56 Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

by Kennedy, Kostya

• ISBN13: 9781603201773
• ISBN10: 1603201777
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-08
• Publisher: Sports Illustrated

Summary

Seventy baseball seasons ago, on May 15, 1941 at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio lined a hard single to leftfield in the first inning. It would be his only hit of the game. No one paid it any notice; after all, the Yanks lost 13-1. Who knew that this would be the start of the most resonant baseball achievement of all time? Beginning that day, the vaunted Yankee centerfielder kept on hitting-at least one hit in game after game after game. In the summer of 1941, as Nazi forces moved inexorably across Europe and young American men were drafted by the millions, it seemed only a matter of time before the U.S. went to war. The nation was apprehensive. Yet for two months in that tense summer, America was captivated by DiMaggio's incredible hitting streak. In 56 , Kostya Kennedy tells the remarkable story of how the streak found its way into countless lives, from the Italian kitchens of Newark to the San Francisco streets of North Beach to the Oval Office of FDR to the Upper West Side apartment where Joe's first wife Dorothy, the movie starlet, was expecting a child. Joe DiMaggio comes alive-a driven ballplayer, a mercurial star and a conflicted husband-as the tension and the scrutiny upon him build with each passing day. DiMaggio's achievement lives on as the greatest of sports records. Inside the story of DiMaggio's dramatic quest, Kennedy examines the peculiar nature of hitting streaks and gets inside the number itself, as its sheer improbability heightens both the math and the magic of 56 games in a row.

Author Biography

Kostya Kennedy, a senior editor at Sports Illustrated since 1994, has written on a wide range of topics, including cover stories, features and lead editorials. He spearheaded the magazine's Scorecard section, is the editor of SI's The Hockey Book, is a frequent columnist on SI.com and appears regularly on sports talk shows.

Before arriving at Sports Illustrated, Kennedy was a staff writer at Newsday and wrote for The New York Times and The New Yorker. He graduated with a B.A. from Stony Brook, and received an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he was named a Pulitzer fellow.