How Many People Actually Showed Up That Day?

Well it seems we have a discrepancy. Baseball-Reference's Bullpen says something a little difference about the attendance at that game on this date in 1941 (than what I wrote before): "On a sweltering day in front of 52,832 fans at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio breaks Wee Willie Keeler's 1897's major league record consecutive game hit streak of 45 with a three-run homer off Red Sox hurler Dick Newsome."

So is it 8,682 or 52,832? That's a little bit of a difference there. B-R's schedule for 1941 shows 8,682 for that game but also does not show any attendance number for the game before that. So I went to the New York Times on July 3rd, 1941 to figure it out (description by Times writer John Drebinger and picture above from the same article):

Sweeping majestically onward with a thunderous smash that soared deep into the left-field stands, Joe DiMaggio yesterday rocketed his current hitting streak beyond the all-time major league record.

For with that home-run clout, boisterously acclaimed by the 8,682 sweltering fans in the sun-baked Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio the Magnificent extended his astounding string to forty-five consecutive games in which he has connected safely.

This surpasses by one the major league mark of 44 games set forty-four years ago by the famous mite of an Oriole, Wee Willie Keeler, who gained renown for his skill in "hitting them where they ain't." Yesterday DiMaggio shattered that mark by the simpler expedient of hitting one where they just couldn't get it.

So it was 8,682 (and the temperature, according to the Times on that day, was 94.4 degrees). Much more interesting to me: how awesome was the writing for that article? No one writes like that anymore. No wonder newspapers are a dying breed.