Andruw Jones had the big hit, a three-run homer. He’s got 12 dingers on the year, 432 for his career. Let me ask you this? Is Jones a Hall of Famer? I know that voters don’t tend to like players who have a long fade to black but Jones was a brilliant defensive player for what, ten years, right? I don’t think he’ll get in but I think he’s probably got a case.
Another question. Rank the following players as Hall of Fame candidates: Jones, Jim Edmonds, Johnny Damon and Bernie Williams.
Last night I saw two adorable girls on the bus. They wore orange sandals, had orange flowers in their hair and drank some kind of orange drink. They held their plastic cups with both hands. I kept waiting for one of them to spill their drink. Sticky orange disaster on the BX7. Ah, summer.
At least there’s a breeze out in Cony Island. Swell day for ice cream, huh?
This was finally the night when Joe DiMaggio’s streak would end. The Yankees topped the Indians 4-3, but all eyes were on DiMaggio, as usual. Luck is a huge part of baseball, perhaps larger than any other sport, so it’s no surprise that Joe D. benefitted from more than a few lucky breaks throughout the streak. What’s interesting about DiMaggio’s four at bats on this night is how easily he could’ve extended the streak had he just gotten the slightest bit lucky.
The villains in what could’ve been Game 57, Al Smith, Jim Bagby, and Ken Keltner, have all become famous for their part in DiMaggio’s demise, but other powers seemed to be at play here. In DiMaggio’s first at bat, he smashed a hard hopper down the line towards third. Cleveland third baseman Keltner was playing incredibly deep. DiMaggio remembers that he was actually on the outfield grass. He knew DiMaggio would never bunt (in fact, DiMaggio never bunted during the streak), and he had one of the stronger throwing arms in the league, allowing him to play deeper than most third baseman. As the ball bounded down the line, ticketed for the leftfield corner and a certain double, Keltner somehow was able to backhand the ball behind the bag. His momentum carried him into foul territory, but he turned quickly and unleashed a bullet to first base, denying DiMaggio. (Below that’s DiMaggio and Keltner clowning for the cameras years later.)
Cleveland starter Al Smith then walked DiMaggio in his next at bat, much to the dismay of the Cleveland crowd, which was approaching 70,000. In his third at bat DiMaggio again tested Keltner with another two-hop smash down the line, and the result was the same. Keltner was able to glove the ball and fire to first, getting DiMaggio by a step. In what would be his final plate appearance of the streak, DiMaggio came up in the top of the eighth inning and promptly smashed a grounder to shortstop Lou Boudreau. The ball took a wicked hop, and if luck had been with DiMaggio that night the ball might’ve bounded into left field for a single. Instead, Boudreau fielded the ball easily and started a 6-4-3 double play. The streak was over.
Or was it? Down 4-1, Cleveland mounted a ninth-inning rally to bring the score to 4-3. If they could tie the score and send the game into extra innings, DiMaggio would have another shot, as he was scheduled to hit in the top of the tenth inning. That tying run stood at third base in the person of Larry Rosenthal. There were no outs, so extra innings seemed an almost certainty. Unfortunately for our hero, the Indians weren’t able to cash in that run, and DiMaggio never got that extra at bat. The streak really was over.
The Yankees would continue their hot pace in the games to come, and they would eventually win the pennant easily, leaving Cleveland far out of first place. And what of DiMaggio? Failing to hit in Game 57 apparently cost him a $10,000 deal to endorse Heinz 57, but DiMaggio promptly started another streak the next game. This second streak lasted seventeen games, which means that had DiMaggio managed a hit on the fateful night in Cleveland, he might have put together an seventy-four game streak. With his base on balls in this game, DiMaggio did reach base in seventy-four straight, the second-longest such streak in history, trailing only the 84-game string put together by Ted Williams in 1949.
The 1941 campaign, of course, is memorable not only for DiMaggio’s streak, which lasted a bit more than a third of the season, but also for Williams’s season-long feat of hitting .406, the last time a hitter has topped the .400 barrier. From a numbers point of view, the Splendid Splinter’s .406 is generally felt to be more impressive than the Clipper’s fifty-six, but it wasn’t seen that way at the time. The need for DiMaggio to get a hit in each game captivated the nation in a way that Williams could not, and the simplicity of the Streak surely played a role as well. You didn’t need a calculator to track DiMaggio; either he got a hit or he didn’t.
