56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

by Kennedy, Kostya

  DiMaggio had so narrowly missed playing alongside the Babe—just one season between Ruth’s last game as a Yankee and DiMaggio’s first—that they were forever linked. “Here is the replacement for Babe Ruth,” Dan Daniel had written in the New York World-Telegram when DiMaggio joined the Yanks, and in some sense he was exactly that. Going into his rookie year, before DiMaggio had really comprehended the size of Ruth’s singular feat, and also before he had grasped just how vast left centerfield was at Yankee Stadium, he said to reporters, “Naturally I would like to break Babe Ruth’s record, 60 home runs.” Some writers referred to DiMaggio as the Little Bambino.

  The first time DiMaggio had met the Babe—it must have been 1937 or ’38—Ruth had come into the Yankees’ locker room and walked over to gather DiMaggio’s long hand into his own warm, fleshy paw. “Hello, Joe,” the Babe said, pumping hard on the handshake. Gomez’s eyes opened wide. The brief meeting was remarkable, Gomez assured DiMaggio later. Ruth had two names for a ballplayer: “Doc” if you’d been around a bit and “Kid” if you were new. “That’s the first time I ever heard him call anybody by name,” Gomez said. DiMaggio grinned and said that he felt honored. Lefty was always looking out for Joe.

  You could feel the glow around Ruth when you stood beside him, as DiMaggio sometimes did at the baseball writers’ dinner, the two players turned out in their tuxedos. They posed together for photos. The writers would sometimes ask Ruth what he thought about Joe, or about Joe’s swing, being as it was so much more level than the Babe’s. Ruth would chuckle and backslap and maunder genially through a noncommittal reply. Ruth would be aware of DiMaggio’s hitting streak by now. He knew what it meant to set records, what they could do for you—in the moment and for years afterward. Numbers and statistics were baseball’s most sacred currency. Nobody got that better than the Babe.

  DiMaggio put out his cigarette and took up his glove. The game would soon begin again. In the bottom of the fifth inning, the score still knotted at 3–3, he stepped in against the large and lanky lefthander Al Milnar, still in the game despite the long break, and on a 3–1 pitch DiMaggio lined a double into leftfield. The crowd exulted and DiMaggio stood impassive at second base. The Yankees would later win the game, erasing a 4–3 deficit by coming back on Milnar to score three in the eighth after two were out. Peckinpaugh’s Indians were stunned, and their lead in the standings trimmed to a whisker.

  WHEN IT WAS at last time to leave Saint Vincent Academy for the day, Bina would stand and smooth out her navy blue dress—part of a uniform that she would soon pack away for the summer months—and make her way quickly through the halls. She had books in her arms and she was nearly at the double doors up front when she saw one of the men who worked at the school coming out of an office. They must have had a radio in there. The man saw Bina and grinned. “You know your friend Joe DiMaggio got another hit today,” he said. “Thank you!” Bina blurted. And then she hurried happily out of the school and all but ran the eight long blocks back home.

  ________

  1 Years later research revealed that in 1907 Yankees first baseman Hal Chase had actually hit safely in 33 straight games, a fact unmentioned and unknown in ’41.

  Chapter 12

  The Fight

  DAN DANIEL ADJUSTED his tie. He squeezed the tight knot at the center of the bow and stared for a lingering moment at the field. The others in the press box all watched him, waiting.

  Joe DiMaggio was standing on first base, and it was the bottom of the seventh inning. Daniel was not only covering the game for the World-Telegram, he was also the game’s official scorer. Tough call. That ball DiMaggio hit sure took a vicious bad bounce, Daniel told himself. Routine grounder until it kicked up and smacked Appling on the shoulder, maybe caught the side of his face. Tough play. Tough dang play. But would a niftier shortstop than good ol’ Luke Appling have put it away? Might another guy have handled it and thrown DiMaggio out? Ordinarily, Daniel might have quickly signaled for a hit on a play like this, but now, with the streak on the line. . . .

  Still the other writers looked at Daniel, and now some of the Yankee players had stepped out of the dugout and were turned toward him, looking up. What’ll it be, Daniel? Maybe I should call it an error, Daniel thought. Demand a little more of Joe, make sure no one says he got one easy. As much as Daniel cherished moments like this—the sense of real power that he felt with an outcome hanging on his word—the weight of this one lay upon him. Make the right call, he told himself, just make the right call. DiMaggio still needed a hit to extend his streak to 30 consecutive games. John Drebinger of The New York Times sat beside Daniel. “Looked like a hit to me,” Drebinger said. “Dumb luck. That thing took a terrible hop.”

