, THAT WAS the moment the Yankees became DiMaggio’s team, finally and without a doubt. On June 2, 1941, Lou Gehrig died. At that point, the Yanks were playing in Detroit. The manager, McCarthy, and Lou’s closest Yankee friend, Bill Dickey, would fly to New York for the funeral. DiMaggio would stay behind to lead the team—which he did: though the mournful Yankees lost 4–2, DiMaggio’s home run pushed his streak to twenty straight.
Right on cue, Joe was shaking off the pain and stiffness in his neck and shoulder, starting to hammer the ball. He was the intimidator in the middle of the Yankee lineup, and for his teammates, a beacon and spur. Sure, the club was in fourth place, but if Dago stayed hot, better times would surely follow. Next game, Detroit again, a triple for DiMag. But Tom Henrich also stepped up, with a homer to tie the game in the ninth. (Henrich had literally taken his cue from Joe; he’d broken a slump of his own by switching to one of DiMaggio’s D-29 bats.)
The Yankee train arrived in
St. Louis: three hits for DiMaggio, five Yankee runs in the ninth to win; and this time, it was Charlie Keller who stepped in with a home run.
A twin bill in St. Louis on Sunday: Joe had two home runs in the first game, another homer and a double in the second. And now all the Bombers fired away in fusillade: Henrich and Red Rolfe joined with homers in the first game, a 9–3 Yankee win. In the second game, 8–3 Yanks, Keller and Joe Gordon matched long balls with DiMaggio.
Next day, the venue changed to Chicago, Comiskey Park, but the result remained the same: the New Yorkers ran away with the game 8–3, this time on the strength of a homer from Keller and a grand slam by old Frank Crosetti. The New York writers were noting a new streak: it was the eighth straight game that some Yankee had poled a ball out of the park. For Joe, it was a day of struggle against his erstwhile sandlot teammate, the White Sox third baseman, Dario Lodigiani. First time up, Lodi grabbed a hard hopper and threw Joe out at first base. Second time, Joe came up with a man on first, hit another hard shot to third, where Lodigiani collared it and slung the ball to second for the fielder’s choice. When Joe came up, oh-for-three, in the seventh inning, Lodigiani backed up a step, on the balls of his feet, ready—or he thought he was. Joe hit another smash toward third, this one so hard that Lodigiani could only block it with his body. Then he pounced on the ball, fired across to first, and was relieved to see he’d nipped Joe by a hair—a quarter-step. “SAAAFE!” yelled the ump at first . . . . But the scorer couldn’t give Lodi an E on that play. DiMaggio’s streak climbed to twenty-five games, while the Yankees climbed into second place, four and a half behind Cleveland.
Of course, Lodigiani wanted to stop Joe. All the players wanted their picture in the papers—they’re the guy who stopped him cold. And, of course, it was pitchers, most of all. One day, the young Chicago right-hander Jack Hallett, he’d had enough. First the Bostons had come through town, and Dominic DiMaggio hit everything Hallett threw. Now, it was the Yankees, and big DiMaggio already had two hits on the day. Hallett was steaming: “How d’you get these fuckin’ DiMaggios out?” Lodigiani looked over at the on-deck circle and there was Joe with two bats, grindin’ ’em together. He said: “Why’ncha hit the big bastard on the Number 5?” And Hallett, he was hot enough, young fool enough, to do it. He fired a fastball so far in, Joe could only turn around and take it in the back. (And Hallett was a big kid, threw a heavy ball.) Of course, Joe didn’t say a word: dropped his bat, ran to first. On the White Sox bench, the old coach, Muddy Ruel (who’d been in the majors since 1915), announced to the team at large: “Hallett don’t know it yet, but he just made a big mistake.” Sure enough, next time up, Joe hit another bullet off Hallett—made it three for four that day. “Guys like that,” as Ruel pointed out, “you don’t wanna wake ’em up.”
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book) Page 20
