The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World by Roger Kahn
Authors: Roger Kahn
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distance. “Every one of them would give their left nut to see me have a bad year. But, mister, it ain’t gonna happen because ol’ T.S.W. [Theodore Samuel Williams], he don’t have bad years.” Lest I miss the point, Williams bounced a bat off the grass with great force, caught it one-handed on the rebound, and walked away.*
Such extravagant behavior was alien to DiMaggio. Indeed, he took pride in keeping his emotions under rigid control. When questions annoyed him, DiMaggio glared through the questioner. He didn’t boast. He was a more subtle artist than Williams and is perhaps more difficult to appreciate.
Fast as he was in his youth, DiMaggio never stole more than six bases in any major league season. As a rookie, stationed in left field, he threw out 22 base runners. By 1940, established in center, he threw out only 5. DiMaggio was an outstanding base runner on a team that did not steal, but there is no statistic for that. Rival base runners stopped taking chances when Joe DiMaggio was throwing from the outfield, and no statistic covers frozen base runners either. He twice led the league in home runs, batting average, and runs batted in, but he never led in all three columns during the same year. The vaunted “triple crown” eluded him.
Williams is most famous for hitting .406 in 1941. “You know,” DiMaggio remarked as we sat with Hank Greenberg at a little table on an Old Timers’ Day at Shea Stadium, “I wanted to hit .400 myself. One year, I really had a chance. That was 1939. On September 8, I think it was, I was hitting .408.
“Then something went wrong with my left eye. Really wrong. It got sore as hell, all bloodshot and inflamed. I could hardly see out of it. Allergy? I don’t know.
“But Joe McCarthy didn’t believe in cheese champions [a boxing term, for champions of small worth]. He kept playing me every day. He had to know the agony I was going through, swinging at that tough pitching with a blurry eye. I’ll never understand why he didn’t give me a couple of days off. But he didn’t. You played in those days with anything short of a broken leg.” His vision reduced, DiMaggio finished the 1939 season with a batting average of .381.*
DiMaggio’s most soaring accomplishment is generally said to be his great batting streak. In 1941, he hit safely in 56 games, swinging hard, not bunting, even when the streak was on the line. No one has come within a dozen games of matching that streak, but appreciating DiMaggio, even for 1941, requires a certain sophistication. During 1941, DiMaggio struck out 13 times. Swinging as hard as he could, clouting 30 home runs, against the best pitchers in baseball throwing him their best stuff at the corners, DiMaggio struck out once every two weeks. “He simply had no weakness,” Bob Feller says. No one has ever gotten his bat on the ball with so much power so consistently as Joe DiMaggio, 1941.
He was not the same player after World War II. DiMaggio was a winner down to his last at bat — a two-base hit — but after the war his excellence came fitfully. He was not quite as fast a runner as he had been. His throwing arm weakened. Good inside fastballs bothered him. These foibles and slumps upset Larry MacPhail. Like Red Smith, MacPhail confused a star with a deity.
Larry MacPhail discovered that he had a mortal playing center field. These pages may suggest that Leland Stanford MacPhail was a bit of a clown. He was not that. Increasingly he was a bit of a drunk. He could be petulant, petty, and, as on the issue of integration, as wrong-headed as a sinful Janus. But what saved MacPhail in baseball, at least for a little while, was inspired pragmatism. All right. We’re stuck with DiMaggio. God is not available to play center field in the Bronx. Let’s make the best of what we have.
DiMaggio had waged contract wars with the Yankees across many seasons. Some fault was his. Once he told San Francisco reporters that he threw a Yankee contract into the
Such extravagant behavior was alien to DiMaggio. Indeed, he took pride in keeping his emotions under rigid control. When questions annoyed him, DiMaggio glared through the questioner. He didn’t boast. He was a more subtle artist than Williams and is perhaps more difficult to appreciate.
Fast as he was in his youth, DiMaggio never stole more than six bases in any major league season. As a rookie, stationed in left field, he threw out 22 base runners. By 1940, established in center, he threw out only 5. DiMaggio was an outstanding base runner on a team that did not steal, but there is no statistic for that. Rival base runners stopped taking chances when Joe DiMaggio was throwing from the outfield, and no statistic covers frozen base runners either. He twice led the league in home runs, batting average, and runs batted in, but he never led in all three columns during the same year. The vaunted “triple crown” eluded him.
Williams is most famous for hitting .406 in 1941. “You know,” DiMaggio remarked as we sat with Hank Greenberg at a little table on an Old Timers’ Day at Shea Stadium, “I wanted to hit .400 myself. One year, I really had a chance. That was 1939. On September 8, I think it was, I was hitting .408.
“Then something went wrong with my left eye. Really wrong. It got sore as hell, all bloodshot and inflamed. I could hardly see out of it. Allergy? I don’t know.
“But Joe McCarthy didn’t believe in cheese champions [a boxing term, for champions of small worth]. He kept playing me every day. He had to know the agony I was going through, swinging at that tough pitching with a blurry eye. I’ll never understand why he didn’t give me a couple of days off. But he didn’t. You played in those days with anything short of a broken leg.” His vision reduced, DiMaggio finished the 1939 season with a batting average of .381.*
DiMaggio’s most soaring accomplishment is generally said to be his great batting streak. In 1941, he hit safely in 56 games, swinging hard, not bunting, even when the streak was on the line. No one has come within a dozen games of matching that streak, but appreciating DiMaggio, even for 1941, requires a certain sophistication. During 1941, DiMaggio struck out 13 times. Swinging as hard as he could, clouting 30 home runs, against the best pitchers in baseball throwing him their best stuff at the corners, DiMaggio struck out once every two weeks. “He simply had no weakness,” Bob Feller says. No one has ever gotten his bat on the ball with so much power so consistently as Joe DiMaggio, 1941.
He was not the same player after World War II. DiMaggio was a winner down to his last at bat — a two-base hit — but after the war his excellence came fitfully. He was not quite as fast a runner as he had been. His throwing arm weakened. Good inside fastballs bothered him. These foibles and slumps upset Larry MacPhail. Like Red Smith, MacPhail confused a star with a deity.
Larry MacPhail discovered that he had a mortal playing center field. These pages may suggest that Leland Stanford MacPhail was a bit of a clown. He was not that. Increasingly he was a bit of a drunk. He could be petulant, petty, and, as on the issue of integration, as wrong-headed as a sinful Janus. But what saved MacPhail in baseball, at least for a little while, was inspired pragmatism. All right. We’re stuck with DiMaggio. God is not available to play center field in the Bronx. Let’s make the best of what we have.
DiMaggio had waged contract wars with the Yankees across many seasons. Some fault was his. Once he told San Francisco reporters that he threw a Yankee contract into the
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