Quick Hits on Joe DiMaggio and the Streak

• On this date in 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit in his 56th straight game. This would eventually become one of the most well-known, long-standing records in professional sports. He would never get another hit again. Until Friday. He got two on Friday! That's why everyone likes Fridays to this day.
• Also, people like to say that DiMaggio was denied his proposed incentive of $10,000 from Heinz after failing to set the record at 57. If this were true, it would also mean that Heinz was incentivizing a hitless game on Friday, so that the record could stick at 57. This would ruin Fridays. 
• So let me get this straight. Ketchup not only wants to ruin hotdogs with its existence (#mustardforever), but now it wants to ruin baseball? And Fridays?
• Ketchup is awful, and it only seeks to destroy our precious ballgame, and our precious hotdogs, and our precious ballgame hotdogs. 
• Joe DiMaggio got a walk in Game 57, and eventually extended his on-base streak to 74 games. Nobody noticed, however, because sabermetrics weren't a thing. Brad Pitt had not invented them yet.
• Along the way to 56, DiMaggio passed up players like Wee Willie Keeler and George Sisler.
• George Sisler is likely best known by younger generations as the guy whose record was recently broken by Ichiro Suzuki.   
• Although a Hall of Famer, Sisler is rarely mentioned along with the other hit kings like Cobb, Rose, Williams, DiMaggio, and Suzuki. If one were to look at historical photos of Sisler, they could assume that Sisler knew all of his records would be broken. Maybe he owned a time machine and figured it out. It would explain the face.

He even made the face while hitting. He was so disappointed. 

Back to DiMaggio...
The streak ended on Thursday. People were sad. The Heinz family wept. Mustard connoisseurs were happy not to see the game tainted by greed, corruption, red stains and gross aftertaste.  The Yankees won the game, and DiMaggio went on to win the MVP award. The Yankees finished the season strong and went on to beat the crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

And who knows? Maybe a new Yankee Star is on his way to earning an MVP and World Series berth. Time will tell. In the words of a beautiful elderly red-headed man, let's get back to this one.