56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (33 page)

Sometimes DiMaggio switched to lighter bats in the summer months, a trick that Cobb swore by. Go down a couple of ounces and your swing would keep its zip through the season’s most draining slog. But some seasons DiMaggio didn’t go down in weight at all. When he ordered a half-dozen new bats after the theft in Washington they were the same 36 by 35½ as the batch he’d ordered in April. He swung a Y4 model, named for the Tigers’ Rudy York and made of white Northern ash. Joe thought nothing of lending his bats to other players.

DiMaggio sometimes dipped his bat in olive oil—another Cobbism—but other times he did not. Sometimes he applied resin to the handle. Sometimes he left the handle clean. When a photographer asked DiMaggio to rub the bat with a beef bone for a funny picture, he’d do that too. He did like to sand the handles, carefully and repeatedly, so that over time, as with the bat that was stolen, the handle became smooth, and thinner than the way it arrived. Truly, though, these were not matters of high concern to DiMaggio. A couple years back the Yankees had floated the idea of using bats made of yew. The experiment never materialized but all along DiMaggio had been game. Why not? He could hit a baseball with anything.

Anyway, the boys in Newark would get his bat back—for pride as much as anything. You didn’t steal a bat from Joe DiMaggio and get away with it. If that bat was still in one piece (or even if it wasn’t) Spats and Peanuts would find it and bring it in. But it wasn’t back yet today, with Keeler’s 44-game streak on the table and DiMaggio already 0 for 1.

ITALIAN FLAGS WAVED
in the grandstands and men used handkerchiefs to wipe their foreheads and the backs of their necks. People fanned themselves with their score cards; everybody had one it seemed. By the fifth inning a thick, bluish haze of cigarette smoke had gathered in the sultry air and sat upon the field. The mass of white shirts shimmering beyond the centerfield fence made it difficult for the batter to pick up the ball.
Of all the ballparks in the league this is the hardest place to hit
, Doerr thought. Still, when he looked around at the massive crowd and heard the heckling as the Red Sox came in and out of the dugout—
G’wan home Dominic, this is your big brother’s turf!
and,
You’re nothin’ but a bum, Williams!
—Doerr knew that this was a hell of a good place to be playing a ball game.

The Yanks had a 4–0 lead and DiMaggio, after grounding out to the third baseman Jim Tabor in the third inning, was 0 for 2 as he prepared to hit against the righty reliever Mike Ryba in the fifth. Ryba hadn’t made it to the majors until he was into his 30s. Now he was 38 and had a pair of gold teeth. He could play catcher too, and sometimes did. The heat drained some of the players—Williams said that a day like this made him lose his snap—and at times a torpor came over the crowd. But this was never the case just before, during, or after one of DiMaggio’s at bats. The murmur began each time he stepped onto the on-deck circle, while Henrich was still in the batter’s box. Then as DiMaggio strode to the plate that murmur swelled to a steady and determined clamor that drowned out the announcement of his name. Sometimes on the field a player could hear the first shouts of encouragement (
This is the time, Joe, give it a real knock!
) but then the different voices and the different, clapping hands all merged into one larger noise, static and imprecise, the ocean very loud in a conch shell, until DiMaggio took his stance and the pitcher looked in. Then the noise quieted to a low, reverberant hush, a lingering sound like a phrase of music just played.

Ryba threw DiMaggio two screwballs, both of them for strikes. The fans reacted to each pitch and when Ryba missed with the next three, running the count full, they began to boo, fearing a walk. DiMaggio also feared this and though he was fooled by the next pitch, a slow curveball too far inside, he swung hard, catching the top half of the baseball with the handle of his bat. The ball took a high bounce in front of the plate and landed just 30 feet down the third base line. Tabor got to it, and with DiMaggio running hard toward first, threw hurriedly and wildly over the head of the first baseman Finney. In the press area Daniel needed no time to make his judgment: A hit. Not even a strong and accurate throw could have caught DiMaggio, Daniel decided. But many of the fans—most of them—were not aware of Daniel’s call. Wasn’t it an error? Tabor’s throw was way off and DiMaggio had looked so out of character in his swing, flailing at the ball. That’s not what a streak-extending hit looks like. That’s not what DiMaggio looks like.

He’s pressing
thought Moe Berg, one of the Red Sox coaches. So unusual was it to see DiMaggio like that, to see him lunging and off-balance, that a photograph of the swing was later passed around among players and coaches in other ballparks. His right knee nearly touched the ground. His left foot was too far extended and it was awkwardly turned. “Why, that’s not the way Joe bats,” said Connie Mack in Philadelphia. “I never saw anything like it.”

It was the impression of DiMaggio’s awkwardness, and the poor throw that allowed him to go down to second base, that led so many fans to believe that the Tabor play had been an error and thus that DiMaggio was still hitless when he came to bat in the sixth. Again there was the murmuring and the noise—
It’s as if they’re very close but also far away
, Dominic thought—only this time it was followed by an explosion of happy shouts: DiMaggio lined a 1 and 0 pitch into leftfield for a single. The hit streak, at 43, was now secure and definite in everybody’s mind.

As soon as the Yankees’ 7–2 win was complete—Dom had homered for one of Boston’s runs—Joe went straight off the field and into the locker room. Word that he had continued the streak had long since made its way onto the airwaves. At Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Red Barber gave the DiMaggio news on WOR as he worked the Dodgers game against the Phillies. The Dodgers, at long last, were challenging for the pennant. The team was drawing fans and six Brooklyn players were bound for the upcoming All-Star Game. Still, on these early July days the Dodgers could not get top billing in the newspapers, not even in
The Brooklyn Eagle
. Thought Dodgers catcher Herman Franks,
I suppose that’s as it should be. DiMaggio is all of that and more
.

