50 Years Ago AND Still a Big Hit : DiMaggio, Williams Made 1941 Season Unforgettable

It was a year of heroes and heroic deeds, on several levels: Winston Churchill and Britain continued to stand up to Hitler and his Blitzkrieg. Gary Cooper took home an Oscar for portraying “Sergeant York.” Eddie Arcaro and Whirlaway swept horse racing’s Triple Crown. Heavyweight champion Joe Louis defended his title seven times--six by June.

And major league baseball produced a rousing season during which Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams made a lasting imprint on the record books.

Some old-timers say that 1941, baseball’s last full-throttle year before the United States joined World War II and most of its stars went into the military, was a season unmatched since. And when the game got back in full swing after the war, in 1946, it had new horizons. The color barrier was soon breached, the game pushed West, and television eventually changed the perception of baseball and its players.

“I think it was baseball’s best-played era, the years just before World War II,” Williams said in his autobiography, “My Turn at Bat.”

Williams has good reason to look back fondly on 1941. He finished the season with a .406 batting average--the first .400 hitter in 11 years and the last. The Boston Red Sox slugger also capped one of the most exciting All-Star games with a ninth-inning, game-winning home run--his most memorable highlight, he said recently from his Florida home, more exciting than hitting .400.

Indeed, Williams’ .400 year was overshadowed by DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, which continues to stand as perhaps baseball’s most unassailable record. With the New York Yankees running away from the Red Sox in the American League pennant race, DiMaggio beat out Williams as the most valuable player.

“I believe there isn’t a record in the books that will be tougher to break than Joe’s,” Williams said. “It may be the greatest batting achievement of all.”

It was a season in which a relative unknown, Washington Senator infielder Cecil Travis, batted .359--higher than DiMaggio--and led the majors with 218 hits, and another lesser-known player, Cleveland Indian outfielder Jeff Heath, got more total bases than Williams while hitting .340.

In the National League, a team known for second-division finishes, the Brooklyn Dodgers, won its first pennant in decades, then lost a World Series game on the most momentous passed ball in baseball history.

Symbolic of passing the baton, the man who would become baseball’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was born on April 14, and the Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig, battled amyotrophic lateral sclerosis until dying on June 2.

MAKING IT 56 IN A ROW

Joe DiMaggio, one of America’s most famous athletes, spent the winter of 1940-41 his usual way--in a bitter contract dispute with the penurious Yankees.

For DiMaggio, it was old hat. Declared the game’s best player virtually from the time he left his native San Francisco and first took the field for New York in 1936, DiMaggio expected to be paid accordingly, especially as the star of a team he had led to four World Series titles in his first five years.

DiMaggio had especially impressive power numbers, considering that he hit from the right side in a Yankee Stadium built to accommodate left-handed hitters Babe Ruth and Gehrig. A broad-shouldered 6 feet 2 and 198 pounds, DiMaggio could also run and throw with the best, and purists appreciated his elegant style.

“DiMaggio even looks good striking out,” Williams once noted.

In 1938--after two full seasons--DiMaggio held out for what was then the astounding salary of $40,000. In an era when players were bound to their teams by the reserve clause, tight-fisted Yankee General Manager Ed Barrow was dumbfounded. He sent a telegram to DiMaggio in San Francisco pointing out that not even the great Gehrig made $40,000.

DiMaggio’s return message: “Then Mr. Gehrig is badly underpaid.”

The Yankees hung DiMaggio out in the media as a spoiled, greedy ingrate. With the country still trying to pull out of the Depression, that image didn’t sit well with the average fan, and DiMaggio settled for the Yankees’ offer of $25,000--minus a fine for holding out.

In 1939, DiMaggio had led the league in batting with a career-high .381. In 1940, he again had led the league, hitting .352, but the Yankees had failed to win the pennant for the first time in DiMaggio’s tenure. In Barrow’s view, a 30-point drop and no World Series represented an off-year, and going into the ’41 season, DiMaggio was offered a pay cut.

The Yankee Clipper finally signed for $35,000--a raise of $2,500--and reported on March 7 as the second-highest-paid player in the game, behind the reported salary of $42,000 earned by Detroit Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg.

Once the season opened, DiMaggio went on a tear, hitting .528 through the first eight games. But starting in late April, he slipped into a seven-for-43 tailspin.

His streak began modestly on May 15, when he got a single in four at-bats against the Chicago White Sox. Not until more than two months later was he held hitless in a game. “I have said many times that you have to be lucky to keep a hitting streak going,” DiMaggio said in the recently published “DiMaggio Albums.”

