It’s a question we’ve asked historians, authors, key commentators of our times, producers and fans across the web. In this new series, we’ll be featuring some of these insightful interviews with you.

Our first interview is with a man who needs no introduction: film producer Ken Burns.

Elizabeth Kanna:    This is Elizabeth Kanna with Joe DiMaggio, LLC, and I am very excited to have the Ken Burns on the line with me. Ken is a very unique film producer, and of all the amazing documentaries that he’s done, my absolute favorite, of course, is Baseball. (Though they’re all excellent.) Ken agreed to have a conversation about Joe and what Joe means to America.

Ken Burns:    Thank you, Elizabeth, I’m happy to do this.

EK:    The first question that I have is: What does Joe DiMaggio mean to you?

KB:    Well, I think he means a number of things, as I think he does to a lot of different people. He’s one of the iconic figures in the history of baseball—this sort of pure player with a seemingly effortless swing and gait, this elegant outfielder, and an amazing story. And also, one of those kind of quiet heroes that, at a time when baseball was the only sport in America—perhaps college football was nipping at its heels, perhaps the dark netherworld of boxing was a distraction to some—baseball was it. And Joe DiMaggio with it, one of the best players playing on the best team in the history of the game, the New York Yankees. (And I say that as a Red Sox fan, begrudgingly.)

[laughter]

So you’re dealing with one of the great iconic stars. And then of course in that brief moment, as the world is at war but the United States is not yet, he and Ted Williams have one of the most spectacular summers that any two players have ever had, ever. And it left us with the sense that these are works that are not going to be broken.

We’ve seen in our recent years, in very sad ways, a lot of records (i.e., the number of home runs hit in a season) broken once, twice, three times. We’ve watched the total career home runs broken and surpassed—both Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron’s records—in a sad sort of situation. But when one looks back and says, “What’s not going to happen again?” one’s fairly confident that no one’s going to hit .406 again, as Ted William did in the summer of ’41. I think we all agree that there’s something completely unassailable about a 56-game hitting streak. Joe DiMaggio was the proud owner of that record, and it looks like it is a durable, lasting thing that will not be broken.

EK:    Timeless.

KB:    And even if it is, then it marks the importance of baseball in our lives and the way in which we identify with players like DiMaggio. If you’re growing up in New York or you’re a Yankee fan, the identification with DiMaggio symbolizes the sense that baseball means so much more than the outcome of a box score. This is the sport that has accompanied every decade of our national narrative and reflects us, in good ways and bad. And we felt that our [Baseball] series was a perfect sequel to our Civil War series, because if you want to study American history, most people follow just presidential administrations punctuated by wars, but this is a much more interesting story. Those presidential administrations, those wars are there, but through baseball, you get a look at immigration and assimilation.

In fact, Joe DiMaggio is symbolic of an inclusion of a relatively recent immigrant group into the mainstream of America. It was not too many decades before he arrived that someone with a vowel at the end of his name would not have had a chance to play baseball. It was controlled by Englishman and those who had a vowel, an “o” often, at the beginning of their names. Then Germans were tolerated, and then, finally, central and southern Europeans. So there’s a great story, just as today we’re dominated by Hispanic and Asian players. There’s a great way in which baseball mirrors who we are, and I think that’s one of the glories of it. So even if his record is broken down the line, it will be such a national moment that it will only increase our respect for DiMaggio.

EK:    I think a lot of young people don’t appreciate that racial issue of an Italian player. And I love how you said in the beginning of Innings, Volume 6, that in 1941, baseball did become the “national pastime” with Jackie Robinson.

KB:    It did in large part because of what happened six years later, on April 15, 1947, when Jack Roosevelt Robinson, the son of a slave, made his way to first base at Abbott Field and changed not just baseball history but American social history at that moment. It was before Rosa Parks, it was before Brown vs. Board of Education, it was before the lunch counter demonstrations—it was before a lot of things, and Jackie broke the color line so heroically.

