Major League Baseball's favorite punctuation mark has long been the asterisk. Roger Maris got one when he broke Babe Ruth's record and you might have heard that Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball will be emblazoned with one before it heads to Cooperstown. There will probably be more to come as the juiced up stars of recent years set marks. How then, amid all this asterisk-mania, did Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak avoid getting the treatment?That question is being asked by a Canadian magazine called Walrus and they've uncovered a fair bit of evidence that suggests DiMag's streak may not be free from controversy. It's not because of anything Joltin' Joe did or took but because the official scorer for his home games was Dan Daniel.
Daniel was a local sportswriter who would today be considered something closer to a PR man. He was friends with the players, traveled with the team and had his expenses paid for by the Yankees. He was also the sole decider on hits and errors at Yankee Stadium and serving his team and friends may have trumped his objectivity according to the article's author David Robbeson.
In the 30th and 31st games of the streak the Yankees hosted the Chicago White Sox who fielded a shortstop who wound up joining Joe D in the Hall of Fame. Luke Appling was a great hitter throughout his long career but he wasn't a great fielder. He led the AL in errors six times and in each of those games he made plays that could have added to his career total of 643 miscues.
The first involved a bad bounce that hit off the shoulder of shortstop Luke Appling after he reached for it. Hits and errors were not immediately recorded on the scoreboard so, Robbeson writes, some spectators believed the streak had come to an end. Daniel, however, called it a hit.No film exists of these plays and there's no way to know for sure if Daniel was practicing home cooking on his scorecard. The newspaper accounts of these games vary so not even the people who were there could agree if DiMaggio hit screamers that no man could be expected to handle or if Appling's iffy glove failed him yet again. Either way, it's beside the larger point.
The 31st game of the streak involved a fielding play that was also arguably an error on the part of Appling, who got his glove on the ball, but dropped it. Again Daniel scored it a hit.
In 1941 there wasn't round-the-clock coverage of everything that went on in the world of sports. Most people were more concerned with what was going on in Europe than they were about a baseball player's modest 29-game hitting streak and there was no Baseball Tonight to break down the play or blogs to decry Daniel's biased scoring. Over time DiMaggio's streak became one of the touchstones of baseball history and a testament to the consistency and ability of a baseball legend. Today there would be so much scrutiny that the play would either be changed or people would consider DiMaggio's accomplishments ill-gotten to the extreme.
Mathematicians have spent much time figuring out the statistical near-impossibility of a 56-game hitting streak so its only logical to assume that there was some luck involved in getting there. Most histories ascribe that luck to seeing-eye singles instead of questionable scorers but at the end of the day is there a big difference? I don't think so. When Bonds started hitting homers at staggering rates everyone wondered why and pointed to steroids. DiMaggio's accomplishments defy reason by an even greater amount. Any assessment of them which includes a grain of salt isn't an attempt to revise history but a chance to better understand it.
(H/T SportsbyBrooks)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-08-2007 @ 4:10PM
Don said...
Your blog has no credibility in any era. There have always been "homies" when it came to scorers and even some umpires when in a certain park (and that from the son of a famous deceased umpire's son who...ahem...let's say MAY have leaned in the Cubs favor a time or two--I won't say what era). And ummps and scorers make mistakes every game vs the type of basketball referee who gets paid to make the wrong call (you know what I'm referring to). But Pete Rose hit in 44 straight--just shy of 12. So if Di Magg's streak was nearly, impossible what was Rose's just 12 games short of it WITHOUT A traveling score keeper. There's no comparison between what Bonds and others have done and DiMagg's streak. Nor the fact--and remember it has been removed by more reasonable people--Maris' asterisk because Frick was a buddy of Ruth. That's simple human bias, not breaking the law or the game's laws. It's like me--if you were my friend--letting you cut in line in front of me at the movies vs. slamming into another car on the freeway so you can speed past (which--ahem--IS done in pro auto racing!) A little bias, cheating, and out and out breaking the rules or law, are all totally different things and cannot be put in the same categories. Nice try! How's the weather in Frisco.
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 6:44PM
Whitey Ford said...
Joltin' Joe was as pure a baseball player you'll get, aside from Ted WIlliams. Come up with an original idea. Tainting sports heroes is getting old, especially when they are one of the game's true icons. Sacrilege, I say.
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 4:40PM
Nestea said...
