56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

by Kennedy, Kostya

  Dorothy thought always of the baby. In her condition how could she not? The thoughts made her feel hopeful and optimistic about her relationship with Joe. They would make a family together! What Dorothy did not know then, as Joe was missing her in Chicago, was that when Joe Jr. was born—on Oct. 23, 1941, 17 days after the Yankees beat the Dodgers to win the World Series—Joe would spend the better part of the night not with Dorothy at Doctors Hospital but at Toots Shor’s celebrating and smoking cigars. She did not imagine that during that following off-season in New York, DiMaggio would, more than ever, go out at night without her, leaving her alone, with diapers to change and formula to mix. She had always expected that the real work of child-raising would fall to her (and that Joe would be best for doting on the boy and dandling him on his knee), but when the time came Dorothy did not embrace this responsibility as happily as she thought she might. It was hard and selfless work. Already she had put her own needs and wants into the background for Joe. Now she was doing it for Joe Jr., too. It seemed to her, during the first year of Joe Jr.’s life, that DiMaggio’s silences grew longer, his ill temper more acute; she felt sure that there were other women, and she did not like it that Joe too often criticized her in front of their friends.

  Nor could Dorothy know then—as she bundled up the daily batch of fan mail to send up to Yankee Stadium—how angry and resentful she would come to feel. She would leave Joe for a stretch during the 1942 season to go home to Duluth and sit with her mother and father and say the thing that weighed so awfully on her mind. “My marriage is just not going well,” she told them. “Sometimes I just want to put it all behind me.” Her parents urged her to hang on, to see if, with patience and understanding, she could make things work. It would not be until the fall of 1943 that Dorothy would officially file for divorce, charging Joe with “cruel indifference.” DiMaggio was temporarily out of baseball then, a staff sergeant in the Army’s special services, and a divorce was not what he wanted. He appealed to Dorothy for another chance, telling her that he would try to make things right between them. For years after the divorce finally went through, in the spring of ’44, he would say to people that he and Dorothy might soon reconcile, though they never did.

  On those hot July days in New York with DiMaggio’s hitting streak now into the 50s, Dorothy did not know that the baby kicking inside her womb would not in the end serve to be a force that held her and Joe together but rather another wedge that drove them apart. She rubbed her big, smooth belly and looked out off of their grand terrace onto the treetops thick with leaves. She followed the streak, as everyone did, through the radio reports. The excitement of what Joe was doing was all around her, in the phone calls, in the mail and on the doorman’s lips—“How about that streak, Mrs. Joe!” When Dorothy heard Joe’s voice over the telephone line she envisioned him returning home and collecting her in his arms, and she felt that she needed him and that he needed her.

  DIMAGGIO STRETCHED THE streak to 54 against the White Sox’ Johnny Rigney who, thanks to that broken eardrum, had avoided military induction and who was three months away from marrying a Comiskey. Life was good for Johnny. No wonder he had his fastball. In the second inning, Rigney’s 3–2 pitch handcuffed DiMaggio and he lifted a soft flair to short centerfield that the second baseman Billy Knickerbocker flubbed. Error. Some of the Yankee players came out of the dugout and complained that it should have been ruled a hit. On the swing DiMaggio split his bat, the one that had been stolen and then regained with Peanuts’s help, the one that he had hit with in games 1 through 41 in the streak and then used again from 46 through 53. Rigney was booed for walking DiMaggio in the fourth, and booed again when he went to 2–0 against him in the sixth. Then on the third pitch of the at bat, DiMaggio, swinging with a new Louisville Slugger, chopped the ball into the ground in front of the plate. It bounced, then dribbled down the third base line. By the time third baseman Bob Kennedy got to it, DiMaggio was all but across the first base bag. Infield hit for 54. The following game, the last of the four against Chicago, DiMaggio made it 55 in a row when he singled (and later doubled) off of the chubby lefthander Edgar Smith.

