Posts tagged JoeDiMaggio at FanHouse

Alex Rodriguez has had his name besmirched in the most embarrassing ways lately. Madonna? Lenny Kravitz? Couldn't he and his wife at least find two semi-relevant entertainers to shack up with? Madonna is the best we can do? Joe DiMaggio got Marilyn Monroe, and A-Rod gets Madonna? That just ain't right.

Anyway, we haven't really heard A-Rod's side of things; his comment has been limited to "no comment." Such is A-Rod's new media technique:

"You have to take the good with the bad and not take yourself too seriously," he explained later. "I think that's the one thing that over the first four or five years [in New York], I kept knocking myself over the head, and trying to re-explain myself. If this gentleman asked me that question, I probably would've been here for three or four hours trying to explain my personal life -- and kind of made an ass out of myself, really."

In other words, A-Rod knows that no answer is good enough for the tabloid jackals, so he gives no answer at all. That it took five years for Mr. Rod to figure this out is most shocking. Derek Jeter never answers anything, dude -- why do you think so many people like him?

Also, Jeter gets with, like, Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel and God knows who else. A-Rod gets with Madonna. Sigh.

Despite whatever contrarian knee-jerk reaction you might have to Dane Cook shouting at you, the 2007 World Series is shaping up to be a classic. The Boston Red Sox, paragons of consistent domination, and the Colorado Rockies, the hottest team baseball has seen in a long, long time, squaring off. It's going to be a good one.

But just how high does the Rockies' incredible run rank? Even without a World Series, is it the craziest team achievement in baseball history?

Fortunately, we have Rob Neyer to put these things into context (free Insider preview; hurry!):

3. 2007 Colorado Rockies

On the morning of Sept. 16, the Rockies were in fourth place in the National League West. They were 6½ games out of first place, and 4½ games behind the wild card-leading Padres. They'd lost three straight games, and they were dead in the water. Or so it seemed. On the afternoon of Sept. 16 the Rockies trounced the Marlins 13-0, beginning a season-ending surge that would include one loss and 14 wins, including a one-game playoff for the wild card. Since then they've swept their Division and League Championship Series, and so they enter the World Series next week having won 21 of 22 games, and it's safe to say that no team has ever entered the World Series on a run like the Rockies'.

For the record, Neyer's No. 1 and No. 2 miracles were Boston's comeback in 2004 and DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak in 1941. No matter what happens to the Rockies in this series, they're already perched near some incredibly lofty company.

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.

You didn't really think he could do it, did you? Brandon Webb surrendered a run in the first inning on Wednesday night's game against the Brewers, ending his streak of consecutive scoreless innings at 42 -- 17 shy of tying Orel Hershiser's record. Webb would have needed back-to-back complete game shutouts to break it, which isn't easy to do. Now that some attention has been brought to the record, I'm thinking it might be as tough to break as Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak. Not surprisingly, Webb is relieved that it's all over:

"It was really a relief," Webb said of the streak coming to an end Wednesday.
...
"I was feeling it a little bit today, with all the attention it was getting, so to get it out of the way in the first inning I think was a relief," Webb said. "And I was able to get back pretty quickly and get back to where I wanted to be and ended up throwing a pretty good ballgame."

The bottom line, as Tom Fornelli pointed out, is that the D-Backs won the game. The final was 3-2, allowing Arizona to remain in first in the NL West by three and a half games. With 34 games left on Arizona's schedule, Webb could throw nothing but complete game shutouts for the rest of the season, and he still wouldn't reach Hershiser's mark. Now that's impressive.

What are baseball's most unbreakable records? Almost anyone reading this would immediately go with Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak, or Cy Young's astounding career win total of 511 (!!!). I did the exact same thing.

Still, there are other records which are basically assured to never be broken, and The Fantasy Baseball Generals have done the legwork and compiled them for our enjoyment. To wit:

1. Most consecutive batters reaching base safely, an astounding 19, by the Dodgers in 1952.
2. Most hits let up in a 9-inning game, 36 by J. Wadsworth in 1894.
3. Most HR allowed by a winning pitcher, 6 by two guys in the 30s. This could be breakable, but it is crazy to think that it could happen.
4. Least Double Plays hit into: 0 by future (hopefully) Hall of Famer Craig Biggio. Can someone hit into negative double plays to break it??

The Craig Biggio mark is perhaps most astounding to me, perhaps because I've honestly never heard of Biggio's double-play prowess before. Is this the least talked-about milestone in this, the seminal year for milestones?

Anyway, go to The Generals for the entire list, and come on stat-heads -- got any refutations or records of your own?

(HT: BBTF)

Did you know that Joe DiMaggio kept a diary? Well yeah, buddy, he did. And not only that, a 2,000 page, 29 volume collection of entries from 1983-1993 is up for sale now.

