1951 Joe DiMaggio Game Used Bat, PSA/DNA GU 7....

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The Yankee Clipper sails off into the sunset as a World Champion

1951 Joe DiMaggio Game Used Bat, PSA/DNA GU 7. Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb did everything they could to coax DiMaggio back for one more season in 1952, suggesting he could play only at home, or just in a pinch-hitting role, and that he'd still receive the same $100,000 salary he'd earned in 1951. But on December 11, 1951, DiMaggio made his decision official at a press conference, reminding reporters, "I told you fellows last spring I thought this would be my last year. I only wish I could have had a better year. But even if I hit .350, this would have been the last year for me. I feel I have reached the stage where I can no longer produce for my ball club, my manager, my teammates, and my fans the sort of baseball their loyalty to me deserves." His brother Tom put it more succinctly: "He quit because he wasn't Joe DiMaggio anymore."

But even if the merciless progression of time had robbed him of the speed and reflexes that had strung a chain of fifty-six games a decade earlier, he most certainly remained Joe DiMaggio in 1951, the year this signature model Hillerich & Bradsby D29L saw action. DiMaggio was a winner. Though his stat line lacked the bold type of his younger years, Joltin' Joe came up big in his final Fall Classic, matching his career-best tally of five runs batted in, including a Game Four long ball that would prove to be his last of 369 in Major League competition.

This closing bookend to a peerless pinstriped career exhibits typically light use from DiMaggio's abridged playing schedule, with ball marks on the left barrel and two colors of bat rack streaks suggesting multiple games of action. Length of thirty-six inches (36") and weight of thirty-four ounces (34 oz.) match DiMaggio's final orders from the Hillerich & Bradsby factory. The absence of any handle cracks that would have ended the bat's term of service could suggest the thrilling prospect that this was DiMaggio's last bat, and thus retired only with its master. LOA from PSA/DNA, GU 7.

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