By now much of the nation was following DiMaggio’s streak on a daily basis through radio updates and newspaper reports. In addition to the fans, DiMaggio’s teammates were acutely aware of what was going on, as evidenced by the drama of this thirty-eighth game. DiMaggio flied out to left in the second, but his fourth inning at bat was more eventful. He hit a sharp grounder which shortstop John Berardino booted for an obvious error. (The twenty-four-year-old Berardino, by the way, would have a forgettable eleven-year career with a handful of baseball teams, but a forty-year career as an actor. Soap fans might remember his thirty-year stint as Dr. Steve Hardy on “General Hospital”.) As DiMaggio crossed first base safely, his Yankee teammates gathered on the top step of the dugout, peering into the pressbox and awaiting the official scorer’s decision. When the error sign was given, the players were furious. DiMaggio was 0 for 2.

After another groundout in the sixth, this time to third, the pressure began to mount, and this is where things got interesting. The Yankees led the Browns 3-1 as they came to bat for what would likely be the final time in the bottom of the eighth inning, and DiMaggio was due up fourth. The first batter, Johnny Sturm, popped up for the first out, but Red Rolfe came up next and managed a walk. With DiMaggio on deck, Tommy Henrich stepped up to the plate but realized that all would be lost if he were to hit into a double play. He had homered earlier to extend the home run streak, but now he was more concerned about DiMaggio’s streak. He called time to consult with Yankee manager Joe McCarthy and suggested that maybe he should lay down a bunt. Even though the score and game situation clearly dictated otherwise, McCarthy gave the okay. Henrich dropped his bunt and advanced Rolfe to second, avoiding the double play and bringing DiMaggio to the plate for one final shot. At this point in the streak, DiMaggio had become more aggressive than usual at the plate, prefering to jump on the first hittable pitch he saw rather than put himself in a two-strike hole or accept a base on balls. In this final at bat, he took the first pitch he saw and roped it past the third baseman and into the left field corner for a double. Both the crowd and his teammates gave him a prolonged ovation. Thirty-eight straight.

As further evidence of the crowd’s focus on DiMaggio, Yankee starting pitcher Marius Russo took a no-hitter into the seventh inning, but no one seemed to notice. The Yankees won the game, 4-1, and remained in a first place tie, but on this day at least, that didn’t seem to matter.

[Photo Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt]

DiMaggio didn’t wait nearly as long as he had the previous day to keep his streak alive. He smashed a two-run homer to left in the fourth inning, extending the team streak to twenty straight games with a homerun and moving his number to thirty-seven in a row. He was now only four games shy of George Sisler’s 41-game streak. The homerun was DiMaggio’s 16th long ball of the year, and it moved him into first place in the American League in that category. Building on this early lead, the Yanks went on to top the Browns, 7-5, and moved into a tie with Cleveland for first place in the American League.

[Photo Credit: Carl Mydans]

The St. Louis Browns, one of the worst teams in baseball, came to Yankee Stadium for a three-game series, and the Yankees took advantage immediately, taking the first game in a walk, 9-1. Red Rolfe homered for the Bombers in the second inning, keeping the homerun streak alive, but DiMaggio made the fans wait a bit longer to see if he could extend his hitting streak. He grounded out in the first, popped out in the third, and then fell victim to the dimensions of the Stadium as he smashed a long fly to left center, only to have it hauled in some 457 feet from the plate for a long out. Finally, in the eighth inning, the Clipper ended the suspense and came through with a clean single over the head of the shortstop. Elsewhere, Ted Williams was “slumping.” He was hitless for the second game in a row, and his average plummeted to .403.

It took a while, but in the sixth inning DiMaggio stepped up to the plate and killed two birds with one stone as he sent a home run to right, bringing his personal hitting streak to thirty-five games and stretching the Yankee home run streak to a major-league record eighteen games in a row. The homer gave his team a brief lead, but the Yanks would need a two-out ninth-inning rally (which included a DiMaggio double) to earn a 5-4 win.

