He was always so immaculately dressed, six foot two with those shoulders, you know what I mean? Always had that, I wouldn’t say austere, but he had a kind of a majestic quality, almost a royal, royalty quality. Elegante. Yeah, that’s the word. He was a superbly elegant guy on every level. It seemed as if he was walking on air.
He would glide through the stadium. He would glide through a restaurant. People used to pile around him like he was God Almighty. And everybody loved him, and it was Joe DiMaggio, and that was it. No wonder we strove for more than 60 years to give Joe DiMaggio the hero’s life. From his debut at Yankee Stadium in 1936, for more than 60 years to give Joe DiMaggio the hero’s life.
From his debut at Yankee Stadium in 1936 until his death in 1999, DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good. That’s the way the hero game worked. It was always about us. It was about how we felt with Joe. And he knew that, but we never heard him complain. He knew what the hero’s life cost, but he also knew how much it was worth.
Joe made it a point to come out last all the time, so he would be by himself when he came out of the dugout. And the people naturally said, Hey, there goes Joe DiMaggio. See, there’s Joe DiMaggio going by. He made it a point to let everybody know it. over. These are the spikes that Joe wore during his 56th game streak.
But when the streak ended, of course we were were there and he gave my dad a pair as a memento of the streak and I kept them for over 50 years on the top of my closet and the showcase you know that we had made by the casket man and the dirt was still on the spikes. I never cleaned them. They were just the way…
And the newspaper, he had lined them with velvet before he encased them for us. And after you removed the velvet, the newspaper that stuffed the spikes was from 1941. But the velvet was actually a casket. We took them to Little League ball games and had all the kids rub the shoes for good luck. We used to have the children put their feet in the shoes for good luck. Even as a boy, Joe DiMaggio never said much.
Guys in the North Beach neighborhood got the feeling Joe was saving words like he saved his money. He never would spend either. We used to call him Joe. I mean, he was a loner anyhow, you know. He was a loner. He was by himself all the time. Was by himself. I don’t know why. He wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want to do, believe me.
And he really didn’t need anybody. You know what I mean? Joe was like I was. It burned in his pocket. He had that money in his pocket. He would never pull it out. Joe smoked, yeah. And he very seldom bought cigarettes. He always used to mooch them. Most families in North Beach were only scraping by, and that was before the Depression.
But even among those cash-poor fishing folk, the DiMaggio’s stood out. Giuseppe DiMaggio’s boat was too small to operate outside the Golden Gate. That’s where the crabs and the money lay, beyond Giuseppe’s reach. They were really very poor, because the father was not a fisherman that fished like our dads.
Our dads went out for crabs and salmon. His father was a bay fisherman in the bay. Joe’s father was a little short man. He was kind of roundish. Typical of fishermen, like anybody else, you know. Used to have the sash around their belly and hold their pants up. He was a quiet old man. He was quiet. No, he’d go down the wharf and nobody would know he’d be there.
Giuseppe DiMaggio was born to backward isolation on an island off the coast of Sicily. Even after decades in America, he had only a few words of English, none of the skills of the machine age, and nine children to feed. He worked every day to put food on the table, made a little wine in the basement, and kept his troubles to himself.
Seemed like the modules were just for the modules. I mean, they made a living, but there was nothing to brag about. So as soon as the boys got old enough, they all had to go out and help some way. He sold papers on Sutter and Sampson, the old Anglo Bank. Used to be the old Anglo Bank. I think we made about a dollar, a dollar and a quarter, a dollar and a half a day.
Between the three brothers, they must have taken about $4 a day, you know, and kept the families going because things were tough then. After we sold papers we used to go to the restaurant and we used to get a little bowl of beans for five cents and what pennies we had left over we used to pay pennies up against the wall and see who would win the pennies any and every time he would win.
We used to play for cards for nickels and pennies and Joe always won. He was a good player. Anything he put his hands on he played well. Most of the times Joe won because we cheated a little bit. He put his foot under the table and he and if he needed a deuce he’d hit my foot with two, and I’d give him the deuce.
You know, come around and give him the deuce. If he needed a four, he’d hit four times. One, two, three. By the time I got through playing cards, I needed a new shine. Joe liked any game where he could shorten up the odds. Baseball, he knew he could win that for sure. Every kid would throw in a nickel or a dime.