  DiMaggio had been on the road for nine days now, giving Peanuts time for other pursuits in Newark. He helped to organize and then to lead a group of about 1,000 local Italians on a trip to Rockaway Beach in Queens. “For a day in the sand,” he said. Peanuts wore a suit and tie to the beach. He sometimes went by Vincent’s barbershop, where one day a guy came in for a shave and brought with him a square clump of turf and sod that he swore he had cut out of the Yankee Stadium outfield after a game the week before. “Got it from right where Joe was standing,” the man said. The turf had spike marks in it—Joe’s spike marks supposedly—and the man carried it in a cardboard box. His idea was for DiMaggio to sign the box.

  At Vincent’s and at barbershops like it all the way down through Maryland and right up into New England, the first iterations of Les Brown’s Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, live from the Log Cabin, could be heard on the swing stations. Before long, with the melody polished and the lyrics updated to reflect the events of DiMaggio’s streak, the song would ring out across the country, played many times a day wherever in the United States radios were, and a can’t-miss pick on the diner jukeboxes. When Brown and his band went into the Okeh Records studio to lay down tracks for a recording, DiMaggio himself came by the session wearing a light summer suit and sat on a stool in the thick of the big band, cocking an ear to Brown blowing on the saxophone and listening to the song live for the first time: “From coast to coast that’s all you’ll hear of Joe the one man show/He glorified the horsehide sphere, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.”

  He had them all aglow that summer, Joe did, from coast to coast and on the streets of Chicago where now, on a Tuesday night in the middle of July, DiMaggio was walking toward the La Salle Street train station with a few others: Gomez, a couple of the writers. The street—Van Buren—was nearly empty and unevenly lit but still a few strangers saw him along the way. “Aren’t you Joe DiMaggio?” they asked, knowing that he was.

  “Yes,” said Joe and shook hands without breaking his steady pace. One man came alongside and said that he worked on the trains as a brakeman, and that he too was on his way to the La Salle Street Station. He was late for his shift, he said, but he would risk his boss’s ire for the chance to walk and talk with DiMaggio. The man had red hair and said he came from “San Francisco, the Mission District” and asked after Joe’s ballplaying brothers. The group turned off of Van Buren and onto La Salle, and the end of the street where the station stood looked bright and busy with people carrying bags. “That’s some streak you have, Joe,” the man said before breaking off.

  The Yankees held a five-game lead on the Indians and had 300 miles to ride to Cleveland for three games that could tighten the pennant race or open it wide. Each of the games would be an event. People were especially excited for the last of the three. Bob Feller was scheduled to pitch and he would once again try to get the better of DiMaggio, who by that point, the folks in Cleveland figured, would be aiming to push his hitting streak to 58 consecutive games.

  Chapter 25

  Cleveland

  THE PEOPLE ARRIVED hours early to the game, herding together outside the Stadium entrance on Third Street and spilling in a great throng onto Lakeside Drive. The weather had broken clear, and a mild evening breeze blew off of Lake Erie and banked through and around the vast vessel of Municipal Stadium. Normally the Indians played only some weekend and holiday games here, but this too was a special occasion. Night game. Yankees. DiMaggio. All of the stadium’s 40,000 reserved seats had since been sold and now the push at the ticket stalls was for the rest—the 35,000 general admission tickets that the Indians had put on sale that afternoon.

  It’s only six blocks but it would be crazy for us to walk, DiMaggio thought as they left the hotel. Who knows if we would even make it through that crowd with our suits still on. The Yankees were staying up the hill at the Hotel Cleveland, where fr
om an open window anyone could hear and sense the size and energy of the gathering below. Outside the lobby entrance Joe and Lefty ducked into a cab.

  The day before, the Yankees and Indians had played an afternoon game at Cleveland’s League Park, and on the first pitch DiMaggio saw from the gangly lefthander Al Milnar he had smashed a sharp single though the middle, extending the streak. Later he reached base on a pop-fly single to short center—the Indians centerfielder Roy Weatherly played DiMaggio so deep it seemed that Weatherly could touch the home run wall behind him. And later still DiMaggio drove a double 400 feet into left centerfield. Three hits for Joe, and the Yankees won 10–3. The newspaper in the lobby of the Hotel Cleveland showed a photograph of DiMaggio, deft in a fadeaway slide as he scored the Yankees’ second run. He’d hustled home from second base on an infield hit. More magic, the paper said, had been performed by “Joe (Superman) DiMaggio.”