  There was nobody out and the Yankees were trailing the White Sox 7–2. Whatever happened it appeared almost certain that DiMaggio would get another crack at it in the ninth. And even as well as Johnny Rigney had been pitching for Chicago in this game, there was always the chance he would unravel. This start for Rigney now really did look to be his last before the Army took him; because of that determined state director, Rigney had withdrawn his request for a deferral. He was headed back to Chicago after the game, his military physical set for three days hence.

  Maybe the Yankees would rattle Rigney now. The way the Yanks were hitting home runs these days—“The window breakers are back!” was the cry from the stands whenever a ball sailed out—maybe they’d tie this thing up, give DiMaggio even more than one other at bat.

  Rizzuto looked at DiMaggio, as ever. While some Yankees found it natural to stare up into the press box, awaiting Daniel’s ruling, DiMaggio just wiped his hands on his thighs at first base and never turned his gaze from the field. He watched Rigney, and then Keller walking toward the batter’s box, and he did not appear to be anything but calm and unconcerned.

  Why can’t I be like that? Rizzuto thought. All those weeks when he wasn’t playing, he had fretted spectacularly, pottering gloomily around the clubhouse, nervous and easily startled once the game began. The veterans tried to tease him out of it, joking, just as they did about the beat-up jalopy he drove into the Stadium lot. Gomez in particular razzed Scooter and reminded him that he needed to look the part—that being a Yankee did not just begin when you walked through Gate 4 in the Bronx but was a defining and everpresent condition. Rizzuto would laugh along at the ribbing. But at night he lay awake in bed in the hotel room he shared with the other benched rookie, Jerry Priddy, and curled his little body into itself. “You think there’s a chance we’ll get back into the lineup tomorrow?” Rizzuto would say into the darkness.

  McCarthy’s mentoring, Scooter knew, had helped. Nearly every game the manager would point to the field after some opposing infielder had kicked a ground ball or, more sinfully, had thrown to second base when he should have thrown to first or thrown to first when the play was at second. McCarthy would let out a sharp breath through his nose. “Look at that,” he’d say to Rizzuto “He’s supposed to be a major leaguer. You’d never make a mistake like that.” The manager’s aim was clear: to cut everyone down to Rizzuto’s size, to make the majors seem like just another league to the rookie.

  Teammates helped him too. Gordon reminded Rizzuto that he himself had endured a benching early in his career and had come out the better for it. Henrich offered encouragement. Rolfe pointed out the proper way to shade this or that opposing hitter. Even Crosetti, the idol that Rizzuto had once worshipped from afar on the pickup fields of Brooklyn, gave advice. “When you get to first base scoop up dirt in both hands and make a fist,” he said. “Then when you go sliding into second you’ll be protecting your fingers.”

  Crosetti, now 30 years old and in his 10th season, was always onto details like that, little ways to try to get the better of the game. For McCarthy it was like having another coach around. During infield practice, especially on the road, Crosetti would inspect the grass, determine whether it was playing fast or slow. He would roll baseballs gently down the foul lines in fro
nt of home plate to see which way a bunt might break, fair or foul. During long innings in the field Crosetti knew the right moment to walk over from shortstop and hand the struggling pitcher the rosin bag, try to break his failing rhythm. Crosetti always seemed to do this just at the moment that McCarthy thought he should; it was as if he could read McCarthy’s mind.

  And from the bench, to which he was now relegated with his stitched-up hand, there were few better jockeys, few shrewder at unnerving opponents, than Crosetti. Rizzuto had always seemed due to get back in the lineup at some point in 1941, but Crosetti’s injury had brought that day sooner than expected. Crosetti had had just one hit in his last 18 times up when he suffered Trosky’s slash, but even slumping, Frankie was an asset in the game.