DiMaggio was no stranger to hitting streaks. As an 18-year-old Pacific Coast League phenom in 1933, he had hit in 61 consecutive games, a streak that caused a stir even in Eastern newspapers, which often misspelled his name, “DeMaggio.”

He gives Yankee Manager Joe McCarthy credit for helping keep the streak alive.

“He never gave me the ‘take’ sign once,” DiMaggio recalled. “In fact, he even gave me the hit sign where the count was three balls and no strikes, something a manager would normally never do.”

The hits began to fall every day. When the streak hit 30 games--on a bad-hop single that White Sox infielder Luke Appling bobbled--he broke the Yankee team record, and reporters began scouring the record books. It was discovered that George Sisler had set the American League record of 41 in 1922.

The streak reached 40 on June 28, and fans streamed into Washington from several states to watch DiMaggio try to break the league record in a doubleheader against the Senators on June 29. Frenzied fans lined up outside Griffith Stadium to get a glimpse of DiMaggio.

A newspaper report the next day noted: “When he stepped on the field, they swarmed from the stands, pulling and tugging at him. All through batting practice, kids and oldsters alike were hopping from their seats and flocking around the batting cage.”

One fan went so far as to steal DiMaggio’s favorite bat, which upset the normally unflappable hitter. He had used the same bat through the entire streak.

“I treasured that bat,” DiMaggio said. “That was my bread-and-butter bat.”

An appeal was made through the media and a few days later, the culprit, back home in Newark, N.J., turned in the bat and apologized.

Using his No. 2 bat, DiMaggio faced one of the league’s toughest pitchers, the Senators’ Dutch Leonard, but managed a hard single in the sixth inning of the opener. In the nightcap, he singled in the seventh inning. For the day, DiMaggio was two for nine, but a record-setter anyway. And he wasn’t about to stop there.

“How about making it 50, Joe?” catcher Bill Dickey yelled across the clubhouse.

“Fifty, nothing,” McCarthy yelled back. “Joe’s liable to stretch it indefinitely.”

Among those with special interest in the streak was DiMaggio’s kid brother, Dominic, a standout center fielder for Boston.

Dom was on hand when the Yankees returned to Yankee Stadium, where 52,832 turned out to see DiMaggio go three for seven in a doubleheader against the Red Sox, tying Wee Willie Keeler’s major league-record 44-game streak that had stood since 1897.

By the All-Star break, DiMaggio was, in the words of one news account, “the game’s biggest draw since Babe Ruth.”

With DiMaggio coming to town, teams would post ads such as: “See Sensational Joe DiMaggio seek to hit safely in his 49th consecutive game.”

With Americans tuning in their radios for war news, broadcasts often began: “Hitler continues to bomb London. Details in a minute. Meanwhile, Joe DiMaggio got another hit today and extended his streak . . . “

DiMaggio celebrated the 50-game plateau with three singles and a home run against the St. Louis Browns. He got a single and a double the next day, then went seven for 15 in a four-game series in Chicago, and the streak continued on into Cleveland, where he reached 56 with a three-for-four performance in the series opener.

A crowd of 67,468--a night attendance record--filled Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium on July 17 and saw a pitching duel between southpaws Lefty Grove of New York and Al Smith of the Indians.

In his first at-bat, DiMaggio lashed a shot down the third base line that was snagged by Ken Keltner, who threw across the diamond for the out. Smith walked DiMaggio his next time up, and his third at-bat produced an instant replay of his first, with Keltner making another diving stop.

The Yankees knocked out Smith in the eighth inning, and DiMaggio came to bat with the bases loaded and one out against right-handed reliever Jim Bagby. DiMaggio hit a hard grounder toward the middle. The ball took a bad hop, but young shortstop Lou Boudreau made a bare-handed stop and turned it into a double play. The Yankees won, 4-3, but the streak was over.

“When my streak came to an end, it was again a matter of luck--this time bad luck,” DiMaggio said. “Al Smith and Jim Bagby got the credit, but it was really Keltner who deserved it. I hit the ball hard, but . . . Keltner was there twice to turn hits into outs.”

During the streak, DiMaggio got 91 hits, 15 of them home runs, drove in 55 runs and batted .408. In 34 of the games, he got one hit.

