(Brent Schwert)
Correction from last week’s column: I’m a moron.
The Major League Baseball record for consecutive games with a hit belongs to Joe DiMaggio, not his teammate, Lou Gehrig. As a fan of baseball statistics, I spent the last half-week in shame after one of my readers pointed out my mistake to me.
DiMaggio’s streak began May 15, 1941 against Eddie Smith of the Chicago White Sox and ended July 17, against Jim Bagby, Jr. and the Cleveland Indians. He then began a 16-game hitting streak, giving him hits in 72 out of 73 games.
In the 56-game span between May 15 and July 16, the “Yankee Clipper” compiled a .409 batting average and a .717 slugging percentage and faced four future Hall of Fame pitchers. It is one of the greatest and most improbable streaks in professional sports history, and perhaps the least likely to be broken.On Tuesday I did something I vowed never to do at Lawrence: I put my academics in front of my love for Lawrence basketball and I skipped the St. Norbert game in order to study for Hetzler’s Brain and Behavior midterm (which, as it turned out, was not as strenuous as I was afraid it would be). There’s surely something to be said for putting school first, but basketball games are only two and a half hours long. I certainly could have found two and a half hours in the past few days to make up that study time.
Then it turned out that the Vikes struggled against the Green Knights and were it not for the immaculate play of Ben Rosenblatt might have lost . a home game . to St. Norbert.
This, quite simply, is unacceptable.
So for the second time in this article, I apologize. I’d like to say sorry to the Lawrence men’s basketball team. I feel like I let you down by not providing my moral-and vocal-support for my beloved Lawrence Vikings. You should know, however, that at all times, be it home basketball games that I stupidly don’t get to or away games too far for me to travel to, my heart is always with you. Play well, boys.
Is anyone else looking forward to the Super Bowl?
