Joe DiMaggio: The 56-Game Hitting Streak and the Yankee Clipper

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 10 min read

A career profile of Joe DiMaggio built on the historical record: the 1941 streak and what it means, three MVP awards, nine championships in ten World Series, the war years and the road to the Hall of Fame.

Joe DiMaggio played 13 seasons for the New York Yankees, from 1936 to 1951, and the Yankees played in ten World Series in that time. They won nine. He hit .325 with 361 home runs and 1,537 runs batted in, won three Most Valuable Player awards, and in 1941 hit safely in 56 consecutive games, a record that has stood in the major leagues ever since. Pete Rose came closest, with 44 games in 1978.

The streak is why most people know his name, and it is also why the rest of his career gets less attention than it deserves. He missed three prime seasons to military service, played his home games in a ballpark with a very deep left-center field, and was out of the game at 36. This profile uses the historical record for every number, narrates the career in phases, and says plainly what the database cannot tell you: it has no game-by-game logs, so the streak itself is documented history rather than a figure we can recompute here.

The career in one line

The historical totals for DiMaggio's regular season are 1,736 games, 6,821 at-bats, 1,390 runs, 2,214 hits, 389 doubles, 131 triples, 361 home runs, 1,537 RBI, 30 stolen bases, 790 walks and 369 strikeouts. The rates are .325 for batting average, .398 for on-base percentage and .579 for slugging, a combined OPS of .977. He was named to the All-Star team in all 13 of his seasons.

Two numbers deserve a second look. The first is the strikeout total. In an era when the typical major-league team struck out about 3.5 times a game (the 1941 figure was 3.55 per team-game), DiMaggio struck out only 369 times in 6,821 at-bats, one strikeout every 18.5 at-bats. He hit almost as many home runs (361) as he struck out. The second is the walk-to-strikeout ratio: 790 to 369, about 2.1 to one. A power hitter with more than two walks for every strikeout is unusual in any era.

Origins: from San Francisco to the Bronx

Joseph Paul DiMaggio was born on November 25, 1914, in Martinez, California, and grew up in the San Francisco area. His brothers Vince and Dom also played in the major leagues; Dom spent his career with the Boston Red Sox and is on that club's list of leaders in runs scored. Joe came to the Yankees through the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, where, as a teenager in 1933, he hit safely in 61 consecutive games. That minor-league streak is part of the record too, and it is a useful reminder that the 1941 run was not a fluke of one summer.

He made his major-league debut on May 3, 1936, at age 21. He was listed at 6 feet 2 inches and 193 pounds and threw and batted right-handed. Writers of the time praised his smooth, unhurried play in center field. The historical record has no range or defensive metrics, so that part of his reputation rests on contemporary accounts rather than on numbers.

The rookie year and a run of titles, 1936 to 1939

The first four seasons are the foundation of the legend. DiMaggio arrived on a Yankees team that still had Lou Gehrig, whose last season was 1939, and the combination won four World Series in a row.

A rookie with 206 hits, 29 home runs and 125 RBI is already an All-Star, and DiMaggio was one in each of those four years. His 1937 season is the best power season of his career: 46 home runs, which led the American League, and 167 RBI, which ranked second behind Hank Greenberg's 183. Yankee Stadium's left-center field was famously deep, and DiMaggio was a right-handed hitter. The database cannot split his home and road numbers, so it cannot tell us how many more home runs he would have hit in another park, and any claim about a specific number is a guess.

1939 and 1940: two batting titles and a first MVP

The 1939 season was the first of two straight batting championships. He hit .381 in 462 at-bats, playing 120 games, and won the Most Valuable Player award; the Yankees won their fourth consecutive Series. He followed it with a .352 average in 1940, which again led the American League, with 31 home runs and 133 RBI. The 1940 Yankees did not reach the World Series, which ended the run of four.

Those two seasons are the peak of his average. A .381 mark over 462 at-bats is rare for a power hitter, and the context is the second part of the story. It was a good hitter's era in the American League. Ted Williams, a rookie in 1939, drove in 145 runs that year to lead the league, and the competition for the top of the lists included Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg and Bob Johnson. Across his career he led the league in batting average twice (1939 and 1940), in home runs twice (1937 and 1948) and in RBI twice (1941 and 1948). Being among the leaders every year was the pattern; leading every list was not.

1941: the streak and the argument it started

The 1941 season is the one everyone cites. DiMaggio's line was .357 with 193 hits, 30 home runs and 125 RBI, and the RBI total led the league. He struck out only 13 times all year, fewer than half his home-run total, which is a very rare ratio for a power hitter. His hitting streak began in mid-May and ran 56 games, ending in Cleveland in mid-July.

A few things about the streak are worth understanding.

1. The rule. A hitting streak counts consecutive games in which a player gets at least one hit. If he walks every time up, is hit by pitches or lays down sacrifice bunts and has no official at-bat, the streak neither grows nor ends. A game with at least one official at-bat and no hit ends it.
2. The size. Fifty-six games is more than a third of a season with at least one hit every day. A worked example: at his 1941 average of .357, a hitter who bats four times in a game has about a 17 percent chance of going hitless (0.643 to the fourth power), so about an 83 percent chance of a hit. Multiply 0.83 by itself 56 times and the result is roughly 0.00003, about one in 35,000 for any particular 56-game stretch. Real games vary in at-bats, so treat that as a rough guide, but it shows why the streak is a record.
3. The record. Rose's 44 in 1978 is the closest anyone has come in the modern era. The historical record does not carry game logs, so these figures come from the published record, not from our own computation.