We’ve seen baseball at times just mirroring precisely who we were in terms of our acceptance of people. And there had been incredible resistance to Catholics and other immigrants from southern Europe and central Europe. And all of a sudden, when you make it in baseball, that’s a signal that maybe you as an ethnic group have achieved, however begrudgingly, a larger acceptance. And that’s an exciting thing to watch. And I like the fact that baseball quite often does that.

I mean, just think about it in other terms: What happens if you’re a racist, and you’re a Brooklyn Dodgers fan? What do you do when Jackie Robinson comes out? It seems to me you’ve got three options: 1) you can quit baseball altogether; 2) you can move to another team, but it’s inevitable that [things there are] are going to change; or 3) you’re gonna have to change. And that’s what happened—people changed.

EK:    Beautifully said. And that was one of my questions, of the streak and why it’s timeless—what it represents. There’s an amazing story in The National Pastime, when you covered Joe’s streak, where a gentleman talks about a friend of his who was just out of high school, and he was going across the country, and he went into a dusty diner where there were ranch hands and farm hands. It was during Joe’s streak, when it started to capture the nation in a very dark time in our history, and these ranch hands would walk in (there was no television, there was no internet, there was no Twitter to find out), and they would say, “Did he get a hit?”

KB:    “‘Did he hit one?’” Robert Creamer, the great baseball historian, talking about his friend Andy Creichton, who remembers the story. It’s an important moment. World War II has not yet happened to the United States, but a good deal of Europe is under Hitler’s control by now. I believe he’d already invaded the Soviet Union, breaking his own pact with other devil, Stalin, and it’s a very anxious time.

I think in some ways, baseball offered a kind of summer of distraction. But out of it came these two examples—and primarily I think the heroic example of Williams and DiMaggio—of excellence. What we were watching was a kind of perfection that we so very rarely see, and an elegance in both cases to that perfection, and so completely with Joe DiMaggio. And I think that’s what it was, and it just lit everyone on fire. It’s not dissimilar, even in an Internet age, to the summer of ’98, when we were more innocent and we thought this Sousa and McGuire thing was a hearkening back to that incredible moment, the summer of ’41. It turned out it wasn’t; these were steroid-fueled home run bursts. But I remember stopping at the outside of saloons and taverns and bars to see whether McGuire or Sousa was up to bat, and everyone stopping their coverage to go to that at bat. And that was exciting.

But we can’t really fully appreciate—as your excellent question sets up—that this was a country that had newspapers and had radios, and that was it. That was how we got our news about [the streak]. Maybe in the Saturday news reels, you’d get an update after the fact, but the notion that we all sort of held our breath (“Did he get one?  Did he get one?  Did he get a hit?”)—we were all in this together. And we bemoan, when we complain about our contemporary situation, the lack of civil discourse, the lack of sense of unity and common purposes and common cause. DiMaggio was the glue that kept us all stuck together that summer.

EK:    And I would like to think, if I can be so bold, that besides being an American icon, Joe represents all the great things about America—as you said, “the glue.” Joe represents the American Dream: that anyone, regardless of their ethnicity or their economic status, if they work hard and they persevere, they can create a new life for themselves and their family.

KB:    Yeah. That’s exactly right. This is what we promise—that we hope is the promise of America: that we do not favor the rich over the poor, the poor over the rich, but that your talent can take you as far as you can take that talent. And when you see an example of an immigrant kid, a fisherman’s son from the wharfs of San Francisco, making his way from the San Francisco Seals with an extraordinary set of Triple A seasons, and then this extraordinary professional career…This is a reminder to everybody of what is possible. It’s more often than not not possible.

In some ways, we also have to talk of the reverse side of this. You know: If Joe, with his incredible shyness and reticence and reluctance to speak to the press, was around today, how would he fare? Would people treat him the same way? There have been other ballplayers who have exhibited in the modern era, in baseball and in other sports, the same sort of relationship, and they’ve been dismissed as “arrogant” and “snobby” and whatever. At that time, Joe was just shy, and that’s how people described him. You know, somebody asked him for a quote once and he thought it was a soft drink.