  Rizzuto listened to them all. He had learned more about the major leagues in the few months since the start of spring training than he’d ever imagined it was possible to learn. Maybe he really did belong here, in pinstripes and covering the same swatch of infield dirt as players like Chicago’s Luke Appling, an All-Star year after year. When Appling batted .388 in 1936 he’d nearly edged out Gehrig for the MVP award. When he hit .348 in 1940 he had pushed DiMaggio to the final day in their battle for the batting title, finally bowing to Joe by less than four percentage points. Luke Appling was the one player that Jimmy Dykes and the White Sox would never trade. Appling did make errors—Kid Boots was one of his early nicknames—but he also got to more balls than anyone in the game, leading the league in assists and turning double plays almost as deftly as Lou Boudreau in Cleveland.

  So what about this play right here, this nasty bounce that had knocked Appling back on his heels? A hit would put DiMaggio alone in the Yankees record book, 30 straight games. Daniel glanced at Drebinger, and sat on the decision for a few seconds more. Keller was about ready to step in. Daniel leaned forward from his press box seat, out over the railing of the mezzanine so that the Yankee players could see him, and thrust out an index finger. Base hit.

  Through the innings that followed, as the Yankees’ indeed routed Rigney to tie the score, with Keller homering again, Daniel hoped that DiMaggio would get another hit, to remove any doubt at all. “If you think the hitting streak is tough for you,” he would tell DiMaggio later, “you should be in the press box.” With one out in the eighth inning DiMaggio drove a pitch from Rigney deep and on a line into rightfield, the ball seemingly sure to clear the short wall, or at the very least crash safely against it. In the last instant, though, White Sox rightfielder Taft Wright leaped and with one hand snared the baseball, before colliding into the fence himself and holding on. When the Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the ninth, now trailing yet again, 8–7, their final rally ended with two men on base and DiMaggio waiting on deck. Daniel straightened his vest. In the box score the verdict was simple and clear: DiMaggio had gone 1 for 4.

  IN THE 12TH round of the fight, Billy Conn really rattled Joe Louis. He drove a left uppercut into Louis’s stomach, sent another left to the side of his face, splashed a short right across the nose and then, rearing back, the challenger unleashed a searing left hook that crashed, unimpeded, into the right side of Louis’s head. Had Conn in his exuberance not left his feet while delivering that last punch, it would surely have dropped the champion. And now Louis, looking to clinch, had grabbed onto Conn; it was all that kept him from falling to the floor.

  More than 30 seconds remained in the round. DiMaggio sat fully upright in his seat, raised his chin toward the ring. The static of the crowd behind him had become a voluminous roar. Men stood up spontaneously, waving their hats. Billy Conn, against the odds—Louis had gone off as a 3–1 favorite in some houses, as high as 4–1 in others—was winning the fight, having battered the champion impudently and courageously all night long, all the while feinting to defray so many of Louis’s blows. Even after Louis had opened him up in Round 5 Conn had not quit, but rather had come back harder still. By now all of the judges had seven or eight rounds going to Conn; none gave more than five rounds to Louis. The fight fans at the Polo Grounds leaned in and shouted. Radio listeners all over reached to turn up the volume on their sets. Billy Conn, the Pittsburgh Kid, a light heavyweight who had moved up in class for the chance at Louis’s title and who at the opening bell was giving away 25 pounds or more, really was winning the fight.

  Toots Shor could feel that good and giddy surge, his eyes and cheeks aglow. He had bet $100,000 on Conn. Toots shifted comfortably in his seat, anticipating, and joined the growl of the crowd. He held a drink in his right hand. “C’mon Billy, finish the crumb-bum!” This was the biggest bet that Toots had ever made in his life. It was much, much more money than he could afford to lose.

  DiMaggio sat beside Toots, soaked in. He loved the big-time fights, the hugeness and the heat of it, the absence of ambiguity. Two men each with the same simple and straightforward assignment: to beat the other. DiMaggio was a Joe Louis man, and had been since before the summer of 1937 when he went to Pompton Lakes, N.J., and dropped in on Louis, then barely two months into his heavyweight champion reign and training to fight Welshman Tommy Farr. Louis had stopped what he was doing that afternoon, put away his jump rope, and he and DiMaggio had spent better than two hours together, talking baseball mostly. Louis was a Tigers fan from Detroit but after that day he said he would always be rooting for DiMaggio too.

