JOLTIN’ JOE’S HIT STREAK DESERVES ASTERISK A LA BONDS: Just as the public has elected to place an asterisk on Barry Bonds’ 756th home run ball, someone wants to brand another baseball record:

ABC NEWS lines up a new revelation that Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak may have been tweaked in order for it to continue. The source of the contention is the New York Yankees’ official home-game scorer, Dan Daniel.

Not only was Daniel in charge of recording swings and misses, he was also a reporter covering the Yanks, and became good friends with most of the players, especially Joltin’ Joe.

In a recent article for WALRUS magazine, David Robbeson argues that opponents may have been robbed of ending Joe’s streak. He points out two games where DiMaggio’s hits could have been scored as errors, instead.

In game 30 of the streak, DiMaggio’s smacked a shot to White Sox shortstop Luke Appling. When he leaned down to grab it, the ball took a bounce and hit him the shoulder, allowing Joe to reach base safely.

In the next game, DiMaggio hit again at Appling, who had the ball in his glove, but dropped it. In both cases, Daniel did not score the bobbles as field errors, but marked them as clean hits. DiMaggio went on to extend his streak for another 25 contests.

East Coast Bias strikes again!

For those of you asking - yes, there is such a thing as WALRUS magazine. The Canadian rag offers up this fun list of other DiMaggio streaks:

For example, DiMaggio’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe lasted 286 days, a union that took only 5 minutes to create and 8 minutes to end in divorce proceedings.