Book interview: 1941

Editor’s note: My wife says these entries are too long. My wife studied some marketing back in college, and so she was explaining to me the various reasons why shorter and more frequent entries would get significantly more hits for this blog. And more hits, she says, equals more money. I must admit to not understanding the math on this:

Few hits x $0.00 = $0.00
Lots of hits x $0.00 = $0.00

In any case, I promised her I’d try it for a week – so for a time those long blogs with lots of different ridiculous thoughts will be broken up in to individual, bite-sized blogs with individual ridiculous thoughts. Is this a good idea?

First, though, we have to start with a relatively long entry. We have an interview with the brilliant New York Post columnist, author and groomsman at my wedding Mike Vaccaro. We talk a little .400, hitting streaks and all about his terrific new book: 1941 – the Greatest Year in Sports: Two Baseball Legends, Two Boxing Champs and the Unstoppable Thoroughbred Who Made History in the Shadow of War. You’ll want to buy the book.

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TSOB: OK, so the new book is called "1941: Lots of Really Cool Stuff Happened That Year." Well, it’s something like that. And the book is fabulous, of course. I want to talk more about modern day events with you here, but first I have to ask you: Ted Williams hit .400 in 1941. Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games that year. How bloody bad was American League pitching that year?

Vac: I actually had to look it up to make sure they weren't throwing underhanded that year. Actually, what's really amazing is if you look at just how brutal the entire American League was, not only in 1941 but throughout that era. You had the Yankees, of course, and the Red Sox were always fairly good. The Indians were competitive, and the White Sox and Tigers were representative. But think about the other three teams: the St. Louis Browns, the Washington Senators, and the Philadelphia Athletics. And here's the thing: you got to play SIXTY-SIX games a year against that collection of schmoes. Sixty-six! There are times, if you follow an AL East team, when it seems like you're always playing the Devil Rays. But those good teams were ALWAYS playing three of the most comical franchises in history. It's amazing third place in the AL didn’t win 103 games every year.

TSOB: Let's start with the concept of .400 – as you know, I’m fascinated by the number. You probably don't know this but some computer guy hacked into my blog and predicted -- using my name -- that Todd Helton was going to hit .400 this year. Someone needs to prosecute these people. But that aside do you think .400 is possible now, with night games, specialty relievers, better defenders, hard sliders and the intense glare of the media?

Vac: Here's the thing I find fascinating about media/fan attention in 1941 for Williams: Think about the last day of the season, when he so famously went 6-for-8 to get to .406. Not only were there only the six traveling Boston writers in the press box that day, but there were only 10,000 people in the stands. Think about that. What's the worst baseball city in America now? Probably Tampa Bay or Miami, right? If, say, Alex Gordon ever goes into the last day of the season hitting .399, that building is going to be overflowing.

So you factor that into the other stuff. Seriously, again, think about what happens if Gordon (OK, let's switch that to Derek Jeter) goes into game 162 hitting .399555. Think about all the things that'll surround that day, things that didn't happen in '41

1) There'll be 55,000 people there.
2) Every New York paper will have three people there.
3) Talk radio will go absolutely bonkers, with some of them yelling at how crazy Jeter is to risk .400, and others yelling that he damn well better not sit on .399955.
4) Every at-bat will be televised, available everywhere in the world.
5) Every swing will be analyzed and overanalyzed.
6) Even the most brutal major league pitcher in 2007 has a splitter, or a slider, or a sinker that pitchers just didn't have in their repertoire in 1941

And that's just the last day of the season. The two weeks leading up to it would be just as crazy. You know the only way I think it'll happen? If someone like Chase Utley is hitting .402 in the second week of September, before the horde joins up but after he gets the necessary 502 plate appearances, and then he breaks his ankle.

TSOB: You know another thing that will happen – there would be a national throng of media as well. Seriously, last day of the season, Derek Jeter trying for .400 – there might be more than 10,000 MEDIA MEMBERS at the game. I’m exaggerating for effect, of course. But only slightly.

One thing I've noticed is that the guys who have come closest to hitting .400 – Williams in 1941 and again in 1957, Carew in 1977, Brett in 1980, Gwynn in 1994 -- none of them were legging out too many infield hits. I suppose Carew would lay down some bunts, but among the Top 10 batting averages since 1941, I'd say the only guy who really relied a lot on his speed was Ichiro in 2004 (when he hit .372). What do you make of this?

