It began innocently enough on May 15, 1941, at Yankee Stadium. The New York Yankees uncharacteristically lost, 13-1, to the Chicago White Sox. It dropped New York’s record to 14-15, keeping them in fourth place in the American League, 6.5 games behind first-place Cleveland. Likely, only the most ardent surveyors of the next morning’s box scores noticed that Yankees center fielder and cleanup hitter Joe DiMaggio knocked in New York’s only run with a first-inning single off Eddie Smith. None of them knew that the right-handed-hitting DiMaggio would hit safely in the next 55 games and capture the imagination of a nation.
Eighty-five years later, baseball’s best hitters are still chasing Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio. pic.twitter.com/l83tDkTJGh
— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) July 17, 2026
DiMaggio had gone hitless in seven official at-bats in the previous two games. To the media at large, that was a “slump.” Everything the 26-year-old son of Italian immigrants did – or didn’t do – was magnified. After all, he was a larger-than-life star. He was only in his sixth year in the majors, but already he had accumulated two batting titles, a home run title, a Most Valuable Player Award, and five All-Star Game appearances. He was media-savvy beyond his years, conscious of avoiding controversy or saying anything that might make him seem like a jerk, and the media loved to play up that clean-cut aspect of his persona. Even Yankee haters loved him.
The media didn’t start paying attention to the streak until it reached 18 games. (It’s amusing today to attend a major league game and see the scoreboard flash news that so-and-so has a six-game hitting streak. I’ll think, I doubt that somewhere in the afterlife, DiMaggio is worried.) But once the press started to notice the streak, the radio news would cover it even before the latest reports on World War II. Let’s look at it chronologically.
Living Right
May 29 (Game 14 of the streak): Despite the lack of attention the streak was getting at first, there were signs that DiMaggio must have been living right and 1941 was going to be his year. In a rain-shortened game at Griffith Stadium versus the Washington Senators, DiMaggio had only five innings and three plate appearances to work with, but he managed a single in the top of the fourth inning off Steve Sundra. After five innings, the score was 2-2. The game was called and declared a tie, with the stats counting.
May 30 (Games 15 and 16): The Yankees split a Friday afternoon doubleheader with the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. In the first game, DiMaggio didn’t get a hit until the ninth inning. In the second game, Mickey Harris tossed a two-hit shutout for Boston. DiMaggio got one of the hits.
“It Was an Honest Record”
June 8 (Games 23 and 24): DiMaggio had a big day at Sportsman’s Park, where the Yankees played a Sunday afternoon doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns. In Game 1, DiMaggio touched up Browns starter Elden Auker for two home runs. Game 2 was called after seven innings due to rain. DiMaggio homered in that game, too, victimizing Jack Kramer. The Yankees won those games by scores of 9-3 and 8-3.
June 17 (Game 30): Twenty-eight years later, DiMaggio was asked to relive the streak by writer Herb Goren for a story in the Christian Science Monitor. After initially questioning why Goren wanted to discuss it after all these years, DiMaggio said, “But I’ll tell you this: It was an honest record. You saw it. Every base hit was an honest base hit.”
Well, with one possible exception. On this date, the Yankees hosted the White Sox and lost, 8-7. DiMaggio was hitless when he led off the seventh inning against Johnny Rigney. DiMaggio hit what looked like a routine grounder to shortstop Luke Appling. The ball took a bad hop and struck Appling in the shoulder. The shortstop reached for the ball, dropped it, picked it up, and threw it to first base, too late to get DiMaggio. The Yankee Stadium scoreboard at that time didn’t include hits and errors. Everybody turned their heads to the press box and official scorer Dan Daniel. After some hesitation, Daniel held up one finger, signaling it was a hit.
June 20 (Game 33): Now records were starting to fall. The Yankees used first-inning home runs by Tommy Henrich and Charlie Keller to put this game away early, defeating the Detroit Tigers, 14-4, at home. Those home runs gave New York a major-league record 27 homers in 16 games. DiMaggio kept his streak alive by going 4-for-5 with three runs scored, a double, and an RBI. The 33-game streak tied the National League record of Rogers Hornsby in 1922.
Unconventional Strategy
June 26 (Game 38): Managers insist they manage to win games, not to help players achieve stats. Anybody who’s ever watched a manager sit in the dugout and watch his closer walk batter after batter while still eligible for a save knows that’s a load of bunk. Yankees manager Joe McCarthy was well aware of DiMaggio’s hitting streak and used some unconventional strategy to help his center fielder extend it.
At Yankee Stadium, the Browns’ Auker was much better against DiMaggio this time. Going into the bottom of the eighth inning, DiMaggio was hitless in three tries, and the Yankees were ahead, 3-1. Johnny Sturm led off by popping out. Red Rolfe followed by drawing a walk. Henrich strode to the batter’s box with DiMaggio in the on-deck circle. If Henrich hit into a double play, DiMaggio wouldn’t have come to bat. Thus, McCarthy ordered Henrich to lay down a sacrifice bunt. The successful sacrifice moved Rolfe to second base. The Browns didn’t issue an intentional walk to DiMaggio, who made the most of this gift by ripping Auker’s first pitch for an RBI double into left field. The Yankees won, 4-1. The streak continued.