In late August, DiMaggio’s teammates held a surprise party for him in their Washington hotel. When pitcher Lefty Gomez coaxed DiMaggio to stop by a teammate’s room, the Yankees burst into song, then presented him with an engraved sterling silver humidor. Teammates saw DiMaggio overcome by emotion for one of the few times in his career. The humidor remains his favorite piece of memorabilia.

“When Gomez turned the handle of that door, he paved the way for the greatest thrill I’ve ever had in baseball,” DiMaggio said later.

He finished the season with a .357 average, 30 homers and 125 RBIs. In 541 at-bats, he struck out 13 times. The Yankees went on to win the World Series, defeating the Dodgers in five games.

That winter, Yankee management offered DiMaggio a $2,500 raise. He held out.

HITTING .400

As impressive as DiMaggio’s streak was, consider that Ted Williams hit .412 during the same period .

Williams knew he was born to hit. He was 22 when the season opened, filling out and hitting his prime.

“To hit .400, you have to be an outstanding hitter having everything go just right,” Williams said. “And in my case, the hitter was a guy who lived to hit, who worked at it so hard he matured at the bat at a time when he was near his peak physically. The peaks met.”

The lanky Williams burst on the scene in 1939, as brash as he was talented. The left-handed, pull-hitting Splinter--a nickname derived from his spare 6-foot-4 frame, led the American League with 145 runs batted in and hit 31 home runs as a rookie, and demonstrated his great eye at the plate, walking 107 times.

In 1940, Williams raised his average from .327 to .344, but his power fell off, and the temperamental slugger, already beginning a career-long stormy relationship with Boston reporters, considered it a relatively disappointing season.

Instead of spending the winter in hometown San Diego, he went to Minneapolis, where he had played in the minor leagues and had a girlfriend.

He showed up for 1941 spring training in an upbeat mood--his salary had been doubled to $20,000--and quickly injured his ankle sliding in an exhibition game. That, he said, turned out to be a blessing on his way to batting .400. Williams was a notorious slow starter who didn’t enjoy hitting in cold weather. In 1941, he opened the season on the bench, taking lots of extra batting practice and pinch-hitting.

“When I finally got back in the lineup, the weather had turned warm, and I mean I got off to a flying start,” Williams said.

His average crested at .436 in June, and there was talk of his challenging the season record of .438 set in 1894 by Hugh Duffy, who was, coincidentally, the Red Sox hitting coach.

By the All-Star break July 1, Williams was batting .405, and he didn’t slow down in the ninth renewal of All-Star competition, held that year in Detroit’s Briggs Stadium. Though DiMaggio was the marquee name, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Arky Vaughn was the game’s early star, hitting two home runs as the National League took a 5-3 lead into the ninth.

With one out, Keltner singled, Joe Gordon singled, and Travis walked, loading the bases for DiMaggio. He hit what should have been a game-ending double-play ball to shortstop, but a hard slide by Gordon at second gave Williams a chance to bat against Claude Passeau.

Williams had doubled in a run earlier. Now he worked the count to 2 and 1, then swung hard at a fastball.

“I was afraid I hadn’t got enough of the bat on the ball but, gee, it just kept going, up, up into the right-field stands,” he recalled years later.

Williams’ blast gave the American League a 7-5 victory, and as he saw it clear the fence, he began hopping and skipping around the bases. When he reached home, such contemporaries as DiMaggio and Bob Feller carried him off on their shoulders.

“It was the kind of thing a kid dreams about . . . when he’s playing those little playground games we used to play in San Diego,” Williams said. “It remains to this day the most thrilling hit of my life.”

Williams was hitting .402 in late August and increased his average to .413 in mid-September before going into one of his few slumps.

“Everyone was interested as we got into September,” he recalled. “We’d go into Detroit, where Harry Heilmann (who had hit .403 in 1923) was broadcasting the games, and Harry would take me aside and say, ‘Now forget about that short fence, just . . . get those base hits.’ ”

In the last two weeks of the season, Williams lost almost a point a day and was just a tad under .400 before the final weekend series against the Athletics in Philadelphia’s old Shibe Park. Saturday’s game was rained out, and Williams was at .39955 going into Sunday’s doubleheader. The night before, Manager Joe Cronin had given him the option of sitting out the game--the average would be rounded off to .400--but Williams refused.

Before the game Sunday, A’s catcher Frankie Hayes delivered a message from Manager Connie Mack: “Ted, Mr. Mack told us if we let up on you, he’ll run us out of baseball. I wish you all the luck in the world, but we’re not giving you a damn thing.”

