[GeoPoto]

The 1941 Washington Senators won 70 games, lost 84, and finished in sixth place in the American League. They were managed by Bucky Harris and played home games at Griffith Stadium.

The year 1941 was wonderful for American League baseball. Little more than half a decade after Clark Griffith made his prophecy about night baseball and gave his personal endorsement of "the Lord'd own sunshine," the lights were turned on for the first time at Griffith Stadium, on May 28, 1941. (The Nats had played their first night game nearly two years earlier, on July 6, 1939, at Philadelphia.) The Yankees were the visitors for the occasion and winners by a 6-5 count. As usual this season, it was the Yanks, and more specifically, Joe DiMaggio, who were generating most of the magic. In every game New York played between May 15 and July 17, 56 of them, DiMaggio got at least one hit to set a mark yet unbroken.

The Senators did not, of course, escape the wrath of DiMaggio during this period. At Griffith Stadium on May 27, he went 4-for-5 to extend his streak to 12 straight games with a hit. On the 28th, in a night game, DiMag tripled off Sid Hudson. The Nats lost that one in a manner that was particularly heartbreaking, beaten by a pinch-hit grand slam by George Selkirk, who one day would become General Manager of the Washington Senators.

On June 29, 1941, it was against the Senators that the Yankee Clipper tied and then broke George Sisler's all-time American League record of hitting successfully in 41 consecutive games. In the first game of a doubleheader, DiMaggio doubled off Dutch Leonard in the sixth inning to tie Sisler's record, and in the second game, he singled in the seventh off big Red Anderson (who totaled 36 big-league appearances) to set a new standard. Joe D was only 2-for-9 on the day, but the Bombers still battered the Senators, 9-4 and 7-5.

Joe DiMaggio eventually broke Wee Willie Keeler's all-time mark of base hits in 44 straight games, at Yankee Stadium on July 2. The record setter was a three-run homer off Dick Newsome of the Red Sox and came after Joltin' Joe had been robbed of hits in his two previous at-bats that day. The skein reached 56 games, and the final hit was a long double surrendered by Joe Krakauskas. On the following day, "the streak" was halted by Krakauskas's new teammates, pitchers Al Smith and Jim Bagby, but especially by third baseman Ken Keltner, who made two sensational diving stops on DiMaggio rockets. After that game Joltin' Joe, who incredibly, had hit in 61 straight contests as an 18-year-old in the very tough Pacific Coast League, had safeties in 16 more games in a row. He led the league with 125 runs batted in, and the Yankees went on to their fifth World Series triumph in six years, reclaiming for the league the championship lost by the Tigers in seven games to the Cincinnati Reds in 1940.