They’d play win or take all at the North Beach Playground. That was tar. Asphalt. Didn’t used to play on that. Rip your pants and everything else. Oh, I tell you, it was terrible. Joe never said two words, but he played hard. He’d hit a ball passing infield or in between the outfielders. He’d round first, and he would slide on that asphalt.
And good night, that would take a little hide off your sides, you know, but it didn’t mean anything to him. He just wanted to be sure he got the second base. Joe would get up there and just hit that, just get up there, boom. That ball would go right over Columbus Avenue from Taylor Street to Columbus Avenue and damn near to Jones Street.
That’s how hard he hit that ball. Papa DiMaggio didn’t think much of baseball. Too many pants, too many shoes. And what was it good for? Play with a ball instead of bringing money home. Like a lazy bum, Magabono. The odd thing was, Joe looked at baseball the same way. It was the kind of thing other kids could afford.
Like school. We were lower class. There seemed to be a higher class of students. We were fishing people, so-called poor. But if you wanted to learn, many did. It just happened to be that we didn’t care. Joe just didn’t like school. When he graduated from Francisco Junior High, he went to Galileo High School.
And he only stayed there about a couple of months or something, then he left. ROBERT STACKLIN, When he bombed out of school at age 15, no one even noticed. Joe played hooky, didn’t look for a job. What job would he want? All he wanted was to have a few bucks in his pocket and to stay off his father’s boat.
Every time Joe’s dad came near him, he ran. He didn’t want to get near the boat. Joe didn’t know how to fish. I don’t think Joe knew how to do any work. I never seen Joe do any work. In the end, it was baseball that saved Joe from the sea. The neighborhood boys got a sponsor for their team, Rossy Olive Oil.
Frank Venezia made the pitch to Joe, all excited. They were going to have uniforms and real shoes. Joe signed up for the shoes. Even so, he only played with Rossi for a few months. Joe was playing for us, and he hit a home run real wallop. Adi Bambratarten was there, and I just turned and happened to see him give Joe $2.
And next week, Joe was paying for his team. That’s his first pay he ever got in baseball. $2. $2. Soon, Joe was a hitter for hire on semi-pro teams around the city, and he was big news. In 1932, he got his first tryout with the San Francisco Seals. That was the Pacific Coast League, the closest thing to Major League ball that was anywhere west of St. Louis.
From that moment, even before he made the Seals, ball bat and glove weren’t for play anymore. Baseball was going to put real money in his pocket. Joe bent his life to the game. He’d never had any coaching. But now he learned, like Mozart learned the piano, all at once and instantly. Baseball, baseball, baseball.
He ate and slept baseball. Joe DiMaggio, when he was playing ball, he knew what he was doing. He knew every move. He had everything he could show he could feel he could run he can do everything and I think deep down he knew he had it you know but he never bragged he never talked about it Joe wouldn’t spend a minute on talk he He was 18 now and in a hurry.
Before the newspapers could spell his name, DiMaggio was hammering the Coast League pitchers. He hit in 30, 40 straight games. His name was bannered across the same papers he was selling just the year before. By the time his streak ended at 61 straight games, Major League scouts were a swarm at Seals Stadium.
Two days before his 20th birthday, the Yankees bought DiMaggio to bring him to New York, the big time of the big leagues. For Giuseppe, as for his friends, there was only one way to describe it, a miracle. Here was a boy who didn’t want to work, unlettered, unskilled, barely compliant. And now, he’d be paid more than the mayor of San Francisco to play with a ball.
Oh, yeah, well, they set up a dinner for me to meet DiMaggio, my idol after all these years. We went there. I had dinner with him. And when I left, we kept, I’ll show you what I did when we left. This is the chair that DiMaggio sat on when he had dinner with me. This is his number, five. And to make sure in case I get senile.
Sonny Grasso, Joe DiMaggio. There you go. And when they showed this to DiMaggio, he said, where does it say Grasso Joe DiMaggio. There you go. And when they showed this to DiMaggio, he said, where does it say Grasso gets top billing? So, you know, when I first saw the chair, I said, this chair is a little out of sync with the motif here.
