56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports (44 page)

IN 1969, TO
commemorate the sport’s centennial season, Major League Baseball commissioned a survey of baseball writers and broadcasters to determine by vote the greatest living players at each position, as well as, it followed, the greatest living ballplayer, period. The results were announced on July 21, one day before the All-Star Game, at a banquet at the Sheraton Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. More than 2,200 people attended including 34 of the 37 living baseball Hall of Famers, the widows of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth and all 56 of the players on that year’s All-Star teams. “I have been in baseball for half a century,” said former Pirate Pie Traynor as he accepted the award for greatest living third baseman, “and this is the greatest event I have ever attended.”

Supreme Court Justice Byron White was in the ballroom that night, as were the Secretaries of State, Defense and the Interior. President Richard Nixon sent regrets. He was handling matters relating to Neil Armstrong’s having set foot on the moon a few hours earlier, an occurrence that seemed fitting to baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn as he presided over the banquet. “Baseball,” Kuhn explained without irony, “has had a cosmic effect on people because it has promoted human relations and has understood human dignity.” Col. Frank Borman, who seven months earlier had commanded the first manned trip into lunar orbit aboard
Apollo 8
and who was now sitting on a dais among ballplayers such as Stan Musial and Satchel Paige, joined in the applause.

One by one the players were cited and honored. “Greatest living catcher: Bill Dickey. . . . Greatest living second baseman: Joe Cronin. . . .Greatest living leftfielder: Ted Williams.” Then Willie Mays, 18 years into his career as a centerfielder, was announced as the greatest living
rightfielder
and he bounded to the podium. “Well, what do you know, I played rightfield two or three times in my life,” he said good-naturedly. Then he added, “But it would be wrong if centerfield were reserved for anyone but Joe DiMaggio.”

It was about then, recall people who were on hand that night, that the murmuring began, the attendees realizing that DiMaggio would also bring home the evening’s biggest prize. Soon it was announced: Joe DiMaggio, Greatest Living Centerfielder. Joe DiMaggio, Greatest Living Ballplayer.

The label would immediately, and for the next 30 years, greatly enhance DiMaggio’s already formidable aura. He wore the crown regally, bowing slightly and giving a demure smile when the three words preceded his introduction at public events. There was little, if any, public objection that evening or in the days that followed to the choice of DiMaggio—even though this was an ideal subject for sports argument and there certainly seemed room for debate. One candidate with an argument might have been Mays himself, who at that point in 1969 had hit 596 of the 660 home runs he would end up with, and who played centerfield for the Giants with a panache and brilliance that was unmistakably his own.
¹

There was Cardinals outfielder Stan Musial, a three-time MVP and seven-time batting champion who had ended his career in 1963 with 1,951 RBIs (then the fourth highest total of all time) and a National League record 3,630 hits, nearly 1,500 more than DiMaggio had.

There was Mickey Mantle, who had succeeded DiMaggio magnificently as the Yankees centerfielder and who was one year retired from a career in which he clubbed 536 home runs, won three MVP awards of his own and established himself unquestionably as the Greatest Switch Hitter of All Time, if that had been among the honors bestowed.

And of course there was Ted Williams, who had bettered DiMaggio’s numbers in virtually every offensive category, outhitting him by 19 points, outhomering him by 160 and reaching base more than 48% of the time to DiMaggio’s nearly 40%. Williams had missed almost five full seasons in military service; DiMaggio three. While Williams was inarguably a much, much lesser fielder, he had accumulated his offensive numbers in lineups that were invariably far weaker than those DiMaggio enjoyed.

Yet none of those players ever offered serious complaint about DiMaggio’s having the title and the media did little to stir up controversy. DiMaggio was the Greatest Living Ballplayer until the day he died.

