Baseball is often called a game of failure. They say hitting a round baseball with a round bat squarely is the hardest thing to do in professional sports. Because of that, the sport is completely obsessed with its own history and statistics. Every night, fans check the box scores, wondering if they just witnessed something that hasn’t happened in decades.
Well, if you’ve been following Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson lately, you didn’t just see a good week of baseball. You saw a guy essentially time-travel back to the 1930s to hang out with baseball royalty.
Joining the Inner Circle
It’s one thing for a player to get hot at the plate. It happens all the time over a long 162-game summer. It’s entirely another to put up numbers that force historians to write your name next to absolute legends like Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio.
Over a mind-boggling 10-game stretch, Swanson managed to drive in an astonishing 26 runs. Let that sink in for a second. Twenty-six runs batted in, over the course of just ten games.
Since the RBI became an official Major League stat way back in 1920, only four other guys have ever knocked in that many runs in a 10-game span. Those names? Mel Ott in 1929. Lou Gehrig in 1930 and 1931. Jimmie Foxx in 1933. And Joe DiMaggio in 1939.
That’s the entire list. For over 85 years, nobody has touched that kind of pure run-producing magic. Until Dansby.
Fireworks in New York and Chicago
You don’t get to 26 RBIs in ten games by just hitting a bunch of lucky singles. You have to absolutely mash the baseball, and Swanson did exactly that in incredibly dramatic fashion.
The wild ride really kicked into high gear in late June during a doubleheader against the Mets out in New York. Swanson turned into a one-man wrecking crew that afternoon. He drove in 11 runs across the two games, setting a brand-new Cubs franchise record in the process.
But he was just getting warmed up. A week later, playing at home in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field against the Padres, he put on an absolute clinic. The Cubs won in a ridiculous 23-3 blowout, and Swanson was the undisputed main character. He blasted three home runs, including a massive grand slam, finishing the day with 8 RBIs. Nobody in a Cubs uniform had done that since Sammy Sosa back in 2002.
The Ultimate Comeback Story
Here is the most amazing part of this whole story, and honestly, the most human part, too. Just days before this historic tear began, Swanson was arguably the coldest hitter in all of baseball.
He was stuck in a brutal, agonizing slump, batting just .183. Out of every qualified hitter in the major leagues, he was sitting in dead last. When you’re struggling that badly on a massive stage, the pressure is immense. The mental game gets incredibly heavy.
Most people would crumble. Instead, Swanson just kept showing up, trusting his process, and taking his swings. Going from the worst batting average in the league to sitting at a table with Gehrig and DiMaggio is almost impossible to believe. But it’s a brilliant reminder of why we love the game—no matter how bad yesterday was, you are always just one swing away from making history.
Yashpal Singh brings readers closer to the action with coverage of sports news, game updates, athlete stories, team developments, and major moments from the field. From local matchups to broader sports headlines, his reporting focuses on the stories fans care about most.