DiMaggio came to bat in the first inning and got jammed, but managed to muscle a single over the head of Detroit first baseman Rudy York, extending his streak to thirty-four straight. That total matched George McQuinn’s streak from 1938; all that remained was Ty Cobb’s 1911 streak of forty games and Sisler’s record forty-one. The other streak continued as well, as Phil Rizzuto (Holy Cow!) knocked one out to left. The Yankees had homered for seventeen games in a row, tying the major league record. None of this was enough to earn a win on this first day of summer, however, as the Tigers posted a 7-2 victory.

The Detroit Tigers came to New York for a three-game series and were greeted rudely by the Bronx Bombers, who crushed Detroit pitching and came away with a 14-4 win. Tommy Henrich hit a high drive into the right field seats in the first inning, keeping the Yankee home run streak alive at sixteen games, and DiMaggio singled immediately after to keep his own string going. He would add three more hits, two singles and a double, to give himself a nice 4 for 5 afternoon. With seven hits in two days, DiMaggio’s season average was up to .354, good enough for fifth in the league but still far behind Ted Williams, who led the galaxy at .420. DiMaggio had now moved to within eight games of Sisler’s mark, still believed to be the all-time record, and he seemed to be paying attention. Much later, DiMaggio would look back at this game as pivotal: “I didn’t get warm about this thing until the 33rd game.” As summer arrived in the Bronx, he’d get warmer still.

DiMaggio avoided any drama by singling in the first inning, bringing the streak to thirty-two games in a row. Apparently relaxed, he went on to collect another single in the fifth and a homerun in the eighth. These efforts, along with a grand slam by Charlie “King Kong” Keller (that’s Keller in the photo above), led to a much needed Yankee victory as they salvaged the finale of the their three-game set with the White Sox, winning 7-2. Thirty-two straight for DiMag, fifteen for Yankee home run hitters, and a home run in three straight games for Keller. Not bad at all.

The Yankees lost their second straight to the White Sox, coming up on the short end of a 3-2 score. DiMaggio managed only a single in three at bats, a blooper over the head of shortstop Luke Appling, but it was enough to keep the streak alive. Charlie Keller’s two-run homerun in the second accounted for all of the Yankee runs and made it fourteen straight games that New York batters had homered.

There were some who believed that DiMaggio’s single hits in games thirty and thirty-one were questionable at best. The ball that hopped off of Appling’s shoulder on the 17th was seen as especially controversial, and various reporters at the time reported that fans at the Stadium stood in silence as they awaited the official scorer’s decision. That official scorer was Dan Daniel, and in October of 2007 David Robeson wrote an article in the Walrus in which he asserted that Daniel’s biased scoring had erroneously given DiMaggio two hits that he didn’t deserve. (The hit in the 31st game glanced off of Appling’s glove, and Robeson argues it should’ve been scored an error as well.) Here’s the crux of Robeson’s argument:

In keeping with the ethics of the era, Dan Daniel, a popular writer who had been covering baseball since 1909, enjoyed all the perks of covering the Yankees. He travelled with and befriended the players, and had his expenses paid for by the club itself. Daniel was, by modern standards, part of the team, as much a PR man as a reporter. He wrote of DiMaggio extensively, championing “The Big Dago” before DiMaggio had even appeared in the bigs, and it was he who authored the quote, “Here is the replacement for Babe Ruth.” The Clipper made for wonderful copy: he was a good-looking bachelor who patrolled the most revered position in all of sports, centre field for the New York Yankees. Daniel also happened to be the most important witness to the streak. The reason? This friend of DiMaggio and quasi-employee of the New York Yankees just happened, unbelievably, to be the Yankees’ official home-game scorer as well — the very arbiter of hits and errors. For games at Yankee Stadium, Daniel, and Daniel alone, decided if DiMaggio was to be credited with a hit.

