To sports enthusiasts everywhere!
To the editor:
As you may know, this year, 2016 is the 75th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s incredible feat of hitting safely in 56 consecutive games. The Major League Baseball Network is doing a day-by-day story of this special athletic achievement. Joe DiMaggio’s string of hitting safely in 56 straight games started on May 15, 1941.
I was born and raised in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. The story below is Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio’s little known connection with my hometown. I hope you enjoy Don Carney’s (my long-time friend) article as much as I have:
Jon Larsen Shudlick
Fort Myers
Remembering Joltin’ Joe’s Visit
By Don Carney
As the holiday season arrived over seventy years ago, Rice Lake, was all abuzz with the thought that Joe DiMaggio and his wife, Dorothy, would visit relatives here early in the new year. “Joltin’ Joe” was a household name by then. After he joined the New York Yankees in the spring of 1936, they won four straight pennants and four World Series with Joe leading them every inch of the way. This included 46 home runs in 1937 and a .381 batting average in 1939. He was known far and wide as a graceful hitter, and he only struck out 21 times during the entire 1938 season.
In 1937 Joe met movie starlet Dorothy Arnoldine Olson, who used the stage name Dorothy Arnold, on a movie set in Hollywood, and they were married after the 1939 baseball season. Dorothy hailed from Duluth, where her Dad was a railroad man and where her mother and dad lived with her sister Irene. Joe had given Dorothy a 4-1/2-carat diamond ring, which Irene said was “absolutely humongous.” Other friends of Dorothy and Joe in New York referred to it as a “locomotive headlight.” A Duluth reporter described Dorothy, a blue-eyed blonde, as “so utterly beautiful it hurt to look at her.”
The 1940 baseball season was a downer for the Yankees, and Dorothy told Joe that they should drive to San Francisco in November to see his family and then to Duluth for Christmas. Then on the last leg of the journey, they would stop in Rice Lake to visit her sister Joyce Hadley. Joyce was married to Les Hadley, who was a salesman for the Minnesota Flour Company; and they were renting an apartment on North Main Street.
Joe and Dorothy arrived quietly just after New Year’s Day, and that evening the apartment was filled with friends and relatives. As they sat around talking, the men all stared at Dorothy, who was the life of the party. Joe, who tended to be moody, suddenly got up and walked out and was found about a half-hour later by Les, in a tavern, nursing a beer. The following evening, Bob Yarish, who was a high school senior then and still lives here, decided to stroll over to the bowling lanes at 12 W. Eau Claire Street. Bob was met by owner Harry Whitney, who said, “How would you like to roll a line with Joe DiMaggio?” A very surprised Bob said yes he would, and they both rolled 111 scores. Bob recently said that he thought Joe may never have bowled before that time. See Bob for more details of that memorable day. Joe returned to the alley the next day and rolled 126 and 178 while Dorothy scored 115 and 135. Les Hadley easily beat everyone with a sterling score of 230. Star Rice Lake bowler Milt Fredrickson got Joe’s autograph, but told friends later he was rather miffed that Joe did not ask for his. Milt had rolled three competitive 700 series in the previous month with a top single game score of 278.
The Chronotype sent a 17-year old reporter-not Warren Leary Jr.-to interview Joe at the apartment a day or so later. When the young fellow saw Joe, who was the idol of millions, he was so nonplussed that he forgot most of what he wanted to ask. He did say that Joe was very friendly and relaxed and offered this recipe for success: “Take all your advice from older people, live clean and practice, practice, practice.”
While Joe and Dorothy soon got into their Cadillac and drove back to New York, the real fanfare came a few months later. Joe hit safely in 56 straight games, a record that has never been equaled. If you add to that a .357 batting average and 30 home runs, you can easily see how he cashed in on his own advice with a top salary of $37,500 for the 1941 season. Best of all, those of us from the good old days remember a recipe for success that still works just as well now as it did then. Thank you, Joe DiMaggio.
For more details on Joe and his Rice Lake visit, read, Joe DiMaggio, The Hero’s Life by Richard Cramer.