Keeler went on to play for the Giants and for the Highlanders too, retiring finally in 1910 at the age of 38 with 2,932 hits, two batting titles, and an unmatched eight seasons of 200 base hits or more. “Records don’t mean much to me,” he said, but of one even Wee Willie was proud. In a span of more than a full season in the 1890s Keeler had come to bat 700 times without striking out.
He would have been great in any era—everyone chewing it over at Yankee Stadium that day agreed. But could you really compare Wee Willie’s time to 1941? Foul balls did not even count as strikes then. Poking with his little club, Keeler would knock foul after foul, wearing a pitcher down in body and in mind until he threw just the pitch that Keeler wanted. What about that? went the argument in the Stadium bleachers. A good hitter could be up forever! No wonder they got wise and changed the rule. That deck was stacked.
It was the first of July, a Tuesday afternoon, and nearly 53,000 fans had jammed into Yankee Stadium for the doubleheader with the Red Sox. The size of the crowd was astonishing, the largest of the year. Not even the Yankees had expected this many fans to show up, not in the middle of the week and certainly not with the heat being what it was. There had been no letup. Temperatures remained in the mid 90s and the air had become even heavier and more stifling. A 54-year-old man in Brooklyn died of prostration. A 39-year-old news reporter from the Journal-American became so overheated that his heart gave out. Many people throughout the area were hospitalized. The papers offered advice about what to do—put a cold compress on the neck; lie in cool bathwater in the middle of the day. Around the city the air-conditioned movie theaters were packed regardless of what they were showing on their screens. On a day like this you did not pay to sit in the open sun at Yankee Stadium, with the body heat of thousands around you, unless something special was going on.
They are here to see me, DiMaggio thought as he jogged out to stand in centerfield. He could hear the people calling out his name. They’re here to see me get a base hit in both games.
In the bottom of the first inning of Game 1 against the second-year lefthander Mickey Harris, DiMaggio fell behind 0 and 2. Then he hit a foul pop-up that was caught by the Boston first baseman Lou Finney.
DiMaggio had still not recovered the stolen bat, a fact that Bina Spatola, sitting in the first row right behind the Yankees dugout and right in front of Jerry Spatola, her dad, was well aware of. She still couldn’t quite believe that she was here at the game, on this day in the heart of the streak. She and Geta were in Joe’s good seats, the same seats where actors like George Raft and Virginia Pine sometimes sat. Or Lou Costello and his wife. Bina had her hair pulled back and she was wearing a sundress. Geta had sunglasses on.
Jerry had been working to get Joe D his bat back. The word on the street had revealed some news, a few suspects. The bat was apparently in Newark somewhere—that much even Bina had heard. An usher had seen a guy leaving Griffith Stadium carrying the bat, but by now it had changed hands who knew how many times. Jerry Spats, with the help of the broad-knuckled Peanuts (and probably, though Bina would never have been able to say for sure, with the help of some of Richie’s guys), was making sure the bat got back to Joe where it belonged. If Dad has to pay somebody for it that’s what he’ll do, Bina thought. He’ll get it back. She liked to put her hands on the top of the warm dugout roof. Home plate was right there in front of her.
In truth losing the bat didn’t matter all that much to DiMaggio. Certainly he was sorry not to have it—he was sorry for anything that forced a change in his habit, and he had liked that bat fine. But DiMaggio was not finicky about bats. When he was first breaking in, tall tales were written of how Joe had grown up in San Francisco hitting with oar handles. Those stories may as well have been true. DiMaggio had been ordering from Louisville Slugger since 1933, and just in the past couple of years the company had sent him 36-inch bats that weighed 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37 ounces. When Fritz Bickel turned a bat for DiMaggio he was as assiduous as ever, working his calipers and gauges, bent intently over the lathe. But Bickel knew that he would never hear about it if he didn’t get the weight exactly right. It wasn’t like turning a bat for Williams. The Splinter demanded the best wood, with a long narrow grain. Eight grains per inch or he might send it back. And you had better not miss on the weight. It was said that Williams could pick through a batch of 10 bats and just by hefting each one know which was two-tenths of an ounce lighter than the rest. DiMaggio? Not quite. Once in a rare while if he thought a bat felt funny he’d take it to the butcher and have him put it on a hanging scale.
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 o
f 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.
Chapter 21
Aglow
BEFORE 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 w
as 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.
THOSE STORM CLOUDS around Yankee Stadium had never dropped any rain and the heat had risen higher still, well into the 90s and on its way to set a high for the year. The beaches at Coney Island and the Rockaways teemed with people seeking relief. Five more had died in New York City and many others had taken ill. The animals at the Bronx Zoo were brought into the shade. The great Lefty Grove, set to pitch for the Red Sox at the Stadium, decided that at his age, 41, he’d better not.
All along it was a strange and unusual day for DiMaggio. Dorothy’s family was in town. He had left the apartment and come to the park early with Gomez. The weather had finally beaten back the crowd—8,682, still a nice midweek showing, had braved the brutal heat—yet the attention upon DiMaggio seemed closer still. Motion picture cameras had been set up in the stands and a man from Life magazine was hovering around eyeing things; he was planning to do an oil painting of DiMaggio, and the Yankee Stadium scene.
Joe had also agreed to meet with a New York Times writer, not one of the regular guys but some big shot from the magazine. That’s why he’d come in early. DiMaggio sat with the writer for a while in the clubhouse before the game and answered his questions about the hitting streak. “Trying to be natural is a bit of a strain,” DiMaggio allowed at one point. Gomez came and sat beside DiMaggio, to make sure everything was going okay and to see if he could help Joe out. He’d crack a joke here and there to make things easier.
56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports Page 24