They didn’t have to. Williams lined a single off Dick Fowler, then homered his next time up. He singled in his next two at-bats against Porter Vaughn. In the second game, he got two more hits, including a ringing double off the loudspeaker in right. He went six for eight that day.

Williams raised his average to a final .406. In the intervening 50 years, only he, Rod Carew and George Brett have come close again. In 1957 a graying, heavyset 39-year-old Williams batted .388, a mark matched by Carew in 1977. Brett hit .390 in 1980.

Williams also finished the 1941 season with an astounding walk-to-strikeout ratio of 145-27, recording an all-time on-base average of .551. He led the league with 37 home runs, drove in 120 runs, and had a Ruthian slugging average of .735. “I’ve always felt pretty much the same about (hitting .400),” he said. “Really, it has only gotten bigger the last two, three years as it approached 50 years. I never thought I would (hit .400) again. I never felt like it was that important,”

Unlike DiMaggio, Williams had a warm relationship with team management. Paternal Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey doubled his salary for 1942, to $40,000.

“The $40,000, that seemed like, boy , that was a lot,” Williams said. “That excited me. It was easier playing with Mr. Yawkey (than with the Yankees), that’s for sure.”

THE YANKEES AND DODGERS

In a 154-game season, the Yankees won 101 games, winning the pennant by 17 games. In the National League, the Dodgers went 100-54 and held off the St. Louis Cardinals by 2 1/2 games.

In winning their first pennant in 21 years, the Dodgers were building the team that would dominate the league after the war. Under Manager Leo Durocher, switch-hitting outfielder Pete Reiser led the league in batting at .343 in his first full season. First baseman Dolph Camilli was the league’s MVP, leading the league with 34 home runs and 120 RBIs. Pitchers Kirby Higbe and Whit Wyatt each recorded 22 victories, and Pee Wee Reese played his first full season at shortstop.

The Yankees, with their all-star outfield of DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich and Charlie Keller, and such standouts as Dickey and shortstop Phil Rizzuto, were heavy favorites to win the World Series, but the games were competitive. Yankee right-hander Red Ruffing won the opener at Yankee Stadium, 3-2, and Wyatt bested Spud Chandler the next day by the same score.

The scene shifted to Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, where the Yankees won another tight game, 2-1.

DiMaggio wrote: “There was always a saying around New York that anything could happen in Brooklyn.” In Game 4, it did.

Keller singled in a run against Higbe in the first, and the Yankees added two more in the fourth, one on a passed ball that got by usually reliable catcher Mickey Owen.

The Dodgers scored in the bottom of the fourth on a two-run pinch-single by Jimmy Wasdell. They took a 4-3 lead in the fifth as Dixie Walker doubled and Reiser homered, and reliever Hugh Casey, who had come into the game in that inning, protected the lead into the ninth.

The first two batters were retired on ground-outs, and Casey got two strikes on Henrich to pull the Dodgers within one pitch of tying the Series at two games apiece. The count went to three and two, then Casey threw a breaking pitch that fooled Henrich, who swung and missed.

It also fooled Owen. The ball skipped past the catcher all the way to the backstop. Henrich froze momentarily, still trying to hold up his swing, realized the third strike had gotten away and reached first base easily.

In “Baseball Between the Lines,” Henrich recalled: “It looked like a fastball. Then when it broke, it broke so sharply that it was out of the strike zone. So I tried to hold up but I wasn’t able to. There’s that famous picture you see all the time--that’s the end of my swing. I never finished that swing; I was trying to hold up. . . . There’s another picture--I’m looking for that ball. And I saw that little white jack rabbit bouncing and I said, ‘Let’s go.’ It rolled all the way to the fence. I could have walked down to first.”

Given a second life, the Yankees jumped on Casey. DiMaggio singled, Keller doubled in both runners, Dickey walked, and second baseman Gordon doubled in two more. The Yankees won, 7-4, and took a commanding lead in the Series, three games to one.

The Series returned to Yankee Stadium, where New York’s 3-1 clincher seemed anticlimactic--the first of many crushing disappointments the Dodgers would endure at the hands of the Yankees in World Series play before finally beating them in 1955.

Owen, who hit .255 over a 13-year career that stretched to 1954 and caught nearly 1,200 major league games, is forever remembered for that one play. Ironically, he still holds the National League record for most chances without an error--set that season.

Owen, who recently turned 75, said the other day, “Casey had two curveballs. We had a system worked out where I’d just flash a sign (for a curve), and he’d throw either one. He had a big overhand curve and a quick breaking ball like a slider.