EK:    I love that. That’s really one of my favorite Joe quotes.

And he represented humility, perseverance. He truly did love his fans, and he always played hard. I’m sure you know, with all the research you did, that he wasn’t taken with himself. He actually told his close friend, Morris Engelberg that he never really liked “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” He said, “I’m right here.”

He didn’t always like that lens constantly on him. He felt he did his job, he played hard, but one of his best quotes about him is, “He played hard because he never knew if somebody watching him, or a kid, and it was their first time seeing him.” And in that way he was like my father-in-law who was also of that era, where they could build a rocket ship out of a toaster in their garage—that generation of quiet perseverance, grace. There’s a little bit of longing for that, which we don’t have. And part of that is that we know everything about everybody now. Some things that we just should not know, and we should not judge people based on what our assumptions are, just because they’re quiet or shy. Not everybody lives their live well in a fish bowl.

KB:    I agree completely. And we do have to remember that there are aspects of Joe that are utterly modern. He held out for a salary raise, refused to play, and these are all things that we think are just part of the modern era. And I think it’s very important as we build the heroes of the past that we don’t do so one-dimensionally. Joe DiMaggio was a complicated human being, as we all are. And I think we do him a disservice if we just paint him as a statue collecting bird detritus and not show him as a real, complicated human being.

EK:    Which he was. And he had his idiosyncrasies like everybody else. But again, going back to what you said about “the glue”: Joe represents the hope and promise that you work hard—and it doesn’t happen overnight—but you work hard, and it isn’t just the outcome; it’s about showing up every day.

KB:    I like that. The thing that I think sticks with me about all the many stories about him is why he was lugging out a double; he said “because somebody may not have seen me before.” And I like that notion that every time you go up to the bat, you’re conscious of your role as a model.

EK:    That’s very important, yes.

KB:    Very, very important.

EK:    It’s not about the ego, not about the star; it was about the fans. It was about doing your job not for the fame and glory, but as long as you’re gonna be there, it’s about living in the moment. Put your best out there right then and work hard. Joe worked hard. It wasn’t handed to him. He worked very hard for it.

KB:    Yeah, I’m not sure that anybody’s been “handed” anything. But there’s always the worry that somebody’s going to get some extra break. I’m less worried about that than I am about the fact that this is a story about excellence. This is somebody who did what he did for a living extremely well, and elegantly. I mean, there’s nothing like that way he rounded the bases or the way he made the most difficult of fly balls look routine. And I love that about him; that’s what I will cherish.

EK:    The elegance. There are a lot of great stories that he would travel very lightly, with a couple of suits, and wash out his underwear himself. Again, not a pretentious guy at all. Yet when Joe walked anywhere, his fans followed him…in New York, in San Francisco. There were many famous individuals who would say, “When Joe DiMaggio gets out of a cab, he looks like an ad.”

KB:    Yep.

EK:    It was flawless.

KB:    Well, I think that that’s the nature of heroism, you know—that at the beginning, everybody is sort of a perfect person, and he had that sort of Greek-god-ness to him.

EK:    Absolutely. And that’s why—although he was a complicated individual—there’s a part of him that’s an icon. There’s a baseball player, a legend, and like baseball, he’s part of who we are. We all have that potential inside. We’re complicated, as you said earlier. We’re complicated people; we’re all human beings. But if we want it, and we work hard—yes, elegance and grace, he had it in droves—but if we push hard, we can create what our definition of the American Dream is. And it’s a time when it needs to be rebooted, when the American Dream is being redefined. But we do have that glue of what he represents, that hope.

KB:    You know, I think that there are always guideposts. This is why I’ve spent my entire professional life in the past, which is to find those individuals and those events that remind us—not because I want to live in the past, but because history is a set of questions we in the present ask of the past, and so it’s necessarily informed by our desires and our anxieties, our hopes and our fears. And the folks that we collect, in DiMaggio and Williams and Babe Ruth and others, are part of that. They help to define us by what we say is important, what we’ve set aside and said, “This was an important moment.”

