79 Red Sox At Yankees, October 2, 1949, The Little Professor

15 April 2024

Album art features Dom DiMaggio.

Imagine your playing career saw you selected seven times to play in the All-Star game, led the league in stolen bases, posted four seasons of .300 plus baseball, had a hitting streak of 34 games, and averaged over 100 runs per season throughout your career.

Yet his name is one that never stood out, partly because he's on a Red Sox team with the greatest hitter who ever lived… and his older brother was Joe DiMaggio.

This is the life of Dom DiMaggio, who spent eleven years of his eleven-year career in the Majors with the Boston Red Sox. As with almost every player in the forties, the prime playing career was given to service during World War 2.

David Halberstam called him "the most underrated player of his day”, and it’s not hard to see why.

Let’s remember Dom with today’s game, which is a classic. It's 1949, and the Red Sox are facing the New York Yankees. Boston's finest have posted a 96-57 season against the Yankees 96-57. Yep, it's a winner-takes-all game on the final day of the regular season. Dom is leading off for the Red Sox, with his brother Joe in the clean-up spot for the Yankees.

Speaking of legends… Mel Allen and Curt Gowdy will take you through this crunch game.

You can find the boxscore here.

This game was played on October 2, 1949.