With the pennant race decided, attention focused on Ted Williams's pursuit of .400. DiMaggio may have felt relief as Williams now received the attention that had been his for most of the summer.

Despite DiMaggio's remarkable streak, he trailed Williams and teammate Charlie Keller for American League home-run honors, and Keller for RBI. For a while, it appeared as if DiMaggio might catch each, but on August 20 he suffered a badly sprained ankle against Detroit and was out of the lineup for most of the next three weeks.

While Joe recuperated, his Yankee teammates took stock of his performance and decided to do something. They planned an evening to honor him on August 29 at Washington's Shoreham Hotel.

In secret, pitcher Johnny Murphy and his wife got a craftsman from Tiffany's jeweler's to fashion an elegant silver humidor. On the lid was a bas-relief of DiMaggio on a raised diamond, showing his inimitable follow-through after swinging the bat. Raised letters on either side read "56 games" and "91 hits." On the front of the box it read simply, Presented to Joe DiMaggio by his fellow players on the New York Yankees to express their admiration for his world's consecutive game hitting record -- 1941. The inside of the lid was engraved with the signatures of the Yankee players.

Lefty Gomez worked a ruse to get DiMaggio to stop by Murphy's suite, and when Joe entered, he was surprised to discover the entire Yankee team. The players planned the evening and paid for the humidor themselves. Their gesture was genuine and heartfelt. DiMaggio was deeply touched, and later said that "when Gomez turned the handle of that door in the Shoreham, he paved the way for the greatest thrill I've ever had in baseball."

DiMaggio had come a long way in the eyes of his teammates. What had sometimes been interpreted as aloofness on DiMaggio's part was now correctly seen by his teammates as shyness. The pressures of the streak had graphically illustrated DiMaggio's role on the club and his importance to baseball. The humidor remains his most treasured possession.

The Yankees rolled through the remainder of the season, clinching the pennant on September 4, the earliest clinching in baseball history. Later that month, Charlie Keller also sprained an ankle, and the injury cost him both the league RBI and home-run title. DiMaggio finished with a batting average of .357, third best in the AL behind Williams and Washington's Cecil Travis, with 30 home runs and 125 RBI in 139 games. Keller finished with 122 RBI and 33 home runs, second to Ted Williams's 37. Williams won the batting title with a .406 average. The Yankees ended the season 101-53, seventeen games ahead of second-place Boston, the only team in the entire league to finish closer to first place than last.

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