Baseball is a game of numbers. It is pitch count and exit velocity, launch angle and spin rate. And Wins Above Replacement, commonly referred to as WAR.
And oh, baseball is played with a score. The Tigers score six runs and the Yankees score five — the Tigers win, 6-5. Perhaps the Tigers win due to two defensive runs saved.
Baseball, in this century, is played with a video-game mentality.
Back in antiquity, when I grew up, the numbers 56 and .406 were precious. To me, those numbers still are the most commanding and durable numbers in Major League Baseball.
They belong to Joe DiMaggio — 56 — and Ted Williams — .406.
Their numbers stem from 80 years ago. Babe Ruth has been scrubbed from the record book, but DiMaggio and Williams remain inviolate.
One weekday afternoon in July 1941, I saw them play against one another in a doubleheader. The two greatest players of my boyhood. They were in the process of creating history.
And for a wannabe, a kid of 13, their performances were imperishable.
Joe D’s 56-game hitting streak had started with a glimmer on May 15, a single off the White Sox’ Eddie Smith. By June 1, the streak had garnered attention in the New York press. Toward the end of the month, DiMaggio had hit in 38 consecutive games.
There was a gripping suspense across the country in the national press — the newspaper sports sections and our Stromberg Carlson tabletop radio.
“How’d Joe do today?” my father asked when he got home — typical from the Bronx to Hollywood.
I thrived on stories about the theft of DiMaggio’s favorite bat and borrowing another from Tommy Henrich and keeping the streak going before it was returned. I read about the last-inning rescues to keep the streak moving, and the odd boosts from friendly official scorers. The media — before we ever called journalists that — brought forth DiMaggio’s dour personality, his chiseled quotes.
“I’ll either break it or I won’t,” he said in a quote dredged up from 80 years ago — from an unknown source.
The names of George Sisler and Wee Willie Keeler emerged from the history books.
On Tuesday July 1, 1941, the Yankees were to play the Red Sox in two. Two days earlier, Joe had surpassed the “modern-day” record of 41 set by Sisler in 1922.
DiMaggio’s next target was Keeler’s ancient hitting streak of 44 set in 1897. Joe had reached 42.
‘A dream I’ve always had’
Williams’ target was himself.
He had climbed above .400 in late May. In early June, Williams’ batting average had reached .436.
“It’s a dream I’ve always had — the way I’m hitting now,” the 22-year-old Williams told the Boston Globe that June in a piece preserved in the Baseball Hall of Fame archives.
“. . . Say, .400 is some batting. Look how many hitters have done it in the history of the game. Not many hitters have done it.”
Then Ted’s batting average dipped to .404 by the end of June. A bit of a slump.
His target remained.
Hitting .400 or better was an out-of-date number from the bygone dead-ball era of Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Sisler and Keeler. And Bill Terry, most recently in 1930.
So, there it was DiMaggio vs. Williams, on a sunny afternoon 80 years ago.
It was a mob scene under the elevated trains outside Yankee Stadium for the doubleheader. A 13 year old — perched in the buck-10 seats in short left field — joined the throng of 52,832.
Video game mentality!
Back then, Yankee Stadium was not even equipped with a hit-or-error sign on the scoreboard.
DiMaggio had gone 0-for-2 when he batted against Boston’s Mike Ryba in the fifth. Then he chopped a bouncing ball toward Jim Tabor at third base. Tabor threw wildly to first base.
It sure looked like an error.
But there was no sign on the scoreboard. There was no announcement.
And there were jitters among the rooters in Yankee Stadium.
Top of the sixth, beetle-browed Charlie Keller trumped out to his position in left field.
“Hey, Charlie?” yelled maybe a thousand fans seated low in the left-field seats.
Keller knew what they were asking, and he knew the answer.
He bobbed his head up and down, affirmatively. It is a vision that has remained clear in my memory for 80 years.
Dan Daniel, the official scorer from the New York World-Telegram, had credited DiMaggio with a single and given Tabor an error on the throw.
The streak was at 43.
And I dutifully filled in the blank in my scorecard.
DiMaggio would get another hit in the seventh — a clean single to left.
He eliminated the suspense in the second game. Batting in the bottom of the first, DiMaggio singled off Jack Wilson. Out in center field, Joe’s brother Dominic fielded the ball and threw it back in.
Joe had matched Keeler’s record of 44, set 44 years earlier in the 19th century.
The Yankees defeated the Red Sox twice that day, 7-2 and 9-2.
Williams had managed two singles in six at bats. His batting average shrunk to .402.
Next day, DiMaggio again provided suspense, certainly for the radio audience. He made an out in his first two at-bats, then in the fifth he hit a home run to left.
“Hit where they ain’t,” Keeler might have said.
DiMaggio was alone in history with the streak at 45.
Joe’s hitting streak would reach 48 by the All-Star break.
All-Stars shine in Detroit
And then all the baseball talk circled around Joe and Ted.
The All-Star Game was relatively new. Detroit was proudly the host city. The American League was about to lose. Then in the bottom of the ninth the AL won on a three-run home run into the right field seats at Briggs Stadium, 7-5. The term “walkoff” would not be in vogue for nearly another half-century. But the film footage has been played all those years since.
It shows the hitter clapping his hand gleefully — Ted Williams. Scoring also was the baserunner from first base — Joe DiMaggio.
After the All-Star Game, DiMaggio would reach 49 on a scratch single, and touch the magic 50 with four hits in St. Louis against the Browns.
The streak would continue — through Chicago on another infield single and on to Cleveland. DiMaggio would extend the streak to 56 in Cleveland’s old League Park in a three-hit game. On July 17, with a night game scheduled, the Indians’ played their home game in cavernous Municipal Stadium.
It was there that DiMaggio’s hitting streak would end.
DiMaggio twice was thrown out on sharp ground balls by Kenny Keltner at third. On one grounder, Keltner fielded the baseball with a backhanded stab. Then in the ninth, DiMaggio grounded out to shortstop Lou Boudreau.
The streak was finished at 56 — by Al Smith and Jim Bagby Jr., two obscure pitchers.
Next game, DiMaggio collected two hits off Bob Feller, who would be elected to the Hall of Fame. DiMaggio had started a new 17-game hitting streak. And the Yankees would continue on to win the pennant by double digits.
Meanwhile, Williams persisted. He would hover around .400 — a tad above, a touch below. Mostly above. And soon it was September.
“Nerves?” said Williams to some vintage journalists in the Hall of Fame article. “I don’t know what they are.
“I just take my cut at the ball and let the nerves take care of themselves.”
On the morning of the last day of the 1941 season, manager/shortstop Joe Cronin gave Williams the option of sitting out the doubleheader vs. the Athletics in Shibe Park, Philadelphia. Ted’s batting average was .3996 — rounded off by numbers-trackers to .400.
Williams’ response was not captured for posterity. But getting to know him a little later, the quote would be full of stars and asterisks.
Ted played that Sunday, daring the A’s to stop him from climbing above .400. He went 6-for-8 those final two games, with a home run, a double and four singles.
He batted .406 in 1941.
No hitter, not Tony Gwynn, not George Brett, has touched .400 since.
The 21st-century hallmark is that Wins Above Replacement stat, WAR. Nobody thought about such as statistic 80 years ago.
WAR to Teddy Williams was combat as a Marine aviator in World War II, and then again for the Marines in the Korean War.
Jerry Green is a retired Detroit News sports reporter.