Lasorda Is a DiMaggio Scholar

The clock has sneaked up on Tom Lasorda, capo di tutto capi of the Dodger field forces. It suddenly occurs to Tom, standing on the ledge of the new season, that 50 years have passed since Joe DiMaggio fastened together a hitting streak of 56 consecutive games.

Beginning May 15, 1941, and ending July 17, the streak remains a wonder of the baseball world. It never has been matched, withstanding time like the Pyramids of Egypt.

Recalls Lasorda: “A while back, managers and coaches were polled on what they felt was the modern game’s greatest accomplishment. We were looking at Johnny Vander Meer’s back-to-back no-hitters, at Hack Wilson’s 190 RBIs, at Roger Maris’ 61 homers, at Don Larsen’s perfect World Series game, at other great achievements.”

“And the final vote?”

“It went to DiMaggio’s 56,” Tom says. “It was a personal triumph for me and, at 14, growing up in Norristown, Pa., playing for our eighth-grade team, I followed the DiMaggio streak like a religion. Do you realize what that meant to a poor Italian kid, sleeping on the third floor of a flat where heat from the wood stove went up only to the second floor? When Ken Keltner stopped the streak, I hated him.”

Third baseman for Cleveland, Keltner made artful plays on two hard smashes by DiMaggio, throwing him out. The streak died after 91 hits by Joe.

“Why, in a half-century of improving athletes, has no one come close to 56?” Lasorda is asked.

“Everyone has his own theory,” he answers. “Mine begins with the flat denial that pitching today is better. Does Cleveland have better pitching than in ‘41? The Red Sox? The Yankees? The Tigers? No one has topped DiMaggio’s streak for the simplest of reasons. He pulled off the impossible feat. The record has stood 50 years. It will stand 50 more.”

Several years back when DiMaggio, now 76, enjoyed more robust health, we had a long talk, reviewing the streak. He confided it wasn’t important in the earthly scheme whether the record is broken.

Nor would life become empty for him if it were.

The only thing annoying Joe over the years was the excuses advanced in behalf of today’s hitters.

Very much like Lasorda, DiMaggio never would concede that superior pitching today is preventing batsmen from running a streak of 56 in a row.

“For one thing, pitchers in my time used to fire from an elevated mound,” said Joe. “The mound today is almost flat. For the man at the plate, that is a major edge.

“Then it is said that travel today is tougher than in my day, causing players greater fatigue. Well, teams today cover more miles, but it is easier to fly across the country in a chartered jet than it was for us to take the overnight train from New York to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis. Air conditioning on trains was bad. And you raised the window and you got full of cinders and soot.”

Recalling the era of the iron horse, Joe laughed.

“Those who batted third, fourth and fifth in the lineup got the center berths on one side and the top pitchers got them on the other. The rookies slept over the wheels. I got center berths during the streak, but who the hell could sleep on a train?”

Joe submitted that he couldn’t study films of his swing, as hitters are able to do today. He never took vitamins and food supplements. He never was taught scientific conditioning of his body.

“Science in 1941 consisted of laying off booze and fats,” he said.

Nor was hitting enhanced by artificial turf.

“If you will pardon the immodesty,” continued Joe, “those two smashes I hit at Keltner were real shots. On artificial turf, it is a near-miracle if he stops them. Those kind today skip through.”

Still awed, Lasorda says: “Were it not for Keltner’s glove and the advantages of grass, God knows how long the streak would have gone on. As it was, shut out in his 57th game, Joe then put together a streak of 16 more.”

Not showing at the time extraordinary academic promise, kin to folks who raised grapes on the hillsides of Abruzzi, Lasorda says he was so overwhelmed by DiMaggio’s streak and the Italian glory it engendered that Tom was inspired to scurry to the books.

“It was my first (and maybe only) visit to the library,” Tom says. “I was proud of my research. I learned from a book that his real name was Joseph Paul DiMaggio.”