That summer of ’41 was great; the arc of that career was great. And we don’t want to make too much of it, but you also don’t want to minimize it—particularly in cynical times when that seems to be what all people want to do, is say “Yes, but…”

EK:    Absolutely. And since I’m going to be at the [Joe DiMaggio Forever Stamp release] celebration (and we’re very sad that you won’t be there, but understand), what are your thoughts about Joe’s stamp? What are your thoughts on the fact that the United States Post Office is honoring our “All-Star” legend?

KB:    I don’t think you can you overstate the significance of that moment that started on May 15, 1941 and ended in July—that hitting streak. That is one of the great accomplishments in baseball. I can think of no other of more importance than except, say, Jackie Robinson’s arrival, because of how much baseball’s a very individual sport. The focus is on the pitcher who throws the pitch, the batter who hits it, and then the fielder who may have a chance to get it. It’s not everybody doing something at once; the focus is on one thing. And this is the only sport in which the defense has the ball, so it’s required of the offense to sort of have to take what’s given them—the pitch that comes their way. And Joe was able to do something over 56 consecutive games that no one else has ever been able to duplicate. And it’s so interesting that he’d had a 61-game hitting streak in the minors and that he went on another, I think, 28-game hitting streak afterwards.

EK:    And in the same year, he hit—

KB:    No, the next day!

EK:    The next day, yeah.

KB:    Yeah. Just amazing.

EK:    And it’s actually—no disrespect to baseball—but in all sports, it’s one of the most amazing records of any sport.

KB:    Yeah, the next day, he went on a 16-game hitting streak, which meant that he’d hit safely in 72 of 73 games. Puh-lease. That’s great.

EK:    That’s really hard to even fathom. So like you said, even if it is broken (and each year, there’s a possibility; someone gets to 30 and…), it won’t change what that streak meant.

KB:    No, no, no. I think it only amplifies it, because it’s the more distance between the actual achievement in the summer of ’41 and when it is—if it is, and I highly doubt that it will be—broken. It only just, again, enlarges.

If somebody appears as presidential as Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, that’s still good news for Lincoln and Roosevelt, you know? [laughter] It’s good news for that person who’s in that territory, but we’re also reaffirming their place. And that’s what this whole game is about: memory and history and self-definition. And in the game of baseball, there are very few people for whom the adjective “elegant” is attached to. And if you asked people to name a player based on the adjective first, I bet you 9 out of 10 people who know anything about baseball would say “DiMaggio” after the word “elegant.”

EK:    And people who actually saw him play said even from a distance, you didn’t even have to see the number, you knew Joe.

KB:    Oh, no. No, no, no. There’s a way, just as you know when you’re in love with the game, as we were (and still are, many of us). You don’t have to see the number on the back of the uniform. You see the way they walk to the plate, or the way they swing the bat, or the way they charge something, and you go, “Oh, my goodness, yes, that’s so and so. That’s Joe DiMaggio. I know that walk, I know that gait, I know that lope—the charge of the ball, the swing of the bat…”

EK:    Yes. I hope you have a chance to take a look at one of our first projects last year. We were tasked to create a flagship, iconic brand logo for Joe, and we created a silhouette of his swing that was so representative.

KB:    We know what that is. We know what that looked like, don’t we?

EK:    Yes.

KB:    Well, I hope this was helpful. I have to get back into the editing room.

EK:    This was wonderful. Thank you, and I really appreciate your time.

KB:    Not at all.

EK:    And if you decide to do a new movie on somebody that we both love, let me know.

[laughter]

KB:    I will. Okay.

EK:    Thank you so much, Mr. Burns, I really appreciate it.

KB:    Thank you. Please, “Ken.” And thank you, Elizabeth, and good luck in Cooperstown. I’m sure it’ll go wonderfully.

EK:    Thank you so much, Ken. Take care.

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 2

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 3

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 4

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 5

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 6

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 7

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 8

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.

Read More About The Streak: Game 9