What is this chair? And now I realize it. So my dream has come true in my lifetime. Not that I don’t want to meet other people, but i don’t have to meet anybody else i have i have reached the pinnacle and had dinner with dimaggio for four hours and thank god the guy let it happen but it was the it’s the height of my life and he’s been my hero my whole life and most kids and most people the most adults never get that opportunity but i did life and most kids and most people the most adults never get that opportunity but i did god bless yep
joe dimaggio tall and slender hawk-faced and buck-toothed slow to smile and wary of strangers, left his home in San Francisco in the winter of 1936 to seek his fame in baseball. He’d never even seen a Major League ballpark, but the hero machine was already gearing up for his arrival. Great Babe Ruth was gone, and the Yanks hadn’t won a pennant since.
Three years out of the money. Attendance was down, and so were newspaper sales. At the Yanks’ spring training camp, St. Petersburg, Florida, Joe was awaited by a flock of sportswriters, all starved for copy. In 1936, Lou Gehrig was the great star, but Gehrig had been around since 1923, so everybody knew about him.
Sure, the Iron Horse and the streak was going, and he was a great hitter and a great first baseman, but they had written all of that hundreds of times. They wanted something different, new, exciting. Exciting they’d make it, with his help or not. As Joe came onto the field, they shouted, Joe, how about a quote? Don’t have any, Joe said as he trotted by.
He didn’t know what they meant. Thought quote was maybe some sort of soft drink. No matter, they all knew what the story was. As Dan Daniel wrote in the next day’s World Telegram, here is the replacement for Babe Ruth. It was those writers’ job to make drama, to make larger than life. They were going to make this West Coast boy into a hero or a Dago clown.
As spring training wore on, it looked like stardom for sure. The Yankees crowed. This kid was worth every penny. Writers called him the savior of the team. Then, before the season began, Joe got hurt. Every day, people went to the ballpark. It’s today the day. It’s today the day. Are we going to see this kid? Is this kid really going to finally put the Yankee stripes on and get out there and play in the outfield for the Yankees? And finally, he did break in.
He broke in with a tremendous game. He got three hits in his opening game, and it electrified every baseball fan in New York. With Joe in the lineup for a week, the Yanks took over first place and never looked back. They dethroned the Detroit Tigers and clinched the pennant earlier than any team in history.
The Yankee captain, Gehrig, had one of his greatest years, 49 homers and 152 runs knocked in. Larep and Lou was the league’s MVP, But DiMaggio got the cheers. It was the San Francisco Italian kid who spurred the Yanks to be champions again. When they won the World Series in six games from the Giants, the town, the nation, everyone from schoolboys to the President of the United States, had to salute this rookie star.
When it comes to personal magnetism, you’ve either got it or you ain’t, as the Daily News’ Jack Miley wrote. Gehrig is a hell of a ballplayer, but it is Joe, through no effort of his own, who captures the imagination of the fans. It wasn’t just newspapers now, but radio, newsreels, glossy magazines.
The shy and silent Sicilian kid landed in a million parlors, big as life. That new picture magazine that debuted the same year as he. In fact, Joe was the first one we knew like a friend. In fact, Joe was the first one we knew like a friend. He was in our lives, his stance, his smile, the woes of his famous and fragile body, the quaver of his voice.
Well, I’m just taking my natural swing at the ball, but naturally, I would like to break the Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs. As an Italian growing up in East Harlem, without a lot of Italian heroes, he became like the first big hero for us kids. And DiMaggio not only was a hero here, he was a hero in Italy.
People knew who DiMaggio was in Italy. So my father was very, very proud to show me who this DiMaggio was and what he could do. And I remember that we had box seats. And my father sold the box seats to get us seats in the bleachers so we could watch DiMaggio. What swelled the pride of the immigranti wasn’t how Italian this new star looked, but how American.
DiMaggio was the hero of America’s own game. In the 30s, Major League Baseball was a point of excellence and glamour in a nation that didn’t have many such points to enjoy. The only other big time professional sport was boxing, hardly a wholesome pastime. And Joe Louis could only fight Schmeling once a year.
But baseball was there every day, as present as the weather and as much disgust. ¶¶ Baseball was played on every lot, in every farm, in every city in America. Every 8, 9, 10, 11-year-old kid thought of himself as a potential major leaguer and someone who could actually get his photograph in a newspaper, could actually be asked for his autograph, could actually be paid by God to play this game that we’re all playing for fun.
