DiMaggio kisses his bat following his great 1941 season.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak began on this day in 1941 with a humble RBI single against the Chicago White Sox. The Yankee Clipper wouldn’t be held hitless again until July 16.

That record streak remains one of the most hallowed and admired marks in sports. Andre Ethier of the Los Angeles Dodgers made headlines early this season by putting together a hitting streak barely half as long. In 71 years, no one has come within 12 games of DiMaggio’s record.

Starting today, we’ll “cover” DiMaggio’s streak in real time, but 71 years later.

This series, “Reliving Joe DiMaggio’s Streak,” will include guest posts from sports writers, celebrities and even insights from DiMaggio himself, whose archive contains personal commentary on the streak as it was unfolding.

We begin with Day 1 of the streak.

May 15, 1941

The spring of 1941 arrived amid a grim economic and global political landscape.

The financial footing of many Americans remained tentative as the nation continued to extract itself from the Great Depression.

Phil Rizzuto, here in a posed shot, scored on DiMaggio's single.

Across the Atlantic, a vile German regime was tightening its grip on Europe. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Holland, Belgium, Norway and Yugoslavia were in Nazi hands.

Systematic brutalization of Jewish people was under way and the British House of Commons had been damaged in a German air raid.

On May 15, Luftwaffe captain and physician Sigmund Rascher requested permission to use prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp as test subjects for cruel medical experiments.

An ocean away, baseball remained the national pastime, helping ease the pain, creating a diversion from the rugged times.

In the Bronx, on the afternoon of May 15, the Yankees surveyed the field and contemplated the lackluster start of their 1941 season. Playing .500 ball and hanging onto fourth place, the Yanks had lost four straight games and eight of the past 10.

Joe DiMaggio, of all people, was mired in a slump. How the Yankee Clipper went, so went his pinstriped teammates. The .500 record fell, by most accounts, on the shoulders of the great center fielder.

DiMaggio hadn’t hit consistently since the early weeks of the season. He’d gone hitless in four at-bats the previous day against the Cleveland Indians and had managed only 14 hits in 72 at-bats since April 22.

The Chicago White Sox were at Yankee Stadium that May 15, jumping to a quick 2-0 lead before the Yankees even came to bat.

Chicago pitcher Eddie Smith was already working with two outs in his favor when DiMaggio stepped to the plate in the bottom of the first inning.

With Phil Rizzuto at second base, Smith fired a fastball. DiMaggio didn’t waste his opportunity. His line drive landed safely in left center field: an RBI single.

The Yankees would lose the game, 13-1. But unknown to anyone on the field or in the stands, an unimaginably brilliant and never-duplicated, spirit-inspiring run on the record books had just begun.

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Reliving Joe DiMaggio’s Streak, Game 2: May 16, 1941

New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy was in a foul mood. His team had slipped a game under .500 in embarrassing fashion. That 13-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox the day before had been lackluster.

He needed to light a fire under his Bronx Bombers. In what would eventually be a 6-5 victory over Chicago on this day, he got his spark from two very different sources.

Sure, Joe DiMaggio could be counted on—his 2-for-4 outing included a mammoth homer to left and a ninth-inning triple that set the stage for the come-from-behind win.

But the Yankees were also catching lightning in a bottle from journeyman catcher Buddy Rosar.

The Buffalo native was a crowd favorite, but would toil in obscurity as he played behind eventual Hall of Famer Bill Dickey. However, six weeks into the season, Rosar was white-hot and McCarthy knew a guy hitting .488 needed to stay in the lineup.

In beating the Sox before another disappointing crowd—only 5,616 at Yankee Stadium—Rosar went 2-for-3, threw a runner out at second, doubled and scored.

Dickey—despite hitting .372—was again on the bench, playing late for defensive purposes.

This flicker of heart by the Yanks was the dose of medicine the doctor ordered. Still 6 1/2 games behind Cleveland, New York would begin its long climb back to the top.