Also, no one had seen a streak like DiMaggio’s, but older fans certainly remembered other players hitting .400. Even though it had been eleven years since Bill Terry hit .401 in 1930, the barrier had been breeched five other times in the decade before that. People probably felt like DiMaggio’s streak would never be touched, but they never would’ve guessed that seventy-one years later we still wouldn’t have seen another .400 hitter.
Williams finished second to DiMaggio in the MVP voting that year. Even though Williams often spoke about wishing he could hit like DiMaggio, that clearly wasn’t the problem. He was a far better hitter than his Yankee counterpart — in fact, better than any hitter in history aside from Babe Ruth. What Williams needed was some love.
Consider this. Williams hit .406 in 1941, and won the Triple Crown in 1942 and 1947, but finished second in the MVP balloting all three years. DiMaggio’s win in ’41 can be excused because of the Streak, but the other two years are indefensible.
MVP
Runner-Up
1941
DiMaggio (.357/30/125)
Williams (.406/37/120)
1942
Joe Gordon (.322/18/103)
Williams (.356/36/137)
1947
DiMaggio (.315/20/97)
Williams (.343/32/114)
But this is about Joe DiMaggio and his transcendent hitting streak. Certainly he was one of the two or three best players of his era and one of greatest players in baseball history, but the Streak elevates him. Though some have dismissed it as a quirky accomplishment that’s more about defying probability than hitting curve balls, it permanently positioned DiMaggio on center stage. Statistically he wasn’t as good as Mickey Mantle, and not even in the same conversation as Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, but thanks to these two months in the spring and summer of 1941, he sits alongside them in baseball lore.
Bob Ryan retired last night. A veteran newspaperman, he distinguished himself covering basketball. Here’s a book he co-wrote with Terry Pluto that is worth reading; here’s another, about minor league baseball that’s solid, too.
Ryan loves baseball–his final column (subscription required) is about Kevin Youkilis. He’s also one of the few TV talking heads who is funny, smart, but doesn’t take himself too seriously.
As my friend Mark Lamster mentioned in an e-mail tonight, Phil Hughes is working faster than ever these days. It helps when he’s facing a bunch of hackers like the Jays who swing early, often and hard. So the game played like a National League affair and both starting pitchers were gone when the Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the eighth, score tied 2-2.
Alex Rodriguez singled with one out and moved to third on a passed ball while Robinson Cano reached on an infield single. That brought Jason Frasor into the game to face Mark Teixeira. Guy owns Tex and he got ahead of the Yankee first baseman. Then he threw a slider in the dirt. It bounced in the air and Rodriguez charged home. While he was doing that Teixeira hopped in a circle in front of the plate. The ball had clipped him in the right foot sending him to first and Rodriguez back to third.
That started a drama best appreciated by those of us who watch and care about baseball deeply. To a casual sports fan what unfolded might appear dull. Frasor shook off signs, huddled with his catcher, threw a pitch, shook off more signs, and met with his catcher again. No clock, just moments in between the action. Frasor got ahead of Nick Swisher but then it was 2-2 and finally 3-2. After shaking the catcher off again and one last meeting on the mound, Frasor broke off a curve ball–his first of the sequence–and caught Swisher stuck-on-stupid. Nothing he could do but look at the ball cross the plate and listen to the home plate umpire ring him up.
The crowd, which had been making plenty plenty noise, standing and cheering and carrying on, sat down and shut up. They stirred when the next hitter, Raul Ibanez, got ahead 2-1 and rekindled their enthusiasm when Frasor threw a fastball that missed outside for a ball making it 3-1. Fastball count. Frasor wasn’t going to throw another curve ball, was he? No, he threw the heater and Ibanez was sitting on it, waiting, drooling. And he didn’t miss it. Ibanez hadn’t finished his follow through when he, Frasor, everyone in the park, and everyone watching on TV, knew where it was headed.
