July 17, 2006
Joltin’ Joe Posted by John Steele Gordon at 01:30 PM EST Sixty-five years ago today, on July 17th, 1941, Joe DiMaggio did not get a hit.
That, you might well think, is not much of a historical event. Even the greatest of ballplayers, after all, go hitless now and then. But that game on July 17 brought to an end a hitting streak that had begun on May 15 and had lasted 56 games. The record still stands, and many think it always will. The closest anyone has come in modern times is Pete Rose, of the Cincinnati Reds, who hit safely in 44 consecutive games in 1978. Wee Willie Keeler (he was only 5 feet 4, probably the shortest man ever to play major-league baseball) also hit safely in 44 consecutive games, way back in 1897. Only 40 players have had hitting streaks that lasted 30 games.
Having taken a day off on July 17, DiMaggio proceeded to hit safely in the next 16 games.
DiMaggio was born to play baseball as Einstein was born to do physics or Mozart to compose music, not only a legendary hitter but an endlessly graceful centerfielder. Despite a relatively short career, only 13 seasons, he has joined the true immortals of the game, those whom everyone knows, even those who don’t know the difference between a sacrifice fly and a stolen base.
By all accounts DiMaggio was not a very pleasant man personally, moody and unclubbable. But there are two stories about him I have always cherished.
A few years before he died, in 1999, when baseball salaries had been going through the roof, a reporter asked DiMaggio what he thought he might be paid if he were playing baseball then. DiMaggio smiled and answered, “I’d just knock on Mr. Steinbrenner’s door and say, ‘Howdy, pardner.’”
The other story concerns his brief, disastrous marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was a film actress, used to working in front of cameras and technicians, not audiences. After their wedding, DiMaggio and Monroe went to Korea to entertain the American troops fighting there against the Chinese communists. There were perhaps 5,000 soldiers on the air-base runways waiting to greet them, and when they stepped out of the plane, the soldiers started cheering. Monroe, startled by the ovation, turned to her husband and said, “I bet you’ve never heard such cheering, Joe.” DiMaggio, who had brought a sold-out Yankee Stadium screaming to its collective feet more times than he could count, just said quietly, “Oh, yes I have.”
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