Who deserves the title of greatest living ballplayer today? Mays? Musial? Hank Aaron, with his 755 home runs and 2,297 RBIs, his good speed and good glove? Would anyone make a case for BALCO customer and seven-time MVP Barry Bonds, who, whatever enhancements he may have relied on, still had to actually hit all those home runs, draw all those walks, get all of those 2,935 base hits and play a peerless leftfield? Might some people say that admitted steroid user Alex Rodriguez, sixth on the career home run list at age 35, has a claim? Or Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, the only player aside from Al Simmons in the 1920s and ’30s to drive in more than 100 runs in each of his first 10 seasons? What about Ken Griffey Jr. who emerged through the steroid era untainted (at the time of his retirement), clubbing 630 home runs and, for the first 12 years of his career anyway, playing a Maysian centerfield? Would the outstanding Phillies’ third baseman of the 1970s and ’80s, Mike Schmidt, get votes?

From 1969 to ’99, the last three decades of DiMaggio’s life, there was no doubt who wore the crown. And while he would have been in the running had he never reeled off his hitting streak—a feat, it’s worth noting, that DiMaggio himself called his most remarkable career achievement moments after receiving the Greatest Living Ballplayer award—there is little likelihood that he would have beaten the other candidates. “Everybody thought that Williams would win it,” recalls Allen, who was then working at the
New York Post
and who attended the event. “He just seemed to have the numbers and he was the Washington manager then. Myself, I voted for Musial, for what he did over 20 seasons—just for being that excellent for that long. So DiMaggio winning it was a surprise.

“In some ways it was DiMaggio’s hitting streak versus Williams hitting .406 in 1941 and the voters weighing which one was the greater accomplishment,” Allen continues. “Both players did other important things in their careers, of course, but there is no way that DiMaggio would have been named Greatest Living Ballplayer without that hitting streak. No chance at all.”

UPON RETURNING TO
New York after the end of the streak, DiMaggio was so ardently and unceasingly besieged by autograph-seekers at his apartment that he agreed to set aside some time and hold a special signing session just for the people who lived in the building. A week later he made an afternoon appearance on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village where he would give out 1,000 baseballs and 600 miniature bats. He had made similar appearances in years past, and always to exuberant response, but never had it been anything like it was in 1941. The phenomenon of DiMaggio’s record-shattering streak burned brightly and he was then 12 games into what would be a 16-game streak that he began the day after being stopped in Cleveland. A line began to form on Sullivan Street 10 hours before DiMaggio showed up. Some kids wore T-shirts with Joe’s name and “56” written on them and when the supply of balls and bats ran out many hundreds of people were left empty-handed.

That season and the next, spurred by a suggestion from an editor at the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, some sportswriters advocated that DiMaggio change his uniform number from 5 to 56, a fitting reminder of his accomplishment, they said, and perhaps also a fated figure: during the streak, it was pointed out, he had scored exactly 56 runs. DiMaggio dismissed the suggestion without comment but it became an occasional lark in the clubhouse for a teammate to snatch Joe Gordon’s uniform—number 6—and hang it beside DiMaggio’s number 5. Photographers would try to catch DiMaggio and Gordon standing next to each other during batting practice, DiMaggio on the left, and shoot a picture from behind.

Les Brown’s hit song
Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio
played regularly on the radio not only in 1941 but for years afterward. When DiMaggio was stationed in Hawaii during World War II he would cringe if the song came on, especially when the other soldiers sang along to the twee background chorus:
We dream of Joey with the light brown bat
. In 1970, upon DiMaggio’s turning 56 years old, his friend Reno Barsocchini threw a party for him at Reno’s bar on Post Street in San Francisco. This was a milestone, like anyone else’s 50th or 60th. Gomez came to the party, as did some of the old guys from North Beach. There were drinks on the house and a blonde hooker for the birthday boy. Joe DiMaggio only turns 56 once.

