Game 34: June 21, 1941 Joe DiMaggio won nine World Championships in 13 big-league seasons. It was an accomplishment of which he was deeply proud. DiMaggio’s Yankees had won four crowns in his first four years. But Joltin’ Joe, coming into the 1941 season, was just DiMaggio—another great Yankee who drew constant praise from New […]

Game 35: June 22, 1941 “Who Will Stop DiMaggio?” blared the New York Post headline. “Sisler Standard Next Up for Joe,” promised the World Telegram. On Sunday afternoon, June 22, 1941, it was a sweltering 86 degrees at Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers would get a mixed bag of pitching from the fading Tigers. Hall […]

Game 36: June 24, 1941 Bob Muncrief was a strapping country boy from Madill, Oklahoma. The journeyman pitcher, who in 1941 toiled for the lowly St. Louis Browns, is all but forgotten in baseball history. Muncrief won 80 games in a 12-year career. He lost 82. He grew up in hard times, respected his family […]

Game 37: June 25, 1941 In “DiMaggio: Setting the Record Straight,” the Yankee Clipper’s close friend and attorney during the the last 16 years of his life, Morris Engelberg, tells how Joe DiMaggio for the longest time would tell people: “I’m just an Italian ballplayer.” Engelberg, in a recent telephone interview, said that DiMaggio told […]

Game 38: June 26, 1941 Joe DiMaggio usually owned St. Louis pitching. Everyone did. But the Browns’ Elden Auker, in his next-to-last season, gave DiMaggio fits. Both he and young Yankee starter Marius Russo were pitching gems on June 26, 1941. With New York leading 3-1 going into the bottom of the eighth, Joltin’ Joe […]

Game 39: June 27 1941 When Joe DiMaggio retired after the 1951 season at age 36, he was spent, by his own standards. When he walked away, he was baseball’s highest-paid player and could have come back for another season at $100,000 or more. But he was no longer the Joe DiMaggio he promised. His […]

Game 40: June 28, 1941 Almost 14,000 came to Shibe Park on a brilliant Saturday afternoon, June 28, 1941. Philadelphia pitcher Johnny Babich was a California contemporary of DiMaggio’s. Born in Albion—160 miles north of San Francisco—a year before Joe, Babich went to high school across the Bay in Richmond and played for the Mission […]

Games: 41 & 42, June 29, 1941 Joe DiMaggio owned the batter’s box. Always had, ever since playing North Beach sandlot ball a decade before. He was almost regal in stance. Back foot gnawing a hole from which to push off, legs spread wide apart, DiMaggio always held his bat a few inches off his […]

Games 43 and 44: July 1, 1941 The Boston Red Sox were in town for a Tuesday, July 1, doubleheader with the Bombers. The previous two Tuesday games at Yankee Stadium drew an average of 7,200 fans for St. Louis and Chicago. But this was Boston. Ted Williams came in hitting .404. Another DiMaggio, Dominic, […]

Game 45: July 2, 1941 As hot as the Yankees were, winning nine of their last 10 games, the city itself was hotter. Temperatures on July 2, 1941 were creeping into the mid-90s. Five more people had died in the five boroughs from heat prostration. The beach at Coney Island was crammed with New Yorkers […]