  “I’ve got a strange feeling in my bones that you’re going to get stopped tonight.” The taxi rolled slowly through the choked streets and neared the stadium. The driver was talking to Joe. “I hope you keep the streak going for a hundred games, I do,” he said. “But I feel like you’re not going to get a hit tonight.” Anger shot across Gomez’s face and he snapped at the driver to be quiet, just keep driving.

  “Creep tried to jinx you!” Gomez, stewing, said to DiMaggio when they stepped out at the players’ gate. DiMaggio shrugged, unmoved. All told it had been a 20-cent ride.

  By the time the Yankees took batting practice, the seats throughout the huge stadium—at 78,811 it had by far the largest capacity of any major league park—were thick and murmurous with fans. People crowded into the double-decker grandstand and into the outfield bleachers. Down low around the infield there was scarcely room to move in the aisles. Before the start of the series, fans in Cleveland had followed closely the progress and the details of the streak, counting down to DiMaggio’s arrival. One newspaper sketch depicted DiMaggio’s face on the head of a locomotive charging into town. The official attendance for this game would be 67,463, the largest crowd to attend a baseball game in 1941, and the largest to attend a night game in any stadium, anywhere, ever.

  On the field an orchestra played swing tunes, at one point tossing off Happy Birthday in honor of Indians shortstop Lou Boudreau who was turning 24. Then the Cleveland manager Roger Peckinpaugh was brought out and as part of a marketing gimmick was given a brand new refrigerator by the Westinghouse Electric Supply Company. A few within the mammoth crowd were hoping to see DiMaggio’s hitting streak stopped by their Indians. Many wanted to see his streak continue. And some people felt both of those things at once, conflicting.

  Feller was like that. He couldn’t quite bring himself to root for DiMaggio to get a hit against his team, but at the same time as he sat in the dugout in the moments before the game looking out at the great, soughing crowd and the gleaming outfield scoreboard, Feller found himself thinking, Boy, it would be nice if DiMaggio keeps it going another day. I’d sure like to get a crack at stopping that streak tomorrow. I’d like to be the one on the mound.

  What pitcher wouldn’t? The challenge and the excitement around each at bat was motivation enough, and there was also the prospect of immediate fame. Feller’s was a widely known name, but for another guy, shutting down DiMaggio would be a notice-maker: the pitcher who stopped Superman.

  The Indians’ Al Smith, tonight’s starter, was skinny and lefthanded, and he threw a lot of soft stuff. He rarely appeared excited about anything. His teammates all called him “Silent Al.”

  Ground’s still wet, DiMaggio thought as he took his batting stance in the top of the first inning. Might be a slog to first base. Rain had fallen earlier in the day and he could feel the mud sticking to his spikes. The Yankees already led 1–0, and with one out Henrich stood on second base. Smith started DiMaggio with a fastball, missing high and away.

  At third base Ken Keltner shifted his weight, rubbed the palm of his glove, reassumed his crouch. A week earlier he had been an All-Star teammate of DiMaggio’s and in the thick of the American League’s ninth-inning, game-winning rally in Detroit. Keltner was up and down as a hitter—he drove in 113 runs as a rookie in 1938; he batted just .254 in 1940—but he made the All-Star team because of his glove. He approached the art of fielding assiduously, positioning himself carefully and differently for each batter. Often Keltner stood well in front of the bag, closer to home plate than any other third baseman in the league. He had the reflexes and hands to get away with that. But against DiMaggio, Keltner took the opposite tack. He played very deep and over against the foul line. I would rather have him sneak a single through the hole than put a double past me, Keltner reasoned. He was crisp and heady on the corner, just as Boudreau and Ray Mack were crisp and heady around the second-base bag. Keltner must be standing on the leftfield grass out there, DiMaggio thought, glancing down toward him.

  On 1 and 0 Smith threw a curveball that broke to the inside corner of the plate. DiMaggio lashed at it, pulling the ball hard and on the ground down that third-base line. It zipped fair past the bag, then into foul ground where Keltner backhanded the ball, straightened his body and threw a pellet to first baseman Oscar Grimes. DiMaggio, on a close play, was out.