Luke Appling, seen here in 1986, caught one of DiMaggio's line drives. Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Reliving Joe DiMaggio’s Streak, Game 3: May 17, 1941

New York scribes were hopeful that the previous day’s last-ditch rally was a portent of things to come for the Yankees.

It was not be—not yet, as on May 17, more than 10,000 watched Chicago White Sox pitcher Johnny Rigney outduel Spud Chandler, 3-2.

Joe DiMaggio lined a mid-game single, walked and scored. Nothing press-stopping. Mere mortals would have been praised for DiMaggio’s .311 batting average. But this was the Big Apple. Of the seven daily newspapers, two wrote about Joe’s “slump” continuing.

However, rookie shortstop Phil Rizzuto, 50 years later, remembered DiMaggio’s mystical season. Even his outs started to get loud.

“After the streak started, he hit nothing but bullets,” Rizzuto said. “Even the outs were ripped. I was glad I didn’t have to play the infield in front of him because he hit shots that took off your glove—and sometimes your hand with it.”

This afternoon was particularly unkind to Joe. Both of his outs were hard hit. A nice running catch by a former teammate, the diminutive Myril Hoag, in left and a line drive right at shortstop Luke Appling accounted for the two DiMaggio outs.

The Yankees nonetheless teased their fans again. Trailing 3-1 going into the final frame, the Pinstripes rallied for a run before Rigney retired the final two hitters.

The only solace: Front-running Cleveland had lost, too.

JoeDiMaggio.com is the official and authorized Web site of Joe DiMaggio. During the 70th anniversary of DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, it is publishing “Reliving Joe DiMaggio’s Streak,” which follows the daily progress of Joltin’ Joe in 1941.

Mel Allen became the voice of the Yankees in 1939, but in '41 the Bombers were off the air.

Reliving Joe DiMaggio’s Streak, Game 4: May 18, 1941

Today’s sports fans are numbed by the avenues of information available.

The 6 o’clock news is stale two hours later. ESPN, Fox Sports, talk radio, the Internet, Twitter: For some, it’s a blur. For others an obsession.

But 71 years ago, telephones were tethered to the wall and television was a curiosity (demonstrated before incredulous onlookers at the World’s Fair only a year earlier).

Commercial radio had been in existence for two decades. But in 1941, no radio stations broadcast Yankees play-by-play.

Fans who were not at the ballpark had to wait for game results to be printed in the newspaper hours later—or the next day. Highlights were shown a week or more later in newsreels played between double features at movie houses.

The only sure way a Yankee fan could get in on the action during that ’41 season was by forking over 55 cents and warming a bleacher seat—or a buck for a box seat—in Yankee Stadium.

Yankees games had been broadcast on the radio before the 1941 season, although somewhat reluctantly. Team owners feared— to some extent rightfully so—that play-by-play broadcasts would diminish ticket sales.

But they also realized that broadcasts promoted the team for a solid two hours (or more) on the airwaves. Under that guarded curtain of ambivalence, Mel Allen began a streak of his own in 1939, a 25-year run as the voice of the Yankees on WABC radio.

But lack of sponsorship eliminated radio broadcasting throughout the 1941 season. The same fate befell New York Giants broadcasts that year.

The 30,109 fans who went to Yankee Stadium on Sunday, May 18, came out winners along with the Bronx Bombers. That was the beginning of a three-day homestand against the St. Louis Browns. Behind Lefty Gomez, the Yanks pummeled the hapless Browns, 12–2, delivering the third successive loss to St. Louis, kicking them into the American League basement.

Oh, and Joe DiMaggio. At the top of his game that day, Joltin’ Joe went 3-for-3 – including reaching on an interference call. His double drove in a run and he scored three times.

The Yanks, 16-16 at the end of the day, were tied with Boston in fourth, chasing Detroit, and 6 1/2 games behind Cleveland.