There is, of course, no video of either play, so we are left only with a box score and a handful of written accounts. One thing is certain, though. There are countless variables in the game of baseball, ranging from an umpire’s view of a pitch in the neighborhood of the outside corner to the distance of one park’s fence as compared to another. An official scorer’s decision is simply one more thing which is beyond a player’s control. DiMaggio had a hit on the 17th, another on the 18th, and lots more after that.

The Chicago White Sox snapped New York’s winning streak at eight with an 8-7 victory, but the two other Yankee streaks continued. Charlie Keller crushed an upper-deck shot in the eighth inning, temporarily tying the score and making it thirteen straight games with Yankee homeruns, but the Sox won it in the ninth. DiMaggio set the all-time Yankee hitting streak record at thirty games, but he needed some luck. He came to the plate in the seventh inning, still without a hit, and smashed a hard ground ball directly to Chicago shortstop Luke Appling. But just before Appling could gather in the grounder and put an end to the streak, the ball took a horrible bad hop, bounding up and hitting Appling in the shoulder. He had no play, and DiMaggio kept streaking. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Much more on this tomorrow…

In the final game of their showdown at the Stadium with the Cleveland Indians, the Yankees grabbed a 6-4 victory and moved to within a game of first place. DiMaggio hit a double to left in the fifth inning, setting a Yankee record by hitting in his twenty-ninth straight game. Second baseman Joe Gordon had homered earlier in the fourth inning, meaning the Yanks had gone deep in twelve straight. The Yankees had now won eight games in a row, and seemed to have finally gotten their season headed in the right direction. It’s interesting that the current Yankees seem to have found their way as well.

The Yankees returned home to face future Hall of Famer Bob Feller and the first place Indians at the Stadium. Feller was working on a streak of his own; since a loss on May 9th, he had won eight straight decisions, bring his season’s record to an impressive 13-3. When DiMaggio came to bat in the third inning, he watched three straight balls before Feller finally had to come into the zone. Hitting away, DiMaggio slashed a drive into the right-center field gap for a double. Also of note, Tommy Henrich homered for the Yanks in the first inning, extending another string. The Yankees had hit homeruns in ten games in a row, a streak that some local papers were beginning to follow.

In one of the Yankees’s few night games of 1941, DiMaggio stretched his streak to twenty-six games with a fourth-inning single against the Chicago White Sox. Later, with the game tied in the top of the tenth, he gave his team the winning run with a solo homerun. The Yankees held on for the 3-2 victory and inched closer to the first place Cleveland Indians.

The Yankees won their fourth in a row on this afternoon at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, topping the White Sox by a score of 8-3. DiMaggio was able to extend his streak only through the benefit of a decision by the official scorer. He hit a hard shot at third baseman Dario Lodigiani in the seventh inning. Lodigiani was handcuffed by the ball and couldn’t make a play; the scorer saw it as a hit, and the streak lived another day. Baseball tradition says that no-hitters and perfect games often need a little help from a great defensive play or a questionable call from an umpire, and we don’t have to think back any farther than Johan Santana’s recent no-no for the Mets. This hit by DiMaggio wasn’t as controversial as Carlos Beltran’s foul ball on the chalk, but in today’s culture it might’ve raised a few eyebrows. Oh, well. Twenty-five straight for Joe D.

The Yankees again took advantage of the St. Louis Browns, this time sweeping both games of the doubleheader by scores of 9-3 and 8-3. DiMaggio hammered the Brown hurlers in one of his more impressive performances of the season. He homered twice in the opener, then went deep again in the nightcap in addition to a double. He drove in a total of seven runs in the two games. What little kid wouldn’t want to be Joe DiMaggio when he grew up? Elsewhere, Ted Williams fell by the wayside in his efforts to keep pace with DiMaggio’s streak. In a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox, Williams was hitless in both games, stopping his streak at twenty-three straight games.