Vac: I think it says that of all the things people have praised Ted Williams about, the fact that "he did all that and NEVER got any leg hits" is probably the single most overrated. Seriously, unless you're talking about Jose Reyes, how many guys really get more than eight or nine genuine "leg hits" over the course of a season? A guy who hits .400 is going to hit .400 because he hits the hell out of the ball every time up, and takes his chances that more often than not his line drives are gonna fall in.

By the way, here's another "wives’ tale" in regards to Williams; there has long been this thinking that he was too proud to try and foil the Williams Shift by hitting it to left field. The truth is that while he was primarily a dead pull hitter, he was never afraid to go to left field if someone were shifting him. Jimmy Dykes of the White Sox tried that in '41 one game, Williams saw that and shouted from home plate "Jimmy, you're a fool SOB" or whatever they said in those days, then he ripped a ball right over the third base bag.

TSOB: Who are the five guys these days who would have the best shot at hitting .400 and why?

1) Chase Utley -- There are times you wonder how anyone ever gets him out. He had the right idea when he had a big hitting streak last year (just don't talk about it), and he has enough speed so that if ever did need to get an infield hit late in the year he could do it.

2) Ichiro -- Especially if he winds up playing at Fenway Park next year. Good lord, the thought of him taking aim at the Monster five times a game. Scary.

3) Derek Jeter -- We know the pressure wouldn't get to him, and in any given year he could be sitting in the middle of a lineup that would offer more protection than any other.

4) Todd Helton -- Because at Coors Field, anything's possible.

5) Andruw Jones -- but only if you are allowed to multiply by two.

TSOB: Hey, maybe you’re the guy who broke into the blog and wrote about Helton. … OK, here's a sportswriter question -- or three of them:

1. When do you hit in enough straight game for it to be a streak?
Vac: I say 14 games. Two weeks' worth of baseball tells you it's not an aberration, but something legit.

2. When is a "streak" worthy of putting into a newspaper?
Vac: Well, if it's the hometown team, then 14 ought to be just right. Otherwise, out of deference to DiMaggio, I think it should be when you get exactly halfway home. To me, wake me up when you get to 28.

3. When does a streak become front page news?
Vac: I'd say it was nice of Pete Rose to give us a fairly memorable number -- 44 -- and I think that makes it a perfect Page One reference point. At 44, you have a chance to become No. 2. And you're within two weeks of the record. And that's when the crush will really come down.

TSOB: OK, you point out in the book just how amazing the DiMaggio streak really was -- mathematically, it's a virtual impossibility for a .357 hitter (which is what DiMaggio was that year) to hit in 56 straight games. But I've always thought this was kind of an odd record too -- really, who cares if you get a hit in every game? I mean without taking away from the performance, do you think it would have been as big a deal if it had been done by, say, Cecil Travis?

Vac: Or Pete Rose, for that matter. No. Let's face it, when DiMaggio set the record, it hadn't really been THAT much of a big deal. No one wrote songs about George Sisler when he hit in 41 straight (the same year he was the last AL player before Williams to hit .400; Sisler's name was in the papers a lot in '41). And the extra funny thing is, for about 10 days people were speculating about Sisler's record ... then all of a sudden someone dug up Wee Willie Keeler's 44-gamer back in the 1890s (when foul balls weren't strikes, and walks counted as hits, and men were men, and so forth).

Really, I think the streak gave people a reason to idolize Joe DiMaggio even more than they already did, and once the streak belonged to him that's what made it such a piece of Americana. Of course, now, because it's DiMaggio's streak we're talking about, the man who challenges it would be a big deal, too.

TSOB: Speaking of media glare -- nobody could hit in 56 straight games now, right? And let's say somebody did hit in 55 straight games and then his team was playing the Cardinals, and there was a runner on second with the winning run, and he came up with the record on the line. LaRussa would walk him, wouldn't he?

Vac: I'm convinced that if Tony LaRussa was managing Denny McLain in 1968, he would have put him on waivers for serving up that meatball to Mickey Mantle, thirty-one wins or no thirty-one wins. I'm convinced that LaRussa would have had his pitcher bean Eddie Gaedel. I'm convinced that LaRussa would have had Dale Mitchell try a drag bunt on Don Larsen with two out and nobody on in the top of the ninth. I'm convinced that LaRussa is a humorless bastard.

But I digress ...

It's funny. The way I separate Williams and DiMaggio from 1941 is this way: I think someone hitting 2-for-5 for six months is by far the more difficult achievement. But I think hitting in 56 straight is the more impossible achievement.

