Joe DiMaggio and His 56 Game Hitting Streak

When I was growing up, there were two numbers that, whenever you saw them, you would automatically connect them to baseball; 714, which was Babe Ruth’s home run total, and 56, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak. One has long since fallen by the wayside, as 714 has been supplanted by Hank Aaron’s 755, which Barry Bonds now assails. But Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak remains intact to this day, and most likely will still the standard long after I am gone. It is one of the most revered and unbreakable records in all of sports, a benchmark that has been mildly approached only once. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak of 1941 has withstood the test of time because it is a baseball accomplishment of Herculean proportions.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak began on May 15th, 1941, against the Chicago White Sox. The “Yankee Clipper” went 1 for 4 with an RBI, an innocuous start to a feat that would capture the entire nation’s attention. The next day, Joe DiMaggio tripled and homered; now he officially had a hitting streak. In his prime at the age of 26, Joe DiMaggio would hit .357 in 1941, with 30 homers and 125 RBI. Although Ted Williams would hit .406, it was Joe DiMaggio who would be named the American League’s Most Valuable Player at year’s end, mostly because of his 56 game hitting streak and how it helped to propel New York to the pennant over Boston.

The fact that it was so difficult to strike out Joe DiMaggio was one of the reasons he was able to put together his 56 game hitting streak. That season, in 541 official at-bats, Joe DiMaggio struck out a total of 13 times! For his career, which spanned thirteen seasons, Joe DiMaggio fanned just 369 times. That alone is one of the most remarkable statistics in all of sports.

The 56 game hitting streak finally would end when the Indians’ third baseman, Ken Keltner, made two great back-handed stops on balls Joe DiMaggio hit down the line in front of over 67,000 fans in Cleveland on July 17th. In the eighth inning, Joe DiMaggio came up with one last chance to extend the streak, but hit into a routine double play. On the way to that contest, the cab driver that drove Joe DiMaggio to the stadium told him that he thought the 56 game hitting streak would end that night. Joe DiMaggio would run into this individual again in 1971. The man told him who he was and how he had felt so terrible, thinking that he had jinxed the streak. Joe DiMaggio remembered, “Now this is over thirty years later and the guy said he was that cab driver. He apologized and he was serious. I felt awful. He might have been spending his whole life thinking he had jinxed me, but I told him he hadn’t. My number was up.”

After the streak ended, Joe DiMaggio began a new one, modest compared to the 56 game hitting streak but still a decent one. He hit in another 16 straight, meaning he had gotten a hit in 72 out of 73 games. During his 56 game hitting streak, Joe DiMaggio had hit .408, with 15 homers and 55 runs batted in. Only Pete Rose has ever made a serious run at the 56 game hitting streak. “Charlie Hustle” batted safely in 44 games in 1978 before going hitless. This still left him a dozen games behind the record.

Incredibly, the 56 game hitting streak was not the longest Joe DiMaggio had ever enjoyed playing professionally; he had hit in 61 straight games in the minor leagues. Acclaimed as the greatest all-around player that ever lived, Joe DiMaggio would go on in 1941 to garner his second of three MVP Awards and win his fifth of nine World Series titles. He knocked in over 100 runs in nine of his thirteen seasons and hit .325 for his career. His manager for his first eight years in pinstripes, Joe McCarthy, was explaining to a newsman once why Joe DiMaggio was so special. “He’s the most complete ball player I’ve ever seen. He can hit, hit for power, run, throw, and play the outfield.” The reporter then asked the New York skipper if Joe DiMaggio could also bunt. McCarthy looked at the man and replied, “I’ll never know.”