The Bismarck, 1941. The largest battleship ever built.

When Joe DiMaggio went to spring training in 1941, there was some concern that his throwing arm was giving him trouble, even affecting his batting.

Columnists and beat writers in New York were quick to put the microscope on DiMaggio. In each of his previous three campaigns, Joltin’ Joe had been injured. They were niggling injuries—most of which DiMaggio played through—but his apparently aching arm became a topic of discussion early on.

A columnist in the World-Telegram was so concerned he pointed out that after hitting .381 in 1939, DiMaggio “fell” to .352 in 1940.

“For some reason Guiseppe has been kept in rather low spirit because of his arm troubles. He had most disturbing visions and his hitting suffered.”

Such was New York and the white-hot heat seven daily newspapers could keep on a story or a person, each publication looking for an angle…accurate or not.

The SOS from the World-Telegram came on the last day of March—the same day that the Yankee franchise hit a home run, three doubles and raised his spring average to .429 in a 16-4 shellacking of the San Antonio Missions of the Texas League.

Later, on May 19, 1941, DiMaggio was hitting .328. Top 10 in the American League, but he was doing it in the most demanding sports city on the planet. For the fans, .328 didn’t cut it—and it was certainly not good enough for scribes of the day. Wasn’t there a guy in Boston hitting over .400?

When the Yankees dropped a 5-1 decision to the lowly St. Louis Browns at Yankee Stadium that day, DiMaggio’s double was one of only four New York hits. At 16-17, the Yanks had fallen to fourth place and trailed front-running Cleveland by 6.5 games.

But there was worse news that day: Germany had just launched the Bismarck, a dreadnought that was the largest battleship ever built. With its guardian angel Prinz Eugen nearby, the Bismarck was en route to shut off the America-to-England shipping lanes.

For some New Yorkers, the Yankee record was the least of their worries. Greater United States involvement in World War II was at hand.

Joe DiMaggio's Hitting Streak

Three Italian-American ballplayers from North Beach in San Francisco.

Crosetti and Lazzeri played against each other in the old Pacific Coast League – and had been teammates for several years in the Big Apple before DiMaggio entered their pin-striped world with an explosion – a rookie season for the ages.

The 21-year-old kid was called up on May 3, 1936. New York fans had heard about this guy, a right-handed power hitter who glided through the outfield like a gazelle bounding over the plains.

But this was New York. The Big Leagues. When DiMaggio arrived, the Yankee faithful collectively stared at the curiosity.

There was that 61-game hitting streak that DiMaggio had as a 19-year-old. Some fans dismissed that achievement, however, because it occurred in the minors. Oh, and what about that .398 batting average in the PCL?

“Let’s see how he does against major-league pitching,” Yankees manager Joe McCarthy said two days before his new outfielder arrived.

When DiMaggio stepped to the plate for the first time in the first inning against the horrible St. Louis Browns, Crosetti was on second. Past accomplishments meant nothing now. On this Sunday, DiMaggio was batting third – in front of legends Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey. The pressure was on.

First pitch from Browns hurler Jack Knott: “Stttteeeerike!”

The second pitch to DiMaggio found a home safely in left field. Crosetti scored, the crowd of more than 25,000 at Yankee Stadium erupted, and so began the Hall of Fame career of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio.

He’d go 3-for-6 in the 14-5 blowout. He scored three times and drove in Crosetti during that four-run first.

When the dust settled in yet another World Championship season, DiMaggio had hit .325 with 206 hits, 132 runs scored, 125 RBI.

On May 20, 1941, DiMaggio went 1-for-5. A six-game hitting streak. Still, nobody had in mind that Joe was on a magical journey.

Right now, all fans cared about was this 10-9 victory, getting New York back to .500.

Joe DiMaggio, Yankee Stadium 1941

In a 5-4 victory over the visiting Detroit Tigers, Joe DiMaggio could have had a huge day—a huge in day in almost any ballpark, except Yankee Stadium.