A sample:

April 28, 1989: "Up at 5 a.m. ... Book people felt me out with questions pertaining to baseball. Some part of my private life but not too strong on that. Will not reveal anything in a negative way towards Marilyn -- only books that have come out on her might have not been truthful."

If you're a fan of DiMaggio, these will probably give you one of the most intimate looks into Joe's life, save for somehow getting a transcript of his inner thoughts directly from his brain. (Someday I hope this kind of technology is available, don't you?)

I anxiously await 30 years from now when Jim Thome's diary entires are revealed.

HI DIARY
IT'S ME JIM TH
JIM THOME
TODAY I WOKE UP BUT I HAD THE SHOWER WATER ON TOO HIGH AND IT BURNED MY BACK SO THEN I PUT IT ON LOWER
I MADE COFFEE BUT THAT WAS TOO HOT TOO EVERYTHING WAS HOT HOT HOT

Thanks to the Dugout for Thome's persona, of course.

It's been a pretty long-standing record now -- Joe DiMaggio hit for 56 straight games back in 1941 -- 66 years ago. Since DiMaggio's streak, only one player has even hit in 40 straight games -- Pete Rose who went for 44 straight in 1978. And no, this isn't just a slow sports day where I'm breaking out the bar discussions. This issue was raised by Giants outfielder Randy Winn, whose spectacular 20-game hitting streak gives him the right to speak about the challenge of hitting in 56 straight:

"Sure," he said. "Nobody thought Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games streak would be broken. A lot of people didn't think Babe Ruth's home-run marks would be broken and a lot of people didn't think Hank Aaron's mark would be broken. There are probably people who never thought Pete Rose would break the hits record, or that anyone would ever get 4,000 hits again. It seems that eventually all of those have fallen, so why not DiMaggio's?"

Dude, you got a third of the way to DiMaggio, and you're telling me it's going to fall? These days we're lucky if a player just makes his way into the lineup 56 straight games. To get at least a hit in each one? Lots of things in the game would have to change. I'm going to have to go ahead and say no, this isn't going down.

While everyone waits for the big steroids apology from MLB -- ha! -- we can take solace in knowing that Bud Selig isn't totally without a conscience. He is, in fact, sorry for something, something he really had nothing to do with in the first place.

Selig offered an apology for Major League Baseball's reserve clause, which kept players from moving teams independently. This, of course, kept players from reaping the financial benefits of free agency, and lasted until the 70's when it was overturned:

"That should have been modified decades before someone like me came into the sport," Selig, who became the Milwaukee Brewers' owner in 1970, said after receiving an award from the Sports Lawyers Association. "Change was long overdue, and some balance to the relationship was necessary."

After rattling off some of the sport's financial highlights, Selig said the sport is better off now than it was in the 1940s and '50s -- generally considered the golden age of baseball. And he said the recent labor peace, which would stretch to 16 years by the end of the current agreement, is a big reason why.

Sort of makes you think: what if players in the 1940's and 50's had the chance to be free agents? It seems likely we would have reached an Alex Rodriguez sort of contract far sooner. Somewhere, Joe DiMaggio is cringing.

But hey, Bud wants you to know that he's sorry. Really, truly sorry about everything. Except steroids.

(HT: BBTF)

Barry's World is the FanHouse's look into the season that is Barry Bonds

In Sunday's LA Times, Barry's agent, Jeff Borris, let out a belligerent declaration:

"Barry better be unanimous, 100%, first ballot," Borris said. "If the Hall of Fame is what it stands for, how can the greatest player ever to play the game not be a unanimous selection?"

I understand that Borris is Bonds' agent, meaning his job is to best represent his client's interests, but seriously Borris, don't you think that edict is a little out of order?

Consider this, no player has ever been a unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame. Not the Babe, not Hank Aaron, not Mantle, not Mays, nor DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Nolan Ryan, none of them. On the 2007 ballot, Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn received the 3rd and 7th highest percentages in history, 98.5% of the vote for Ripken, and 97.6% for Gwynn. Ripken had the iron-man streak, 2 MVPs, 19 All-Star games, a Rookie of the Year, and two Gold Gloves. Gwynn has eight batting titles, five Gold Gloves, and 15 All-Star games. They both played in what's considered the fringe of the steroid era and neither of them received a unanimous selection. Why would things be any different for Bonds? Especially consider that the Baseball Hall of Fame has a morals clause wherein character, sportsmanship, and integrity are all heavily weighed. Wouldn't that be enough to keep Bonds from garnering 100% of the vote?

There are more questions that must be asked: Is Barry the greatest player ever? Should Bonds be the first player to receive the unanimous distinction? Will voters snub him of a first-ballot Hall of Fame vote because of all the Game of Shadows allegations that surround him? Lastly, is there any player worthy of a unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame? These are all questions you must ask yourself and try to come up with the answer.