Mad Dog 100 The Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time

The Slammer of '41 Which feat was more formidable, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game streak, or Ted Williams' .406 season? It was one of the most remarkable summers baseball had ever seen. Every day for two months, Joe DiMaggio woke up, put on his sanitary socks and his Yankee cap, and got a hit. And on the last day of the season, Ted Williams wouldn't take a seat even with his .400 average at stake. Sixty years later Mad Dog dissects two of baseball's classic accomplishments. .406 or 56 games? Two of baseball's magic numbers. They're both amazing feats--made all the more remarkable by the fact that they both happened in the same year. But which feat is really greater? More than sixty years later, I think baseball fans look on both of these accomplishments with almost equal reverence. But to really compare them, first I think you have to transport yourself back before World War II. In 1941, people were more in awe of Joe DiMaggio than Ted Williams. Nobody had ever hit in 50 games in a row. The record was 44 by Wee Willie Keeler. And by 1941, Keeler's record had stood for forty-four years, and Keeler had been dead for eighteen years. But it hadn't been all that long since somebody hit .400. When Williams was taking his shot, there were a few guys still walking around who had hit .420: Rogers Hornsby, George Sisler, Ty Cobb. And the last guy to hit .400, Bill Terry, had been retired only five years. I imagine it was a little like Barry Bonds breaking Mark McGwire's home run record. So, I think that 56 games captured America's imagination more than .406. After all, they wrote a song about Joe DiMaggio's streak: "He sanctified the horsehide sphere and set our hearts aglow / He's just a man and not a freak / Joltin' Joe DiMaggio." They didn't write songs about Williams. I think that's because a hitting streak is better theater. America likes streaks. There's drama every single day. Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig. Even the Orioles losing 21 in a row. And there was drama every day during the summer of '41, from the time the Yankees showed up at the ballpark until Joe D got his first hit. When you're talking about hitting .400, you don't get excited about it until the last few days of the season. When Williams got all those hits on the doubleheader day against Philadelphia instead of sitting down, that was the drama of .406. But let's get one thing straight. Williams had much better overall stats than DiMaggio in 1941. He hit 49 points higher, hit 7 more home runs, walked 145 times, and his on-base percentage of .553 was then an all-time record. Williams deserved the MVP award. But because DiMaggio had the 56-game streak and the Yankees won the pennant by 17 games, he got it. The final question is, which one's going to be tougher to break? I think that hitting in 56 games in a row would be quite a bit tougher. I think the pressure of 56 is amazing. It's day after day after day after day. The pressure of the last 20 games will be tremendous. Look at Paul Molitor. He had nine billion reporters following him around and he was still 17 games away. With .406, it's 500 at-bats, a full season's worth. There's never one at-bat--until the last couple of games of the season--that's ultrasignificant. There's also a way that a guy could back into hitting .400. If he got injured and missed a big chunk of the season, it would be a lot easier to hit .400 in, say, 400 at-bats than 600. That's how Tony Gwynn was able to hit .394 during the strike year of 1994. When you're going for 56, on the other hand, it can come down to that one at-bat in the eighth inning of game 45. And the pitchers will have a lot to say about whether or not you succeed. Remember how mad Pete Rose got at Gene Garber, who ended his streak? Garber was throwing him junk and Rose didn't like it. Rose thought he owed it to him to throw fastballs so he could keep the streak going. But a pitcheRusso, Christopher is the author of 'Mad Dog 100 The Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time', published 2003 under ISBN 9780385508988 and ISBN 0385508980.