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With so much attention being paid earlier this week to the epic Roger Federer v. Novak Djokovic Wimbedon final and the The Squad v. Trump Twitter war, a 78th sports anniversary slid by.   Do you know what happened on July 16th, 1941?  Joltin Joe Dimaggio singled to extend his hit streak to 56 games.  On July 17th he was hitless which ended the longest consecutive games hitting steak ever.  And “ever” then still means “ever” today.

The record stands at 56 games, and has now stood that way for 78 years and counting.  We aren’t here to debate if its the greatest baseball record ever for it’s hard to compare pitching feats to hitting feats much less one game to one streak to one season to one career records.  But we are here to say that holding a record for any stat for 78 years is a long, long time and that makes it a great, great accomplishment.

Many, many excellent “hit for average” and “contact hitters” and “line drive hitters” have come and gone in 78 years.  And no one, we repeat, no one has come close to The Yankee Clipper’s run.  Second best you ask?  Peter Edward Rose, aka Pete Rose, aka Charlie Hustle got a hit in 44 straight games in 1978.  That tied Willie Keeler who strung together 44 as well way, way back in 1897.

Ty Cobb had 40 and 35 games with at least one hit streaks.  George Sisler had 41 and 35.  Joe’s brother Dom Dimaggio hit in 34 consecutive games himself.  Paul Molitor reached 39.  Think of players like Ichiro Suzuki, Ken Griffey, Jr., Tony Gwynn, Rod Carew, George Brett,  Rogers Hornsby, and Stan Musial just to name a few.  None of them, in long and distinguished careers passed 30.

Rose’s 44 is 78% of Dimaggio’s 56 games 78 years later.  Suzuki had 262 hits in 2004.  That’s 14 years and counting for the most ever in a season.  He has just 64 years to go for the record to stand as long as Dimaggio’s.  Or, stated a different way, imagine in the year 2075 the closest someone has come to Suzuki’s record is 204 hits.

It’s such a feat that he caught Marilyn Monroe’s eye, and had a song written about him that is  big band, old school fun, and three minutes long here.   

Baseball is a game of numbers.  There are a lot of them above.  But, no matter which ones you are counting, there aren’t a lot that rise above 56.