Big Joe

It was the fifth inning; the Boston Red Sox were playing the New York Yankees. Bronx thermometers registered 94DEG in the shade. But the crowd was oblivious of the sweltering heat. They sat on the edges of their sticky seats, gripping their sticky score cards. Strapping Joe Di Maggio, Yankee slugger nonpareil, was at bat, and something more than a ball game was at stake.

The first pitch was bad. So was the second. Joe walloped the next one but it landed just outside the foul line. The crowd moaned. Joe got set again. Crack ! At the sound, 8,700 fans rose once more. The hit was a honey; it went sailing, sailing, over the left fielder's head, into the lower left-field stands 400 feet away.

As he loped around the bases amid a deafening roar, the 26-year-old Yankee Clipper left in his wake the broken fragments of one of baseball's immortal records. Di Maggio had just hit safely in his 45th successive game, bettering the fabulous string of 44 spun by wondrous Wee Willie Keeler (who "hit 'em where they ain't") 44 years ago.

In 102 years of baseball, few feats have caused such nationwide todo. Ever since it became apparent that the big Italian from San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf was approaching a record that had eluded Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other great batsmen, Big Joe's hits have been the biggest news in U.S. sport. Radio programs were interrupted for Di Maggio bulletins. Crowds jammed the ball parks where he played. Three days before, when he broke the modern record of 41, set by George Sisler in 1922, 31,000 parboiled fans crammed into Washington's Griffith Stadium. Day before, when he tied Keeler's all-time major-league record,* there were 53,000 in the Yankee Stadium.

The records of Big Joe and Wee Willie were not really comparable (in Wee Willie's day, the rules were different--for instance, fouls did not count as strikes). Nevertheless, baseball fans insisted on comparisons. In 179 times at bat, Di Maggio got 67 hits (including twelve doubles, three triples, 13 home runs) for a total of 124 bases. In 201 times at bat, Keeler got 82 hits (including eleven doubles, ten triples, no homers) for a total of 113 bases. Di Maggio's batting average was .374, Keeler's, .408.

Said Yankee Manager Joe McCarthy: "There's no point in trying to compare Joe with any of the others but I will say one thing. It was an achievement, certainly one of the greatest in baseball. . . ."

Said Di Maggio: "You've got to give some of the credit to Joe McCarthy. He let me swing on those three-and-nothing pitches [three balls, no strikes]. Ordinarily he wouldn't do that. He was right with me all the time. ..."

Despite the coddling of Big Joe's batting streak, the Yankees managed to win their share of ball games. On May 15, when Joe's bat got hot, the Yankees were in fourth place in the American League pennant race, six and a half games behind the league-leading Cleveland Indians. Last week, after Di Maggio's historic homer helped his team win their 20th game in 24, the Yankees were in first place, three games in front of Cleveland. And only two days away was July 4, the traditional day when the league-leader foreshadows the winner of the pennant.

In the National League, on the afternoon of July 4, Brooklyn's doughty Dodgers, idle because of rain, were pushed into first place when the pace-setting St. Louis Cardinals lost a double-header to the Cubs.

At week's end, Di Maggio had stretched his string to 48 successive games and was still going.

* Minor-league record for hitting safely is 69 successive games, thumped out in 1919 by Joe Wilhoit playing for Wichita in the Western League.

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