Joltin' Joe - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Joltin' Joe

On this day back in 1941, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio went 3 for 4, hitting in his 56th straight game to set a MLB record that has never or likely ever will be surpassed. This achievement occurred while I was still a figment of my parents' imagination. In fact, they hadn’t even met back in 1941. Dad was farming his family's farm west of Ft. Loramie because his dad died a decade before at age 52 leaving his mother with 14 children to raise. Dad, being one of the older family members, took on the farming duties. Meanwhile Mom was living at her parent’s home in St. Patrick’s working at the box factory in Minster. No doubt Dad was aware of the record because he loved baseball; however, Mom could have cared less. She wasn’t into sports, except for badminton as documented in this previous blogpost.

During the streak, DiMaggio hit .408 (91 for 223) with 15 home runs and 55 RBI’s. When the streak began on May 15, the Yankees were 14-14, 5 1/2 games behind Cleveland in fourth place. After Game No. 56 of the streak, the Yanks were 55-27 and in first place with a 6-game lead over Cleveland. They went on to win the World Series in 5 games against the Dodgers. DiMaggio was voted the American League MVP that season over Boston's Ted Williams who hit .406 -- the last time a major-leaguer hit over .400. Had DiMaggio been able to extend the streak for one more game he would have earned $10,000 promised to him by the Heinz Corporation to endorse their Heinz 57 products. Incidentally, Joltin’ Joe also had a 61 game streak in 1933 while in the minor leagues. There was even a song about the 56 game streak by singer Ben Homer, an ironic name. Sllde to the 4:13 point of this interesting tribute to baseball music for a listen to Joltin’ Joe.

My recollection was that DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak happened during WWII when the best players had all enlisted, but since the feat occurred in the summer of 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, MLB teams were still at full strength. This fact even makes the feat more amazing. Pete Rose, the best hitter I’ve ever seen, made it to 44 straight during the 1978 season. More recently, Whit Merrifield (who?) of the Kansas City Royals hit safely in 31 games earlier this year. You can buy Merrifield’s baseball card for $2.54 on eBay versus as high as $405 for DiMaggio and $39 for Pete Rose!

Why there aren’t more modern day batters going after hitting streaks, I don’t know. Likely it’s really difficult to be that consistent for that long. Or maybe with the scuttlebutt about juiced balls and launch angles, today's hitters are going for home runs instead of simply base hits, resulting in more strike outs and fly balls. Who knows?

Back to DiMaggio, he retired in 1951, so my only real memories of Joltin’ Joe were not baseball-related at all, rather about his love life! He had married movie star Marylyn Monroe in 1954.

Here are DiMaggio's career MLB stats; note the 3 year gap during the war, where he mainly played baseball for service teams and never did see combat even though he had requested it.

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