“That day, he was throwing that hard, quick curve, and they couldn’t hit it. Against Henrich, he threw the big breaking curve, and I had myself in a mode to expect the other one. I crossed myself up. I wanted to kick myself. I never worried I’d make an error. I was more shocked than anybody in the park when I looked down and that ball wasn’t in my glove.”

What’s the price of infamy? Owen has made a second career of it. “I sign a lot of balls and I still get a lot of requests from Brooklyn--they tell me I’m legendary,” he said with a chuckle. “I could play among the good ones. I seemed to be around when something unusual happened.”

In 1941, there was an abundance of the unusual happening.

JOE DIMAGGIO, BATTING STATISTICS IN 1941 G: 139 AB: 541 H: 193 2B: 43 3B: 11 HR: 30 RUNS: 122 RBI: 125 BB: 76 SO: 13 SB: 4 BA: .357 SA: .643 TED WILLIAMS, BATTING STATISTICS IN 1941 G: 143 AB: 456 H: 185 2B: 33 3B: 3 HR: 37 HR%: 8.1 RUNS: 135 RBI: 120 BB: 145 SO: 27 SB: 2 BA: .406 SA: .735 DIMAGGIO’S 56-GAME HITTING STREAK

G Date Opponent Pitcher(s) AB H 1 June 15 Chicago Smith 4 1 2 June 16 Chicago Lee 4 2 3 June 17 Chicago Rigney 3 1 4 June 18 St. Louis Harris 2, Niggeling 1 3 3 5 June 19 St. Louis Galehouse 3 1 6 June 20 St. Louis Auker 5 1 7 June 21 Detroit Rowe 1, Benton 1 5 2 8 June 22 Detroit McKain 4 1 9 June 23 Boston Newsome 5 1 10 June 24 Boston Johnson 4 1 11 June 25 Boston Grove 4 1 12 June 27 Washington Chase 1, Anderson 2, Carrasquel 1 5 4 13 June 28 Washington Hudson 4 1 14 June 29 Washington Sundra 3 1 15 June 30 Boston Johnson 2 1 16 June 30 Boston Harris 3 1 17 July 1 Cleveland Milnar 4 1 18 July 1 Cleveland Harder 4 1 19 July 2 Cleveland Feller 4 2 20 July 3 Detroit Trout 4 2 21 July 5 Detroit Newhouser 4 1 22 July 7 St. Louis Muncrief 1, Allen 1, Caster 1 5 3 23 July 8 St. Louis Auker 4 2 24 July 8 St. Louis Caster 1, Kramer 1 4 2 25 July 10 Chicago Rigney 5 1 26 July 12 Chicago Lee 4 2 27 July 14 Cleveland Feller 2 1 28 July 15 Cleveland Bagby 3 1 29 July 16 Cleveland Milnar 5 1 30 July 17 Chicago Rigney 4 1 31 July 18 Chicago Lee 3 1 32 July 19 Chicago Smith 1, Ross 2 3 3 33 July 20 Detroit Newsom 2, McKain 2 5 4 34 July 21 Detroit Trout 4 1 35 July 22 Detroit Newhouser 1, Newsome 1 5 2 36 July 24 St. Louis Muncrief 4 1 37 July 25 St. Louis Galehouse 4 1 38 July 26 St. Louis Auker 4 1 39 July 27 Philadelphia Dean 3 2 40 July 28 Philadelphia Babich 1, Harris 1 5 2 41 July 29 Washington Leonard 4 1 42 July 29 Washington Anderson 5 1 43 Aug. 1 Boston Harris 1, Ryba 1 4 2 44 Aug. 1 Boston Wilson 3 1 45 Aug. 2 Boston Newsome 5 1 46 Aug. 5 Philadelphia Marchildon 4 1 47 Aug. 6 Philadelphia Babich 1, Hadley 3 5 4 48 Aug. 6 Philadelphia Knott 4 2 49 Aug. 10 St. Louis Niggeling 2 1 50 Aug. 11 St. Louis Harris 3, Kramer 1 5 4 51 Aug. 12 St. Louis Auker 1, Muncrief 1 5 2 52 Aug. 13 Chicago Lyons 2, Hallett 1 4 3 53 Aug. 13 Chicago Lee 4 1 54 Aug. 14 Chicago Rigney 3 1 55 Aug. 15 Chicago Smith 4 2 56 Aug. 16 Cleveland Milnar 2, Krakauskas 1 4 3 TOTALS (.408 batting average) 223 91