Week 10 Summary (06/16/1941 - 06/22/1941)

Week Ten of the 1941 BBW replay is in the books, and it was quite a week. There were ten shutouts this past week, three grand slams, and A's outfielder Wally Moses hit for the cycle (the first of the season). Twelve of the sixteen teams have reached or surpassed the 60-game played mark and the rest will be there before the end of this upcoming week.

1941 Boston Red Sox
The Yankees started the week with an 8.5 games lead over second-place Chicago and ended this week with that lead expanded to 11.0 games. This was New York's maybe not-so-subtle way of saying "you might blink, but we won't." Cleveland is now 1.0 games behind Chicago, Boston is 1.0 games behind Cleveland, and Washington is over .500 (31-30) and is 2.0 games behind Boston. This means that if Washington were in the NL with that record, they would be in third place, 0.5 games ahead of Cincinnati (30-30).

St. Louis has a firm hold on sixth place in the AL, but they have shown occasional flashes of being a team on the come.  They still struggle getting good pitching and good hitting at the same time, but when they do they look like they could be world beaters. Philadelphia isn't going anywhere, only avoiding last place because Detroit got off to such a horrible start. The Tigers finally won a few games and started to look respectable, but their reward was to spend a week in Boston and then New York - it wasn't pretty. With those two series behind them, they hope to get back on the winning track quickly.

 

The Cardinals were high-flying coming into this past week but then lost four consecutive games in mid-week. The Dodgers had been going through a spell where they were pretty moribund, but they appear to have regained some of their magic and were able to cut 2.0 games off the St. Louis lead. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh both seem to be content to bounce around .500 and regularly swap third and fourth place in the NL standings, but a new player has suddenly appeared. The Giants had been mired in last place for most of the first month of the season but then they got hot and moved up the standings into fifth place, and this hot streak has continued, and they ended this week 0.5 games behind fifth-place Pittsburgh and 1.0 games behind third-place Cincinnati.

 

Boston Player-Manager
Joe Cronin
Chicago is sitting 1.0 games behind New York and while surprised by this sudden intrusion of the Giants ahead of them in the standings, it is the Cubs who are the most active in roster adjustments and lineup juggling to help find an optimal lineup and rotation. In seventh place is Philadelphia, current owners of a five-game winning streak, with most of those wins coming over cross-state rival Pittsburgh. Boston sits in the NL cellar, last in the NL in runs scored and seventh in ERA.

By the end of this past week, Joe DiMaggio had extended his 1941 hitting streak to 35 games. The coverage of this was only starting to hit a fever pitch. Every game, every at-bat, every hit, and every out was under the microscope and one can only imagine the pressure DiMaggio was under. At least the Yankees were winning - Cleveland was still in first place on this date in 1941, but there was no doubt the Yankees were on the move after their slow start.

 

In the replay, DiMaggio is currently working on a 61-game on-base streak. Although not currently on an active streak, Dom DiMaggio has the second longest on-base streak (44) and Ted Williams just had his 39-game on-base streak just broken at the end of this past week. Williams is still chugging along with an even .500 batting average while DiMaggio (Joe) remains in second, hitting .387.


Fenway Park 1946 Digital Art by Gary Grigsby | Pixels





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