Away from DiMaggio himself, the number became and still remains a hallmark, a point of absolute reference even beyond the game. Not a week goes by without public mention of DiMaggio’s streak, and often several mentions. Predictably, many analysts held up the streak for comparison when, at the 2010 Australian Open, Roger Federer reached the semifinals of a Grand Slam event for a record 23rd consecutive time. In a retrospective piece, the
Los Angeles Times
likened the track star Edwin Moses’s 122-race win streak from 1977 to ’87 to DiMaggio’s hitting streak, just as the
Cape Cod Times
invoked the streak in historical comparison to golfer Walter Hagen’s winning four straight PGA Championships from ’24 through ’27. Bassmaster Mike McLelland’s recent run of finishing in the money at 14 straight Elite Series fishing events was compared to DiMaggio’s streak, as was a club-record 11-game hitting streak run off in the summer of 2009 by infielder Shawn O’Malley of the Class A Charlotte Stone Crabs.

In September of 2010, when Oakland A’s second baseman Mark Ellis put together his own 11-game streak, he announced: “I don’t think I’m going to break Joe DiMaggio’s record.”

Modern observers are quick to refer to the streak in any number of contexts. After the Cleveland Indians traded away a reigning Cy Young Award winner for a second consecutive season (CC Sabathia to the Brewers in 2008, Cliff Lee to the Phillies in ’09), the
Plain Dealer
suggested that this was the Indians “organizational equivalent” of DiMaggio’s streak. When the U.S. luger Erin Hamlin won gold at the world championships to snap a run of 99 straight wins by Germany’s women lugers,
USA Today
compared Hamlin to DiMaggio’s streak-stoppers Al Smith and Jim Bagby Jr. Last year a
New York Times
writer suggested that the graceful demeanor of the star filly Rachel Alexandra as she raced against and defeated so many colts, was reminiscent of DiMaggio’s elegant bearing during his hitting streak. The streak has been leveraged in analogy during debate on the floor of the U.S. Congress and also in courtrooms, including—and this, you can be sure, required some convoluted logic—during the closing arguments of music producer Phil Spector’s 2009 murder trial.

And on it goes. A writer for
The Huffington Post
suggested that when the 2010 movie
Avatar
exceeded the record for box-office sales set by
Titanic
13 years earlier it was akin to a batter shattering DiMaggio’s mark. Not long ago an article appearing on popeater.com declared that ’N Sync’s U.S. record of 2.4 million copies sold in one week (of their 2000 album
No Strings Attached
), “may be as unbreakable” as Joe DiMaggio’s streak of 56 games.

“That number, it is just. . . I guess it’s just so big that it’s hard to fathom,” said the veteran outfielder Adam Dunn, standing in front of his locker before a game. Dunn is a powerful hitter, although with his long swing and his affection for drawing walks, he is not the streaking kind. “In some ways even the name of the man doesn’t mean as much as that number does,” Dunn went on. “If some other guy had done it we would still know it and we would still look at the number like it was from another world. Everyone understands that Joe DiMaggio was a very good hitter—a very good player—but when you put that number next to him, it makes him, well it makes him different. It makes him better.”

Then Dunn said something echoing a notion that had been expressed by other ballplayers on other afternoons, by the Yankees captain Derek Jeter, and by the Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. “That streak,” Dunn said, “pretty much makes it so that DiMaggio won’t ever be forgotten.”

________

¹
Sometime in the 1990s DiMaggio was asked by his friend, the writer and boxing aficionado Bert Sugar, whether he thought he would have made the famous over-the-shoulder catch that Mays pulled off against the Indians’ Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. DiMaggio paused, then replied coyly: “Well, I wouldn’t have lost my hat.”

A
distinguished collection of professional thinkers has
long debated the likelihood and implications of a baseball player’s hitting in 56 consecutive games—Joe DiMaggio in particular, and any big leaguer in general. Scholarly articles have appeared, naturally, in the
Baseball Research Journal
, the flagship publication for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and in the
Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports
. Other papers relating to DiMaggio’s streak were published in
Sociological Forum
, in the
Journal of the American Statistical Association
and in
Chance
, a magazine that explores the applications of statistics in society. General audiences have found probabilistic analysis of the streak in
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books
and other publications.