Stubborn streak

Getting on a roll like Lo Duca's takes something special

It's been said -- probably way too often -- that the hardest thing in sports is trying to hit a round ball with a round bat.

I've always thought that being a marketer for the Devil Rays has to be a lot harder than that. Or being Peter Angelos' PR man in Baltimore. That can't be easy.

But the truth is, hitting is hard, it really is. The only thing more difficult may be doing it game after game after game. Smacking a hit every night, for a lot of games in a row, no matter what the circumstances … well, that's like finding a $1.50 beer at the ballpark. It's darn near impossible.

We're not talking five or six games in a row. Any hack can do that. Heck, Pat Burrell has a five-game hitting streak this season, and he's barely hitting .200. No, this is about hitting safely for a few weeks in a row. Close to a month. Maybe even longer. That's a good hitting streak. That's hard.

Yet here's Paul Lo Duca, the Dodgers' catcher, making it all look so easy. Lo Duca has a 25-game hit streak going, and it's only the third-best streak this season. Pittsburgh's Kenny Lofton, who still can get hot at his age, already has put up a 26-gamer. So has Boston's Nomar Garciaparra.

Longest hitting streaks in 2003  Nomar Garciaparra 26  Kenny Lofton 26  Paul Lo Duca 25*  Melvin Mora 23  Eric Byrnes 22  Aramis Ramirez 22  Todd Walker 20  Tim Salmon 20 *Active through June 19 Hitting streaks: All-time | Since 1990

It takes a lot of something special to get a hit for that many games in a row. Skill, mainly. Of course, it takes a lot of other stuff, too.

A hitter needs to have the chance, first. A guy who gets up only two or three times a game has a smaller chance of going on a meaningful streak than someone who gets up four or five times a night. So, the higher a player hits in the batting order -- the more at-bats he gets -- the better chance he has at getting a hit and extending his streak. It's math.

Then, of course, a guy needs to have the right people hitting around him. He needs to see some pitches. He can't be in the position to be pitched around.

The right approach to hitting helps, too. High strikeout guys never go on any meaningful streaks. Big home run hitters never do, either. A streak hitter has to selective, but not too selective. He needs to be aggressive in looking for a pitch he can hit, but not so aggressive he goes after stupid pitches. He can't be just a pull hitter. He has to be able to hit to all fields. Having some speed to beat out those infield squibbers always helps.

And -- this is a big one -- a hitter on a hot streak needs some luck. Everybody who ever has gone on any kind of meaningful hitting streak has that moment, and often it's more than one. It's when an out turns into a hit, somehow. A bad bounce, a seeing-eye single, a bloop over the infield, a kind call on the official scorer's part. It happens. It always happens.

Joe DiMaggio, who owns the Holy Grail of all hitting streaks, had his moments. In 1941, during his record 56-game hitting streak, DiMaggio hit two grounders in back-to-back games (Nos. 30 and 31) that Chicago shortstop Luke Appling failed to field. They could have been called errors. Instead, both went down as hits. They were DiMaggio's only hits in those two games.

It helped that DiMaggio's friend, newspaperman Dan Daniel, was the official scorer in both games.

Damian Costantino had a few of those moments, too. He's the 24-year-old outfielder from Division III Salve Regina College in Newport, R.I., who earlier this year broke Robin Ventura's NCAA record hitting streak.

Last year (his 60-game streak bridged three college seasons), a pitcher who already had struck him out twice in the game -- "He was virtually unhittable," Costantino said -- inexplicably left a curve ball over the plate in Costantino's last at-bat of the game. He smacked a hit.

Earlier this year, in the 57th game of Costantino's streak, a game short of Ventura's old record, a teammate crushed a late-inning home run that enabled Costantino to get up again and keep his streak going.

There were hits just past the pitcher but in front of the infielders, there were bloops down the line. All of them counted.

"Certain times," Costantino said the other day, "you just end up hitting them where they're not. I think luck plays a big part in it."

Maybe more than anything, though, a hitter on a streak has to be of the right mind. He has to be levelheaded enough to fight off all the pressure, while being stubborn enough to do whatever it takes to keep the streak alive.

At one point during the memorable summer of 1941, a pitcher had threatened to walk DiMaggio to put an end to his streak. When the pitcher tried to make good on his threat, sending ball four wide of the plate, DiMaggio leaned over and smacked it through the pitcher's legs, then hustled into second for a double.

Pete Rose was a pugnacious competitor who took great pride in his 44-game hitting streak in 1978. He was so upset when the Atlanta Braves' Gene Garber struck him out to end it that he railed at the pitcher for not challenging him with a fastball.

"He pitched me like it was the seventh game of the World Series," Rose said at the time. "I guess he thought it was Joe DiMaggio up there."

Lo Duca, one of eight players to go on a hitting streak of 20 or more games this year, is still hot. During his streak, Lo Duca has had two or more hits in 14 games. He is hitting .422 during the streak. "I'm trying," he said the other night, "not to worry about it."

But it doesn't get any easier. The pressures begin to build, both from outside the clubhouse and within it. Everybody's watching. Every at-bat. Every swing.

"Around [Game No.] 20 or 30, that's when everyone else starts to get involved," Costantino said. "They try to get out of the way as much as possible, but by trying to get out of the way, they get in the way."

Lo Duca's streak could end tomorrow. Or he may stretch this thing out another week. Maybe longer. If he makes it to the end of the month, he'll have a 35-game hitting streak.

That'll leave him 21 games behind Joltin' Joe.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it. Hitting is hard. And getting on a good hitting streak is even harder.

The only thing harder than that, it seems, is staying on one.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

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