It's a very quirky thing. Seriously: say a guy who's hit in 34 in a row needs a day off, his team's played two day-night doubleheaders in a row and he's cooked. Well ... what happens in his day off if he's needed as a pinch hitter? Can a manager NOT use him and not then be fired on the spot for malpractice? And here's a goofy quirk I only learned last year when Jeter had a hitting streak: if you go 0-for-0 with four walks, the hitting streak survives. I had Bill Shannon, the greatest official scorer who ever lived, explain passionately for 10 minutes why that's a good rule, and I love Bill to death, but there's something about that that strikes me as wrong.

How about this one: in '41, sportswriters were the official scorers, and there was a definite ethical dilemma attached to the possibility of a sportswriter's hit/error call extending/stopping the streak. But what about now, when the scorers are de facto employees of major league baseball? Obviously it's good business for baseball to have people obsessing over hitting streaks, right?

TSOB: Same five guys with the best shot to hit in 56 straight as hit .400?

Vac: Actually, I would put Jeter on top of that list. Every year he assembles one hitting streak after another. I could see him getting to 40 at some point before he's done. And since the Andruw Jones answer was a goofy answer, I'll sub David Wright, who has shown a knack for extending hitting streaks in his last time at-bat throughout his career. Of course, it's one thing to extend from 18 to 19 and another to go from 38 to 39 ...

TSOB: Another topic: A lot of people don't know -- I didn't know -- that even though Bob Feller volunteered for service one day after Pearl Harbor -- he was the first player in baseball to volunteer, wasn't he? -- people actually gave him a rough time. How is that possible?

Vac: That was really shocking, I have to tell you. I was sitting in the archives at the Library of Congress, reading old Cleveland Presses and Plain Dealers, and it was astonishing: every day in the final weeks of the '41 season, the papers were STUFFED with letters to the editors from angry fans just KILLING Feller, calling him all kinds of terrible names, draft dodger among them. It was a very different time, and Feller did a few things that were terribly misinterpreted.

First off, a writer asked him once if he'd consider asking if he could pitch on weekend and take a furlough from Army camp. It was a ridiculous question, and Feller had fun with it, saying something like, "Only if the Indians can move home games to the army base in Tennessee." But he didn't say "no," so some people actually took him serious. Also, it wasn't unusual for celebrities' draft questionnaires to be leaked to the press; in Feller's he wrote (as he had a perfect right to do) that his father was gravely ill, and he was the family's lone support. When this hit the papers, some letter writers claimed Feller was lying about his father (I suppose they changed their minds when the poor man wound up dying in 1942) or that Feller should sell the family farm and move them to more affordable quarters before signing up for the army.

I was fascinated by this. I asked Feller if he remembered. And you bet he did. But he said he didn't blame them, that people were "on edge all the time" back then. And then he told me he was from Van Meter, Iowa, just 17 miles from Des Moines.

TSOB: I heard something about that – you know he has a museum there? (This is an inside joke, and one probably not worth explaining, but a few years ago I had an interview with Feller and during the interview he must have told me 25 times that his museum was in Van Meter, which was only 17 miles from Des Moines. I put that quote in the column three or four times, which – rightfully – ticked off Feller. He semi-ripped me at his appearance the next day. But even there, he mentioned again that his museum is 17 miles from Des Moines. … Earlier this year I went to the museum. Bob’s right. Seventeen miles. Almost exactly).

One of the many great things about the book is that it captures a different sports America. Besides for baseball, the stars of your book are Whirlaway, the horse that won the Triple Crown, and a fight -- Louis-Conn at Yankee Stadium in the middle of the summer. Those were really the big three in America at the time, with a little college football in there and some track and field, maybe a little billiards. Why do you think America's sports interests changed so much? Television? The war? What?

Vac: Television exposed more people to football, so that helped. And more people started going to college after the war, helping to expand basketball's popularity, so that helped. But boxing was on TV a lot in the '50s too, and so was horse racing. I think football simply replaced boxing as the place where the American blood lust could be satisfied, and horse racing simply remained what it always was: a pleasant thing to witness in person, especially if you have money on the race, and something that's only occasionally interesting otherwise.

TSOB: Your Web site (www.mike-vaccaro.com) looks fabulous. Who designed that thing?

Vac: That would be the wonderful and talented Margo Keller Posnanski, who should design these pages full time, allowing you to retire to being a fulltime country squire/gentleman author.

TSOB: The Soul of Baseball heartily endorses this possibility. Maybe shorter and more frequent blogs will lead to this country squire thing.