Hero worship wasn’t just for boys. Big guys in New York idolized Dimash. For example, Bernard Tutsh-Shore, who was bigger than most, along with boorish, insulting, and loud. In his saloon, Toots Shaw was host to the hero machine. Athletes, writers, radio men, fight promoters, bookies, not to mention the actors, pals, and Broadway brokers.
Toots fed them all and lubricated the machine with booze. There was no bigger status than being one of Toots’s crumbums, and Tootshaw would identify DiMaggio as a crumbum to other people, and that meant that this kid had really arrived on the scene in New York City. Joe soon found out that he liked that kind of life.
He was not a homebody. He was not a guy who would sit in an apartment and read a book or listen to the radio. He was a guy that wanted to go out to dinner with Lefty Gomez and go to the right restaurants, be fussed over, and have his ego stroked and have his vanity played up to. All Joe had to do was show up.
That was the beauty part. Toots would talk for him. Hell, you could hear Toots anywhere in his saloon. Garinger better than the Dago? Don’t advertise your ignorance. If Joe D. didn’t walk on water, no one had told Toots. The problem was, Joe kind of believed it too. He was money in the bank, so where was his? For his third year in the bigs, he demanded the titanic sum of $40,000 to play. And when the Yanks refused, Joe stayed put in San Francisco.
He was a restaurant owner now, too. In those depression days, Uncle Sam paid $1,200 for a year of hard work. Most third-year major leaguers were making 3,000, maybe 5,000 tops. Joe didn’t care. He was worth all the dough. For the first time since Ruth’s retirement, the Yankees had drawn a million fans.
Joe was their hero, wasn’t he? The Yanks, he said, would have to pay or else. If I don’t get what I want, he says, I’m going to go back to fishing. And Jesus, when I read that, I started to laugh. I said, Joe can’t go by underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. How the heck is he going to go fishing? When Joe finally folded and took the Yankees offer of $25,000, the club owner, Colonel Rupert, crowed, I hope the young man has learned his lesson.
Joe had to swallow his pride to come back. Then he had to swallow worse. It was the boos, Bronx cheers, the hate. They were sending him threats in the mail, throwing things at him from the center field stands. At night, Joe would pace his hotel room, unable to sleep and unable to go out. He’d be spotted for sure.
23 years old and acid was eating away at his stomach. He’d learned a lesson, all right. How fast the machine could turn ugly when he wouldn’t play ball. It’d be different if Joe could talk his way out of things. He wished he could. But Joe could make his case only one way. Boy, oh boy, the great Samash leans on it for a three-bagger, scoring Henry. his case only one way.
DeMaggio ruled every day. Every day something happened. And he just plain stood out. He was so smooth and so fast. I mean, I don’t know. It was something about him that’s just graceful. I mean, that stance at the plate, I could see it in my dreams. I mean, it was unbelievable. And when he would stand there, he would never wiggle a bat.
Once I recollect seeing him in the stadium hit a line drive past the third baseman, which the guy, the third baseman, I got to took his hands off his knees. That was the velocity of that liner. He knew the doggone game as well as anybody. And he would give you the absolute best he had in his body all the time I can tell you Hall of Famers that people think are better than DiMaggio but if you want to play a game of ball and win at the end of nine innings take Joe he was really a in a way you’d have to say a mean ball player.
I remember one game we were playing in Yankee Stadium, and Joe was at bat and he hit a ball to left center. And he rounded first base and he come in to second base and they’re throwing the ball at me, I’m covering the plate. When I caught that ball, I thought a train hit me. You know, I tagged him and he plowed into me and knocked me over on my back and everything and I got up and I said hey Joe what’s going on here he didn’t say nothing he just brushed his pants off and ran over in the dugout and I said well if that’s the way he plays ball
you got to be careful when he gets on base nothing would stop Joe from grabbing what was his, and that was the acclaim of a winner. The Yanks won four straight World Series since he came up. Maybe the club would never pay him what he was worth, but as long as he kept winning, there was money in just being Joe.
The Dante Circle Italian Club, the Columbus Society of Northern New Jersey, or of Cleveland New Jersey, or of Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit. It was the same. Joe would go out to dinner, maybe stand up and say thank you at the end. He’d come home with a new suit or a traveling bag. Sometimes it was even better than luggage.