Man, Dimaggio was UGLY! Marilyn Monroe actually married this guy?
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 4:57PM
Bob S said...
Dan Daniel controlled a lot in baseball. Last game of 1945 season at Yankee Stadium. Snuffy Stirnwiess was battling CWS Tony Cuccinello for bat title. First time up, Stirnwiess hit easy grounder to Red Sox 3B Jack Tobin who completely messed up play. I was sitting at 3B railing. Immediately error sign went up. After the game ended, when it was found that Cuccinello was first in batting race, .30846 to Stirnweiss .30696, the scorer changed that botched error to a hit and Stirnweiss won bat title with .30854. You can check NY Times & other NY papers about this change in scoring. Daniel led writers to vote 1942 MVP to Joe Gordon who led AL 2B in errors & led AL in grounding into DPs, over Ted Williams' first triple crown.
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 5:15PM
Dave said...
Barry Bonds admitted to taking steroids. Yes Barry Bonds admitted it. He may not have known that they were steroids, but he admitted to taking the cream and the clear which we all know were steroids. Now if you buy Bond's excuse that he thought that flaxseed oil was responible for his tremendous weight gain and the need for a new batting helmet, that is up to you to decide. Comparing DiMaggio to Bonds is stupid. Bonds knowingly took steroids. With DiMaggio, anyone who is scoring a game when a guy has a 30+ game hit streak is gonna give the player a hit on plays that could be called an error. Even if it really was a terrible, bias decision by the scorer, DiMaggio wasn't personally at fault. Bonds stuck needles in his ass to get his record.
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 5:18PM
Bob S said...
I don't follow Don's comment above on Pete Rose's streak. Rose's streak ended with no questionable calls at all. Who can forget Rose's comment later that the Braves' reliever who got Rose out in his last at bat was "pitching to me as if it was the 9th inning of the 7th game of the World Series". Rose thought that the reliever should have eased up on him. Typical Rose ego.
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 6:11PM
JAlper said...
Don - Daniel only scored games at Yankee Stadium, he traveled with the team in the guise of "journalist." I haven't looked at reports of every game in Rose's streak but, whether or not he got the benefit of a scorer's call, near impossibility is very different from total impossibility. Both men's streaks were incredible accomplishments, exploring how they came about does nothing to diminish that.
Dave - Never said DiMaggio personally was at fault nor that what Bonds did is comparable to anything DiMaggio did, even if they were both more than a little prickly as human beings. What I'm comparing is the way that people reacted to both accomplishments which, in each case, seem to go beyond reasonable expectations of what a baseball player can accomplish.
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 7:46PM
Bill said...
As a Red Sox fan I have to agree with Whitey--and if he's the real Whitey Ford he has my deepest respect having watched him pitch as a young kid.
Ted Williams often stated Joe DiMaggio was the best player he ever saw making everything look easy. I'd prefer to keep the legend of DiMaggio, who I never had the pleasure of being able to see play, intact. I'm happy to take Ted's word about Joe.
Bill
Reply
10-08-2007 @ 11:16PM
David said...
Josh,
I wrote that article and I'm pleased to say that you have managed to distill and simplify a key aspect of the story that most people (pros or non) either do not get or are incapable of understanding - the power of media-bias, in baseball as in all things.
I actually consider it a story as much about the media and America as it is about baseball. Anyway, good work.
DR
Reply
10-09-2007 @ 12:27AM
John Hawley said...
OK .some guy called nestea.....just called Joe DiMaggio ugly....I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. DiMaggio and as a man he was not ugly at all and I also want to mention that even being so soft spoken and private, you will never be half the man Jolten Joe was nestea. Joe would never have called you ugly after looking at your nestea ass picture...he would be polite and proffessional, something you know nothing about.
Reply
10-09-2007 @ 10:38AM
GentleWhoadie9000 said...
That is called "home field advantage." All home scorers do that sort of thing- every game. Have you ever been to a ballgame?
Reply
10-09-2007 @ 5:16PM
mike said...
DiMaggio was a jerk. He thought he was royalty and treated people like dirt. It is well know and documented. He was an ass.
Reply
10-12-2007 @ 8:16PM
Matt said...
FYI--Maris never actually got an asterisk. It was discussed, but none was ever placed in the official record book. Might want to be a little more accurate in your opening paragraph if you want people to take you seriously.
Reply