The Revenge of Babich?
June 28 (Game 40): The Yankees were in Shibe Park, where Philadelphia Athletics starter Johnny Babich vowed to end DiMaggio’s streak. Babich was once Yankees property. The Yankees acquired him after the 1938 season to complete an earlier trade they had made with the Boston Bees. In 1939, the Yankees sent him to Double-A Kansas City, where he remained all season despite a 17-6 record and 2.55 ERA. The following October, Babich was claimed by the Athletics in the Rule 5 draft. Babich was apparently bitter about his Yankees experience.
DiMaggio explained to Goren, “He’d had a tryout with us, and the club sent him out. Then in 1940, he caught on with the A’s, and he beat us five times. It cost us the pennant. Well, he was still sore, and he seemed to think that if he stopped me, even if he walked me four times, he’d be rubbing it in. [That actually would have kept the streak alive.] Well, the first time, the first three pitches were high and wide. They gave me the hit sign, but I couldn’t reach that fourth pitch with a ten-foot pole. [DiMaggio popped it up to the shortstop.] The second time, ball one, ball two, ball three. But now he gave me one I could get to, and I knocked him on the seat of his pants.” The drive went for a double to center field. New York won, 7-4.
Friends from New Jersey
June 29 (Games 41 and 42): Back at Griffith Stadium, DiMaggio tied and then passed George Sisler on the all-time list by hitting in 41 and 42 consecutive games. He did it by rapping a sixth-inning double off Dutch Leonard in Game 1 and hitting a seventh-inning single off Red Anderson in Game 2. Umpire John Quinn, who worked behind the plate in the first game, marveled at DiMaggio’s hot hitting. “Dutch had as much stuff as I’ve ever seen him have,” he told a special wire service reporter. “He was pitching out of a background of white shirts, too. That pitch he made to DiMag in the sixth was a perfect one. But DiMag hit.” New York took both games from the Senators by scores of 9-4 and 7-5. But before the first game, a crisis emerged.
Henrich noticed DiMaggio’s bat was missing from the bat rack. DiMaggio had other bats, of course. But this was his “gamer,” the one he worked on for the game. He dipped that bat in olive oil (a revelation that surely has my Italian ancestors rolling in their graves), treated it with resin, applied a small flame, and after it dried, sanded it down. Then an usher informed DiMaggio that he had seen somebody poking around the Yankees’ dugout during batting practice. DiMaggio used Henrich’s bat to pass Sisler.
Meanwhile, there were television and radio pleas to return the bat. DiMaggio put some friends from New Jersey on the caper. When an Italian puts his “friends from Jersey” to work in the 1940s, that’s not going to end well for somebody. (I’m Italian, and the joke is meant affectionately. Don’t bombard the site with complaints. I might have some “friends in Jersey” who know where you live.)
July 5 (Game 46): DiMaggio kept hitting when the Yankees returned home. Game 45 broke the all-time record of 44 consecutive games with a hit by “Wee Willie” Keeler. Then DiMaggio received a phone call in the Yankees’ clubhouse. The unidentified man said he was from Newark, and he knew where DiMaggio’s bat was. According to Rick Talley of The Chicago Tribune, the caller said, “One of our guys pulled it from the rack for a souvenir. He didn’t mean no harm. He loves you, Joe.” DiMaggio’s reply was succinct. “I want it back.” It arrived at Yankee Stadium in time for the game. In the bottom of the first inning, DiMaggio lined the first pitch from Athletics starter Phil Marchildon into the left field bullpen, where it was gloved by bullpen catcher Johnny Schulte, for a two-run homer. The Yankees won, 10-5.
Getting Monotonous?
July 16 (Game 56): At League Park, DiMaggio went 3-for-4 with three runs scored as the Yankees routed Cleveland, 10-3, in just two hours and 17 minutes. He was now hitting .375/.451/.659. But he broke the “gamer” bat he had desperately wanted back. The bat he used in the interim was auctioned off for a San Francisco charity. He’d have to continue the streak with his third-favorite bat.
Meanwhile, there was one person who wasn’t a fan. Under the headline “DiMaggio’s Streak Getting Almost ‘Monotonous,’” United Press staff writer Jack Guenther wrote, “I just can’t wait to nominate the hitting streak of Joe DiMaggio as the biggest bore of 1941.” He mentioned that Joe Wilhoit of the 1919 Wichita Jobbers in the Western League had the record for the longest hitting streak in organized baseball history at 61. Guenther was apparently unaware that at age 18, DiMaggio had a 61-game hitting streak for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, or that Wilhoit’s streak actually reached 67 games. He further wrote that Joe Bush of Peoria Teachers’ College once hit safely in 78 straight games, as though that were comparable to DiMaggio’s achievement. Guenther concluded, “As I see it, Joe DiMaggio is paid $30,000 for six months [sic] work, and the work consists of hitting a baseball. He gets an average of four chances, or three at least, to get that hit. All he must do is bat .333 to earn his pay. [Is that all?] When he does it, he is a hero. All of which leads to the conclusion that it is not so much that the streak is fabulous but that the fans think it is fabulous that keeps the wheels turning.”