Two singles in five trips were enough to drive in the winning run and raise the Yankee Clipper’s average to .325. The Streak was now at a modest seven games.

But the unforgiving dimensions of Yankee Stadium cost Joe on this day—as it would on many other afternoons throughout his career.

Hitters needed a bus transfer to reach the center field fence, some 461 feet away. Then there was the left-center power alley, 457 feet from home plate. With straightaway left measured at 415 feet, a right-handed hitter—like DiMaggio—needed to launch a missile to hit a homer.

Pat Mullin, a journeyman center fielder for the Tigers, made two catches of deep DiMaggio drives—one nestled up against the fence.

Few players in baseball history were hurt as much by his home park configuration as was DiMaggio. (If you tracked all of his “outs” to center, left and left-center field and then placed these hit balls in the current Yankee Stadium. The result: 750-plus home runs.)

He hit .315 with 148 home runs in Yankee Stadium. On the road, his average was .333 with 213 homers. No major league player with 300 or more career home runs hit as high a percentage on the road.

Two hundred miles away, in Boston, Ted Williams was almost as challenged by Fenway Park.

Williams, a left-handed hitter, dealt with a power alley in right center that ranged from 380 to 420 feet. He also smacked more circuit clouts on the road than at home—273 on the road, 248 at home. Williams’ average at home, however, was a torrid .361 (.328 away from Fenway).

Had DiMaggio played at Fenway, the left-center field fence would have been an inviting 379 feet from the plate. Williams, at Yankee Stadium, would have had that short right-field porch at which Babe Ruth aimed all those years.

The discussion reverberated among fans and in newspapers about how much more effective the two sluggers might have been had they played in each others’ park—so much so that in 1947, Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and Yankees general manager Larry MacPhail had agreed to trade DiMaggio for Williams.

The deal, to the relief of most Yankees fans, fell through. The reason? MacPhail refused to “throw in” a rookie catcher—Yogi Berra.

Hank Greenberg In a New Uniform

As 10,156 fans filed into Yankee Stadium on a crystal-clear spring day, two things were becoming evident.

The Bronx Bombers were re-establishing their position, and the visiting Detroit Tigers were a mere shell of their former selves—thanks to losing Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg to the military draft.

Greenberg, who was the junior circuit’s Most Valuable Player in 1940 when the Bengals won the pennant, was the first American Leaguer to be drafted under President Franklin Roosevelt’s new conscription edict.

“I made up my mind to go when I was called,” Greenberg told the Detroit Free Press. “My country comes first.”

The Tigers, struggling at 16-16, clearly could have used Big Hank’s numbers in the middle of a weakened lineup. Greenberg had hit 50 doubles, 41 home runs, batted .340 and drove in 150 runs the year before.

DiMaggio’s league-leading .352 average deprived the Tiger first baseman of a triple crown in 1940.

But duty called Greenberg, and the rest of the AL was taking advantage of his absence. Detroit was in fifth, the Yankees were third and climbing.

Again, DiMaggio’s outing was nothing special: 1-for-4 with an RBI in a 6-5 win. But as bright as the sun was on this day, so were the Yankees’ prospects.

New York had won four games in a row. Attendance would climb and, by mid-summer, the Yankees would be where their fans believed they rightfully belonged—in first place.

On the sports pages of the Big Apple, the big news would be New Jersey boxer Gus Lesnevich beating Anton Christoforidis for the National Boxing Association World Light Heavyweight title at the sold-out old Madison Square Garden. Lesnevich would hold the crown until 1948.

Now, the whole baseball world would turn its eyes to Yankee Stadium—a weekend series with the Boston Red Sox loomed. Ted Williams was bringing his .374 average to town.

This was going to be fun. It always was—and still is: the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. A weekend series in the Bronx, featuring Joe’s brother Dom and Teddy Ballgame.

“Ted, DiMaggio? You two ever trade places?” asked the media.