The streak was not the only argument that season. In 1941 Ted Williams hit .406, the last time any major-league hitter has batted .400 over a full season, and he did it in 456 at-bats with 37 home runs. DiMaggio won the MVP award. Williams, who won two MVP awards in his career (1946 and 1949), lost the vote that year, and the debate over whether the voters chose the streak over the average has continued ever since. A reader who wants Williams's side of it should see the profile of Ted Williams. The two cases compare a 56-game streak with a full season at .406.

The war years, 1943 to 1945

In 1942 DiMaggio batted .305 with 21 home runs and 114 RBI, and the Yankees lost the World Series that fall. Then he left baseball for military service, and he did not play in 1943, 1944 or 1945. The historical year-by-year table shows the gap plainly: after 1942 the next line is 1946.

DiMaggio was not alone. Many of the best players of the era served, including Williams and Stan Musial, whose career is covered in the Stan Musial profile. That does not make the missing seasons irrelevant. A hitter of 28, 29 and 30 who had batted .305 with 21 home runs in his last season would very likely have added to his totals. His career line of 2,214 hits and 361 home runs is lower than it would have been, and any list that ranks him by career totals should be read with that in mind.

The Hall of Fame ballot offers a small oddity from this period: his name appeared in 1945 voting, while he was still serving and still an active player, and drew one vote out of 247 cast.

Return, a second MVP year and the heel, 1946 to 1950

He returned in 1946 and hit .290 with 25 home runs and 95 RBI. It was an ordinary season by his standards, and the Yankees did not win the pennant. In 1947 he hit .315 with 20 home runs and 97 RBI, and the Yankees won the World Series. That was also the year he won his third MVP award, by a single point over Williams, who had won the Triple Crown. It is the mirror image of the 1941 argument, and like that one it is still debated.

His best late season was 1948. He hit .320 with 39 home runs and 155 RBI, leading the American League in both. A heel problem kept him out of the first part of 1949, and he appeared in only 76 games, but he hit .346 with 14 home runs and 67 RBI in those games and the Yankees won the Series again. He batted .301 with 32 home runs in 1950 and the club won a second straight title.

Decline and retirement, 1951

His final year was the weakest of his career: 116 games, 12 home runs, 71 RBI and a .263 average. The Yankees still won the pennant and the World Series, his ninth championship in ten Series. His last regular-season game came on September 30, 1951, and his last game of all was Game 6 of the World Series on October 10, at 36. The Yankees' next center fielder, Mickey Mantle, had arrived that spring. The full story of that passing is in the Mickey Mantle profile.

DiMaggio's postseason line in the database is 51 games, 199 at-bats, 54 hits, 8 home runs and 30 RBI over ten postseasons, a .271 average. That is lower than his regular-season mark, which is normal: October pitching is better, and a World Series sample of 199 at-bats is only about a third of one full season. The record that matters here is the team's. In the ten Series his Yankees played, they lost only to the 1942 Cardinals. An overview of how those Series were structured, with no divisions and no league championship series, is in how the MLB postseason works.

The Hall of Fame vote and after baseball

DiMaggio was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1955, with 223 of 251 ballots, or 88.8 percent. It was his fourth appearance. The earlier results show how voters thought of him.

A player needs 75 percent of the ballots. DiMaggio received about 44 percent in 1953, 69 percent in 1954 and 89 percent in 1955. That climb of more than 40 points in two years shows how a candidate's support can consolidate once voters decide he belongs, and it is a mild argument against the idea that a Hall of Famer is obvious the moment he retires.

After baseball he remained one of the best-known athletes in the country. He married the actress Marilyn Monroe in 1954, a marriage that ended in divorce the same year, and he later appeared in advertising and made Yankee appearances at old-timers' events. He died on March 8, 1999, in Hollywood, Florida, at age 84.

What the numbers can and cannot say

The historical record gives us the counting stats and the rates. It does not give us wins above replacement, so we cannot offer a single-number comparison with other great hitters. It does not carry Statcast measurements, because they did not exist; it does not carry pitch-by-pitch data, game logs for the streak, or a home-and-road split. Its Negro League coverage runs from 1920 to 1948, so the great players of the Black leagues who played alongside and against the era's stars are partly in the database, but the competition DiMaggio faced was a segregated one, and that context belongs in any ranking of his era.

What the database does support is clear. DiMaggio was a .325 hitter with more than 2,200 hits who also hit 361 home runs and drew twice as many walks as strikeouts. He led the American League in batting average, home runs or RBI in five different seasons (1937, 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1948). He lost three years to the war and about half of 1949 to injury, and he still played in more than 1,700 games. If the 56-game streak is the monument, the rest of the record is the foundation under it.

Common questions

How many hits did Joe DiMaggio have? He had 2,214 hits, with 389 doubles, 131 triples and 361 home runs.

How many MVP awards did he win? Three, in 1939, 1941 and 1947.

Is the 56-game streak the longest in history? It is the longest in the modern record books. The next longest in the modern era is Pete Rose's 44 games in 1978.

Did he win the batting title? Yes, twice, in 1939 (.381) and 1940 (.352).

How many World Series did he win? Nine: 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1950 and 1951. The Yankees also reached the 1942 Series, which they lost.

Where to go next

To compare DiMaggio with the hitters he was measured against, read Ted Williams, Stan Musial and Jimmie Foxx, and for the center fielder who followed him in the Bronx, Mickey Mantle. The New York National League star of his years is profiled in the Mel Ott article. You can look up other players and career leaders on the players page and the leaders page.