Joe showered quickly, relishing the cool water and the clean medicinal smell of the red Lifebuoy soap, and came out to sit by his locker. His black cleats had been buffed and aired out for him and a fresh uniform hung on its hook. “Half-cup, Pete,” DiMaggio said, and Sheehy brought it to him. DiMaggio had room to extend his long legs while he drank the coffee and smoked. Over by the trainer’s room sweat-soaked jerseys hung on a drying cabinet and soon Doc Painter came around to all the stalls giving out the salt pills. The heat could not even briefly be ignored. One of the writers mentioned that the Yankees’ home run streak had just ended at 25 games, but none of the players cared.

DiMaggio dressed, pulling his black laces tight through the eyes of his cleats, and then he was down the steep steps out of the clubhouse and across the wooden plank beneath the stands and out into the dugout and then jogging briskly out to centerfield, hearing the cheers of the fans once again.
DiMaggio earned his year’s salary today
, a man said to another.
Look at this crowd
. Although black clouds were now visible near the stadium and the scent of rain was heavy in the air, no one had left for home.

Black Jack Wilson, with his fine fastball, took the mound in the bottom of the first for the Red Sox. The suspense, this time, was brief. In the first inning, on a 1-and-0 count, DiMaggio rapped a single over shortstop Joe Cronin’s head. Just like that. Forty-four. The Yankees dugout became like a beehive and the fans, tossing score books and hats in the air, would not quiet down.
There he is
, Doerr thought, watching Joe stand placidly at first base.
There’s the great Joe DiMaggio
. The Red Sox seemed tired and deflated. In that first inning, the Yankees scored three runs.

Then, slowly, the crowd did begin to thin. Looking across the field Bina could see people getting up and walking out through the aisles. She was not going anywhere, not from these seats so close to the Yankees and to Joe. Maybe Dad would take them to see him after the game. Once, coming in from the outfield an inning or two after getting that record-tying hit, DiMaggio had looked over at the Spatolas and touched his cap.

The score was 9–2 at the end of the fifth and the clouds had become so thick as to greatly darken the field. The fans that remained had surely gotten their money’s worth—their DiMaggio had done it and the Yankees were on the way to a sweep—and so the umpire behind the plate, the former big league knuckleballer Eddie Rommel, called over McCarthy and Cronin and they all agreed that given how bad the light was, it made sense to call the game. With that, the fans spilled onto the field.

Soon after in the Yankees’ happy locker room, amid the handshakes and the kidding around, DiMaggio was asked to pose for some photographs, first leaning against and then holding on his lap a large rectangular chalkboard on which was written in block letters, 44
EQUALS RECORD
. There would be another game against the Red Sox the next afternoon.

B
EFORE OR AFTER
one of his big band’s spritzy, feel-good numbers, Les Brown liked to take the microphone at the head of the bandstand and say a few words. Lately he had been talking every night about DiMaggio. “And look at our Joe D! Two more hits today and now he’s got that batting streak up to 44 games.” One of the drummers would rip off a celebratory roll and a trumpeter would blow a few bright ascending notes and someone in the audience would whistle through his fingers as everyone huzzahed. Brown’s intent was not to deliver the news to people—anyone anxious to know would have heard it by then on an evening sports report with Mel Allen or Stan Lomax or Jimmy Powers—but rather to add to the good feeling and the togetherness in the house. Acknowledging DiMaggio’s streak made people feel like participants, as if they somehow had a stake in what was being achieved.

Brown and his orchestra were finishing a two-week stage show at the Strand Theatre in Manhattan, among the nightspots near the Broadway plays, not far from Toots Shor’s. In a few days they would pack up for a run at the Log Cabin in Armonk. It was a roadside dance hall, much smaller than the Strand and an hour or so north of the city, just past the Kensico Dam. Brown and his band were happy to be on their way, and not simply to get out of the city and into the cooler wilds during this hot summer stretch. This was a real opportunity. On many nights the owners of the Log Cabin invited a radio station to set up at the shows and broadcast the music live. WEAF was there now, meaning that soon the songs of Les Brown and his Band of Renown, as they sometimes called themselves, might be heard in homes for many miles around.

Things were going well for Brown; you didn’t get a gig at the Strand for nothing. The orchestra had been touring successfully for several years and he had recently brought on a dark-haired, apple-faced young singer with a sweet and jaunty voice, Betty Bonney. All that the big band needed was its first real hit.

“What do you think of doing a song about DiMaggio?” Alan Courtney was a disc jockey and sometimes songwriter who liked to hang around with Les and the guys. Courtney had gone so far as to write out some words: “He started baseball’s famous streak that’s got us all aglow/He’s just a man and not a freak, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.”

Brown had Courtney sit down with an arranger, a fellow named Ben Homer. They wanted a melody that was simple and accessible, popcorn to the ears. It should be something you could dance to. Homer noodled on the piano. The refrain, Courtney figured, might go something like this: “Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side.”

The song needed work. More lyrics had to be written, the tune wasn’t nailed down. But there was something there. Maybe they could ham it up a little when they performed the song, put on baseball caps, maybe have Betty or one of the side-singers swing a bat. Maybe Les Brown and his Band of Renown could get this song together and try it up at the Log Cabin, on the radio and all. Maybe, if DiMaggio stayed even half as prominent in the public mind as he was right then, a song called
Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio
could really take off.