A photographer yells out: “Ted, Joe. Got a second for a picture?”

“Hey, Joe! I’d like to get a picture with you and your brother,” came another request from a photographer.

Flashbulbs popped, fans milled around the railings, excitement was always in the air, for when these two franchises met, something special always seemed to happen.

Dom DiMaggio, Joltin’ Joe’s younger brother, was playing All-Star-caliber centerfield for the Sox. Several scribes were comparing the bespectacled Dom’s fielding prowess with that of his brother.

Even though Dom was at this point hitting for a higher average (.339), no one dared hint that he was a better hitter than Joe.

Beneath threatening skies—holding the Friday afternoon crowd to only 8,584—the two archrivals had their hitting shoes on in a 9-9 game shortened by the elements and darkness.

The Bosox banged out 13 hits, including two by Dom. Williams drove in three runs with a single and a groundout.

Meanwhile, Joe went 1-for-5 as his average dipped to .319. The Streak, however, survived at nine straight.

Again, it was a day that DiMaggio, playing in another ballpark, might have been a one-man wrecking crew.

The year before, Joe gave then-rookie Dom advice: “I told him to play a little deeper here. Maybe 12 steps back.”

On May 23, 1941, the Yankee Clipper wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

“I came up twice in the game with the bases loaded, and both times I hit the ball into the alley. Four-hundred and fifty feet away,” the Baseball Almanac quotes DiMaggio. “Home runs in any other park.

“Well, with each time, my own brother robbed me by making catches on the warning track. Instead of a possible eight RBI, or at least five or six, I got nothing.

“That night Dom came over to my place for dinner. I remember letting him in the door and then not speaking to him until we were almost done eating. I was that mad.”

Joe DiMaggio. The Swing

Earl Lewis lived in the Upper West Side of New York City. Just a couple of blocks from the American Museum of Natural History at 79th Street and Central Park West, Lewis’ digs were simple, inexpensive and, besides, he figured something big was in his life.

At 21, he wasn’t sure yet, but he knew he’d find his destiny in New York City.

His apartment, a little studio, was inexpensive. There were five small flats just like Lewis’ on his second floor.

“It was $38 a month. I was making about $11 a day waiting at two restaurants,” Lewis told The Davis (Calif.) Enterprise newspaper 60 years later. “I had energy. Things weren’t very expensive. You could buy a loaf of bread for 10 cents. Milk was like 20 cents a gallon. I had a friend in Fort Lee (New Jersey) with a car.

“For 19 cents a gallon, and the top down, we were kings of the world.”

But Lewis lived for two things: Wednesday afternoons at Yankee Stadium and watching Joe D. hit.

“That stance. Spread, bat back. Seemingly able to handle anything,” the late Lewis told the newspaper. “He had no weak spots. He was unflappable. At the plate he was dynamic, a vision, frightening to all opposing pitchers.”

Lewis, for now, had the world by the tail. He had spending money. The economy finally felt like it was turning around.

On Saturday, May 24, with the Red Sox still in town, Lewis had to work. Meanwhile, so did the Yankees.

With the Yanks trailing 6-3 going into the bottom of the seventh, DiMaggio was 0-for-3. Two on, one out with Earl Johnson on the mound, DiMaggio probably hoped Johnson would try to get on top in the count. He guessed right: that first-pitch fastball was lined to center, scoring two and setting the stage for what would be a game-winning, four-run rally.

When Lewis got the news, he was delighted.

“I had the next day off,” Lewis explained.

Instead of riding around with friends, he was headed to 161st Street in the Bronx. Sunday, no work, Ted Williams vs. DiMaggio.

Heaven on Earth.

Lewis died in 2001. But he found his calling—not in the Big Apple, but in California as an engineer in the aerospace industry. He never forgot his formative years in New York, though.

“Nobody has ever been better than DiMaggio,” Lewis reminded anybody who would listen. “Nobody. Ever.”