I don’t claim to be Ernest Hemingway. Still, if I could go back in time, I’d remind Guenther of the number one rule for any writer: “Write what you know.”
Stopped
July 17: DiMaggio and his best friend on the Yankees, Lefty Gomez, stepped into William Kaval’s cab in front of the Cleveland hotel where the team was staying. On the way to the ballpark, Kaval told DiMaggio that he had a feeling that the streak would end tonight. Gomez was reportedly upset. “[DiMaggio] smiled and said, ‘Well, if I don’t, I just don’t,’” Kaval relayed to Russell Schneider of The Cleveland Plain Dealer years later. “But he wasn’t mad. In fact, he was just as pleasant when he got out as when he got in my cab. Joe gave me a real good tip, too, and if Gomez was mad, like DiMag claimed he was, he didn’t say anything to me.”
The Cleveland publicity department heavily promoted DiMaggio’s appearance that night. That wasn’t unusual; it’s what all rival teams had been doing during the streak. League Park was packed with 67,468 onlookers, the largest crowd ever to witness a major league night game. Cleveland started veteran left-hander Al Smith against Gomez. In the top of the first inning, DiMaggio hit a low, outside curveball on a smash down the third base line. Charles P. McMahon of the UP said it looked like a “blurred streak.” However, third baseman Ken Keltner back-handed it brilliantly and fired to first base to retire DiMaggio. DiMaggio drew a walk in the fourth inning and tried Keltner again in the seventh when he swung at a waist-high curve. Another bullet down the third base line. Another back-handed stab by Keltner, who retired DiMaggio.
DiMaggio had another shot in the eighth, with one out, the bases full, and his team ahead, 4-1. Cleveland manager Roger Peckinpaugh went to the bullpen for right-hander Jim Bagby, who McMahon described as “a tall youth, who has never been any ‘great shakes.’” DiMaggio struck a 2-1 fastball at shortstop Lou Boudreau, who started an inning-ending double play. McMahon wrote that DiMaggio’s grounder was “pathetically weak.” Reporter Jack Smith said it was “an easy grounder.” In subsequent retellings, DiMaggio and Boudreau described it as a hard-hit ball that took a bad hop. DiMaggio said Boudreau smothered it with his chest. Boudreau said he caught it with his bare throwing hand. He told Goren, “The hand was stinging for an hour after the game was over.” Boudreau’s account seems the most believable. Perhaps McMahon and Smith thought the game was as easy as Guenther thought it was.
In the bottom of the ninth, the first two Cleveland batters reached base against Gomez, and McCarthy went to his relief ace, Johnny Murphy. Murphy promptly gave up a triple to Larry Rosenthal. With the score now 4-3 and a man on third base with no outs, there seemed to be a good chance that Cleveland would tie the game and give DiMaggio another shot to extend his streak. But the home club couldn’t even do that right. Murphy retired the next three batters, stranding Rosenthal. The streak was over. Blame the broken bat, blame the cab driver’s jinx, or give credit to the Cleveland players. But it was over.
DiMaggio tended to tell reporters what they wanted to hear, even if it contradicted what he told the last one. He told some that he was glad the pressure was off, and he told others that he wanted the streak to continue. To McMahon, he was gracious. “The streak doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “That seven-game lead we took over [Cleveland] means more. That Keltner certainly robbed me of at least one hit. That boy can field them.” Meanwhile, in the rival clubhouse, Keltner got a surprise visitor: a special policeman. “The cop told me there were some guys outside gunning for me,” he told Goren. (Friends from Jersey?) “He said I’d better get a police escort to the parking lot, just to be on the safe side.”
Aftermath
During the streak, DiMaggio hit .408/.463/.717, with 16 doubles, four triples, 15 home runs, and 55 RBI, to go with an absolutely stunning 4.074 WPA. He struck out only five times. More importantly, the Yankees went 41-13-2 during that period and were in first place by six games over Cleveland. That’s where they finished, and they went on to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series. DiMaggio hit .357/.440/.643 for the season, with 30 home runs and a major league-leading 125 RBI, and was named the AL MVP after the season, despite Ted Williams hitting .406/.553/.735. Supposedly, Williams got on the wrong side of a vindictive voter, who vowed not to vote for him.
There was a rumor that Keltner and his pals cost DiMaggio a lucrative sponsorship deal with Heinz 57. The number 56 would remain important in Yankees lore. DiMaggio’s successor Mickey Mantle had his greatest year in ’56, when he hit .353/.464/.705, 52 HR, and 130 RBI, winning the Triple Crown and the AL MVP Award. Jim Bouton, whose Ball Four forever changed what a baseball book would be, wore number 56 for the Yankees. After the streak, a hard thinker with the Yankees suggested that DiMaggio change his number to 56. He wouldn’t do it. It would seem too much like bragging.
