Joltin' Jimmy Rollins

Watching Jimmy Rollins pursue Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak was kind of like watching George Mason in the NCAA Tournament.
Your logic-brain kept telling you not to get too caught up, that there was no way he was going to approach DiMaggio, just like there was no way George Mason was going to sniff a national championship.
But your emotional brain kept you starry-eyed enough to keep believing in miracles.
Logic won out at the end as Rollins' hit streak was snapped at 38 games Thursday, and you might feel a bit stupid for thinking that Rollins could reach 56 games. But that's what sports sells: hope.
I doubt anyone will ever break DiMaggio's record. What he did in the summer of 1941 was downright freakish and in violation of all the checks and balances inherent to the game of baseball. To manage one hit a game for almost two months regardless of opposing pitchers, regardless of travel schedules (this was in the days of train travel), regardless of any annoying injury DiMaggio might have been playing through, is the king of all abberations.
Even if you take away all those factors, you still have to overcome well-hit balls that find their way to fielders. Baseball doesn't reward strength all the time, contact hitting all the time, or great hitters' eyes all the time. Baseball rewards, as Willie Keeler was purported to have said more than 100 years ago, the ability to "hit 'em where they ain't." And as a hitter, you can't control the fielders.
We would be apt to think a contact hitter like Rollins would be a prime candidate to reach DiMaggio's record. Contact hitters put the ball in play, after all. Keeler, who set the widely-accepted previous record of 45 games with a hit in 1897, played in an era when hitters were almost exclusively contact-seekers.
But again, DiMaggio flies in the face of logic. He was a doubles-hitter with a long, graceful swing. Pete Rose and Paul Molitor, who also climbed the DiMaggio ladder, were not true poke-and-jab contact hitters. Molitor especially beared similar hitting traits to DiMaggio.
So maybe Rollins isn't a prime candidate. Maybe there isn't a hitter we can classify as a "prime candidate" to upstage Joltin' Joe.
It's probably a crapshoot. This month, it's Jimmy Rollins. In June, we might be sitting up and taking notice as Jim Thome rides a 30-game hitting streak.
Not likely? Neither was George Mason in the Final Four.