The St. Louis Browns, having recently replaced manager Fred Haney with Luke Sewell, continued their losing ways by giving up five runs in the ninth to lose to the Yankees, 11-7. DiMaggio had three singles on the day, easily keeping his string intact at twenty-two straight. In Chicago, meanwhile, Williams stayed a game ahead of DiMaggio by singling once in four at bats and stretching his streak to twenty-three games. DiMaggio’s streak, of course, was still a week from its midpoint; Teddy Ballgame’s would die the next day.

Perhaps caught in a malaise in the aftermath of Lou Gehrig’s death and funeral, the Yankees dropped their third straight game, falling to Hal Newhouser and the Tigers, 5-4. DiMaggio tripled into the left field corner in the sixth, but that was it for him. His one for five day at the plate saw his average dip to .326, but during the streak he was hitting a bit better, .354 (29 for 82). Ted Williams, meanwhile, was keeping pace. He had now hit in twenty-two straight, and was hitting an even .500 (40 for 80!) during his streak, pushing his season number to a laughable .434.

When they got off the train in Detroit the night before their series against the Tigers, the Yankees were greeted with the stunning news that Lou Gehrig had died earlier in the day. Several of the older players, including DiMaggio, who had played with Gehrig were concerned for his wife and considered skipping the game. DiMaggio decided to play, and his fourth-inning homerun was a small bright spot in a bleak day as the Yankees lost, 4-2, while mourning their former captain.

The Yankees attempted to complete a sweep of their series against the Indians but were faced with the daunting task of hitting against one of the league’s hottest pitchers, Bob Feller. Coming into the game he hadn’t allowed a run in twenty-nine straight innings, and although the Yankees snapped that string in the second, Feller was still able to earn his eleventh win of the young season as the Indians came out on top, 7-5. DiMaggio had a single and a double on this day, and back in his hometown, the San Francisco Chronicle picked up on the streak for the first time. Soon enough, every paper in the country would be tracking DiMaggio’s progress.

Playing their second doubleheader in three days, the Yankees continued their roadtrip by sweeping two games from the Cleveland Indians and moving to within a game and a half of the first place White Sox. DiMaggio had one single in each of the games to bring the streak to eighteen games. His hit in the second game came in his last at bat of the day. At this point, as a new paper each day seemed to pick up on the DiMaggio streak, he certainly must have been aware of what was at stake. He smashed a rocket that glanced off the glove of third baseman Ken Keltner. (The next time the Yankees came to Cleveland, DiMaggio would not be so lucky.) Elsewhere, Ted Williams was also continuing his torrid pace. He collected four hits in a doubleheader against the Tigers, raising his average to an obscene .430. His hitting streak was still intact a game beyond DiMaggio’s at nineteen straight, and he was even hotter than Joe D. Williams’s streak average was an even .500 (36 for 72) while DiMaggio was hitting a comparatively mild .362 (25 for 69).

The Yankees travelled to Boston for a Memorial Day doubleheader, one of six twinbills played during DiMaggio’s streak, another notable difference between baseball then and now. A sell-out crowd of 34,500 crammed into Fenway Park as the Yanks and Sox split the pair. In the opener, things looked bleak for the Yankees and DiMaggio as they came to bat in the top of the ninth trailing 3-1. Still without a hit, DiMaggio came up in the final inning with a runner on first. He singled to keep the rally (and the streak) alive, and New York eventually scored three times to take the one-run lead that would give them a 4-3 victory. In the nightcap, Boston hammered the Yankees, beating them 13-0, but DiMaggio was awarded a hit on a fly ball lofted high into the wind and sun that often plagued Fenway’s right field. Boston’s Pete Fox tried valiantly to make the catch, but the ball fell untouched at his feet, and DiMaggio scampered into second base with a double.

Aside from the two hits, DiMaggio’s day was utterly forgettable. Normally one of the best defensive outfielders in the game, DiMaggio earned his nickname, the Yankee Clipper, with the effortless way in which he sailed across the outfield grass in pursuit of flyballs. On this day, however, he was charged with an error in the opening game and three more in the second, making this perhaps his worst day in the field. None of this, however, affected the streak.