  Instantly cheers erupted from the stands—Did you see that play? Best third baseman in the league I tell you! Woulda been a double. What an arm! A few moments later, when the half-inning ended, applause thundered down again on Keltner as he trotted off the field.

  In the top of the fourth inning the score was still 1–0. Smith had run the count to 3 and 2 on DiMaggio, heightening the noisy crowd. Smith relied on several pitches: curveball, changeup, middling fastball and a screwball that could fool you. It was the variety that sustained him. At 33 Smith was on his third team in five years. He had mucked around in the National League—with the Giants and the Phillies—and been cast off before coming to Cleveland and going 15–7 in 1940. He didn’t strike out many batters. What he really had going for him was the element of surprise: Smith would use any of his pitches at any time. When he now threw a full-count changeup, DiMaggio fouled it into the stands. Still 3 and 2. Hang back on this guy, DiMaggio said to himself. You can always adjust to that fastball. The curveball that followed bent too far inside; DiMaggio restrained himself and did not swing. Ball four. Boos rained out of the crowd. Walking DiMaggio, even unintentionally, was rotten play. Smith did not react to the booing, just took the ball and got ready to face Joe Gordon. DiMaggio was now hitless in two times at the plate. I’ve seen everything that he’s got, DiMaggio thought. I’ll get one next time up.

  Swiftly, the game moved along. The grandstand shook when the Indians’ Gee Walker tied the game at 1–1 with an inside-the-park home run in the bottom of the fourth inning. A visible mist had floated in off the lake and had mixed with the cigarette smoke that wafted from the stands, and the arc lights that encircled the stadium appeared to blur together. Smith was handling the Yankees fairly easily, and Gomez too had his stuff. Lately, Lefty was feeling as good on the mound as he’d felt in years. He hadn’t lost a game since May 12. Watching from the Indians bench Feller felt antsy. He wished it were tomorrow already and that he could get out there and pitch.

  Top of the seventh. One out and no one on base. Score still tied at 1–1. I’m going up swinging this time, DiMaggio thought. The Cleveland crowd had swung DiMaggio’s way for this at bat, rooting for him to get a single and then to stay stranded at first. It was time to get what they had paid for, to witness the Great Man perform. Awright DiMaggio, let’s see what you got.

  From the Yankees dugout Johnny Sturm saw how far back Keltner was standing and thought that DiMaggio might do well to drop down a bunt, although he knew that DiMaggio never would. Smith’s first-pitch curveball arrived waist-high and again bent inside. DiMaggio swung and, as if it had been bottled and then uncorked, the play of the first inning unfolded again. The ball whipped down the third-base line, Keltner backhanded it—No one goes to his righ
t better than this guy, Feller thought—stood and threw across his body and across the diamond to get DiMaggio, by a stride, at first. Again. That’s twice, DiMaggio thought jogging back to the bench. Keltner has my number. The next batter, Gordon, homered to give the Yankees a 2–1 lead.

  And now it was the eighth inning and Smith was tiring badly. The Yankees, on a long rally, had lengthened their lead to 4–1. When Smith walked Henrich to load the bases with one out and bring up DiMaggio, Peckinpaugh came out of the dugout. Aside from the hitting streak, there was a pennant race to consider. The Indians needed to rally back and win this game, then cut the Yankees lead to four behind Feller the next day. Lose, and the Yankees would have a seven-game lead. Peckinpaugh waved for the tall righthander Jim Bagby Jr. to come in from the bullpen. There was half a yellow moon in the sky and it was high up.

  DiMaggio knelt on his right knee in front of the Yankees’ dugout and rested his left elbow on his left thigh and set his chin upon the back of his left hand and watched Bagby Jr. warm up. Bagby’s father had also pitched in the majors and in 1920 he had won 31 games for the pennant-winning Indians. Junior, though, had done nothing close to that; he had less than a .500 record over four so-so seasons. He threw a decent fastball though, especially next to Al Smith’s, and he liked to keep it down.