Over the fence, yes. Into the second deck. A grand slam home run. Ibanez took a few steps and then slowed down. Frasor titled and then rolled his head. The tension was over and so was the game. Sure, Cody Eppley, Rafael Soriano, a bunch of bloop hits and an error made things tense, in an irritating, indigestion kind of way in the ninth, but Soriano caught Cody Rasmus looking at a breaking ball and soon he angrily untucked his jersey as the Yanks won: 6-3.
[Photo Credit: Kris Graves; Al Bello/Getty Images]
The Blue Jays are in town for three. Man, I don’t like those dudes. I’ve been bracing myself to hate them all season. Yanks will play them a lot in the second half so we shall see…
Hughes hasn’t allowed a home run in his past three starts. Only twice before in his career has he had a longer homerless streak as a starter: a five-game streak in 2008 and another one in 2010.
That means he’ll give up three tonight, right?
1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. A-Rod 3B
4. Cano 2B
5. Teixeira 1B
6. Swisher RF
7. Ibanez LF
8. Chavez DH
9. Martin C
In time, of course, this fifty-sixth game would become known as the final game of Joe DiMaggio’s record hitting streak, but at the time it was just another game in a string that might go on forever. Newspapers and radio stations still carried news bulletins on DiMaggio’s at bats, but there was no longer a record to shoot for; the only question was how long he could continue the streak. On this day, the answer was the same as it had been for the previous fifty-five games: one more day.
As the Yankees were hammering Cleveland 10-3 and pushing the Indians five games back of first place, DiMaggio collected the final three hits of his streak. He singled to center in the first inning, reached again on a blooper that fell in front of the center fielder in the third, and stroked a hard double to left in his final at bat of the day.
In an interview after the game, DiMaggio spoke of how the pressure had changed. While chasing Keeler’s record he had felt the importance of each at bat, knowing that any missed opportunity might spell the end of the streak. At this point, however, he still felt pressure to get a hit, but not with every at bat. DiMaggio also had two goals that kept him focused this deep into the streak. First, he spoke of wanting to match the sixty-one game streak he authored while playing for the minor league San Francisco Seals, and second, he wanted to catch Ted Williams for the league batting title. His 3 for 4 afternoon pushed his season average up to .375, twenty points short of Williams at .395.
Tonight, Carl Crawford is expected to be in the line-up for the Red Sox. Kevin Youkilis will be in the house too, starting for the visiting White Sox. And Daniel Bard will still be in the minors. Over at Grantland, Charlie Pierce has a story on Bard’s interesting and horrible season:
There was an ill-starred attempt to make him a starting pitcher, which seemed to get deeply into his head. He started thinking like a starter, not like the blow-them-away reliever he had been. He was nibbling, trying to induce ground balls, the way starters are supposed to do it. As a starter, he was 5-6, with an ERA over five. He had 37 walks as opposed to 34 strikeouts. He hit bottom on June 3 against Toronto, his last start in the major leagues so far this season. He lasted 1⅔ innings, walking six and hitting two dudes besides. He told the Red Sox he thought he should be a reliever again. They sent him down to Pawtucket.
There were whispers that it might be gone from him for good, that whatever it was that had brought him to the majors had abandoned him at 27. The whispers were in Boston, but they carried down Interstate 95 to this small ballpark tucked amid the abandoned factories. Outside Gate A at McCoy Stadium, there is a cyclone fence covered with canvas billboards that display some of the players who have passed through Pawtucket on their way to the big club in Boston. The very last of these, right where the fans entered the park for this weekend’s series with the Buffalo Bisons, is a picture of Daniel Bard, his arm like a whip, throwing the ball very hard, looking very young.
In the clubhouse, as he got ready for whatever fresh hell baseball was going to hand him this day, I told him about that extraordinarily vivid evening in Fenway a few years earlier. “The first time I hit 100 was in college, I think,” he mused. “It was some time ago, and it was kind of a gradual thing. It was cool, like when you hit 90 in high school. It doesn’t really mean anything. It just sounds cool.”