  “I hope you win your bout against Farr,” DiMaggio said in farewell. DiMaggio, Louis later told the press, had “class, plenty of class.” If he were a ballplayer, Louis said, he’d want to be a ballplayer like Joe DiMaggio.

  The promoters had expected 40,000 at the Polo Grounds for Louis’s fight against Conn, but by the time DiMaggio walked into the noisy stadium in his double-breasted suit many more than that had already arrived. People were crammed back into the $2.50 seats, or settling in closer up at $11.50, or right near the ropes in the most coveted and costly spots, the seats that DiMaggio’s friend and ticket broker George Solotaire preferred to traffic in: $25 a pop. The ring was set up in the middle of the ball field where the New York Giants played and hot bright lights were strung above it. A half moon hung in the black sky. When the last receipts were counted, 54,487 people had made their way inside.

  Louis was guaranteed 40% of the purse, Conn 20%. But in truth it was the impish challenger as much as the beloved champion who caused the excitement. At last Louis, even favored as he was in this his 18th title defense, faced a serious test; Conn had won 19 fights in a row, the last four by knockout. He could not be thought of as just another entry in the bum of the month club. And he was handsome as a movie star. The betting commissioners on 49th Street said there had not been this much wagering on a fight since the second Louis–Max Schmeling match in 1938.

  You still couldn’t think of Louis without Schmeling coming to mind. His defeat of Louis in 1936 drew praise and the predictable, poisonous propaganda from Adolf Hitler himself: See? No black man could beat a German fighter. And then, two years later, again in sold-out Yankee Stadium, Louis had responded with a pure and beautiful vengeance, burying Schmeling with three knockdowns in Round 1, a victory for every black man, a victory for all of America. A victory for everyone, everywhere. After one particular punch Schmeling had yelped audibly in pain.

  Now Schmeling was in the news again, engaged in a more serious fight as one of the first German paratroopers who a few weeks before had landed in Crete through a buzz of gunfire. The subsequent rumors of Schmeling’s death that made it into U.S. newspapers had been exaggerated; he was ill and in a hospital in Athens.

  Under the hot lights in the Polo Grounds, Louis staggered and held on. He somehow ducked beneath another wild Conn left, then avoided another and another as the 12th round ticked down. Flashbulbs popped. Both boxers wore dark purple trunks. There were some women in the crowd and even a few children, allowed out late. DiMaggio, the walls of sound around him, sat rapt, his long day and the Yankees 3–2 loss to the White Sox for the moment forgotten.

  After breakfast that
morning, the sunlight fair upon the terrace, he had left the apartment earlier than he usually did. Peanuts had driven DiMaggio over the bridge to a hospital in Jersey City. He had agreed to visit a kid over there. The boy was 12 years old and named James Licata, and he told DiMaggio that he was a ballplayer too, on the sandlots. But now, after the accident had taken three fingers off his right hand, he wondered if he would ever play again. DiMaggio sat with him for awhile in the hospital room and when he left he gave the boy an autographed baseball and tickets to a game.

  Later at the Stadium the White Sox had walked DiMaggio intentionally in the first inning of the game, the correct thing to do with one out and runners on second and third. When DiMaggio came up in the fifth, 0 for 1 after grounding into a double play, short to second to first, he again hit one Appling’s way, a knuckling bloop of a ball that bounded onto the infield dirt and sent the shortstop to the edge of his long range to smother it with his glove. Appling didn’t even try to throw to first. With DiMaggio churning down the line and smelling a hit, there was no reason to. “The guy runs as fast as he needs to run to get there,” Bill Dickey sometimes said. Earle Combs gave DiMaggio a pat on the rump when he got back to the first base bag; players slapped hands in the Yankee dugout.

  If DiMaggio had had a little luck to keep his streak going the past two days, he wasn’t about to give a hit back. Especially not the way he was stinging the ball now, punishing pitches high and low, on every part of the plate. Getting on base with an infield single, or because of a bad hop, seemed only fair considering all the rotten luck balls—like that smoker that Taft Wright had caught against the wall. DiMaggio felt as if he could hit anything. Once, a year or two earlier when DiMaggio had been in a very good stretch at the plate, he had asked Gomez in their room, “Do you think that a guy could hit .500 in this league.” Gomez chuckled loudly—Yeh, and McCarthy might come to work in a tutu—but DiMaggio wasn’t joking.