At Yankee Stadium, they gave him a diamond-encrusted watch. Sometimes it was even better than luggage. At Yankee Stadium, they gave him a diamond-encrusted watch. At a dinner for a thousand fans in Newark, they gave him a Cadillac. Joe owned Newark. Everybody wanted the Yankee Clipper. Like the boss of the First Ward Rackets, Richie the Boot Boyardo.
What an ornament to Richie’s operation was Joe and Richie returned the favor with ornament for Joe’s new bride-to-be Richie the mob boss threw open his safe where drawers full of diamonds glittered take what you want Joe whatever you like Joe, whatever you like. She definitely was more striking than he would have been, you know, if he didn’t recognize who he was.
But she was beautiful. She was a starlet, a movie starlet. Starlet. They called her a starlet. Not very well known at that time, but, you know. She was a really beautiful woman. I remember her name was, her stage name was Dorothy Arnold. It was ambition that took Dorothy Arnoldine Olsen from Duluth to Chicago and on to New York.
She was brave, willful, and full of hope. By the time she met Joe DiMaggio at 19, she was already a showgirl on the rise. There was a man by the name of Mort Millman who saw some of Dorothy’s work, and he felt she had a lot of talent, and so he wanted her to go to California and have a screen test. So Dorothy did, and she was picked up by Universal Pictures, and she was Universal’s…
oomph girl. I’ve been after that box of Zorkas from the moment he was found dead. I’d have had it and got a price for it by now if you’d left me alone. Maybe she would have been a movie star. But when things with Joe started heating up, Dorothy had to decide where to put her oomph. Well, my sister Dorothy came home from New York, and she was sporting on her ring finger Well, my sister Dorothy came home from New York, and she was sporting on her ring finger a four-carat emerald-cut diamond.
It was humongous, so to speak. And that was it. They were engaged. And her career sort of took second place for a time. She was trying to help Joe in using words and feeling more comfortable. He would talk if you asked him a question, but as a rule, he was not comfortable in the company of a lot of people.
Well, I’ve had many a thrill in my days as a ball player and everything else, but I want to say this is one of my happiest and best thrills I’ve ever had. Well, nobody said it would be easy, but a girl had to admit being Mrs. Joe DiMaggio wasn’t going to be a half-bad role. What’s going on here? Looks like a riot, but it’s just a wedding.
Baseball Joe DiMaggio’s wedding and to 30,000 in San Francisco… My God, it was the biggest wedding in the history of San Francisco. Knowing that the favorite sonnet at that time was getting married, everybody was there. Good night, and they had the place roped off and all, and it was really something.
I was the usher in a wedding. Oh, it was beautiful. Never saw anything like it. They had ballplayers sculpted in ice, and you could see them getting smaller and smaller as the night goes. Dude, they just melted away, you know? It was beautiful. Beautiful is how it looked as Joe and his bride settled in. He was 25, she 22, and they had it all.
Stardom, money to burn, a penthouse on Manhattan’s west side, and then, too, a baby boy on the way. Strange to say, it looked like Joe had a case of the jitters. A month into the 41 season, his average was barely 300 and dropping. The Yanks were in fourth place and losers of four straight. The whole club seemed to have the shakes.
For that matter, the country had them too. Hitler was running amok in Europe. London shuddered under the bombs. The grim truth was America would soon be at war. It was Joe DiMaggio who gave the nation just what it needed, something else to talk about. That May, he started on a consecutive game-hitting streak unmatched to this day.
By the time it was ended, the streak would be part of baseball history, and Joe DiMaggio would be part of American history. His life would never be the same. He built that streak in the archetypal DiMaggio way, day by day, alone, without talk, and in the end under intense public pressure. It started quietly through 15, then 20, then 25 games.
When the streak got into the 30s, fans finally began to take notice. The record went back before the turn of the century, 44 games straight by Wee Willie Keeler. As Joe neared 40, before the turn of the century. 44 games straight by Wee Willie Keeler. As Joe neared 40, newspapers from all over the country dispatched reporters to follow the story.
The streak almost squeezed Hitler off the front page. The wires were running bulletins of Joe’s every at-bat and flashes, 10 bells when he got that day’s hit. and flashes, ten bells when he got that day’s hit. Suddenly, Joe’s battle was our battle, and his triumph would be ours. The man, Joe, comes through, a three and two bagger.
It was like a collective hysteria about that streak. I mean, people in the subway, strangers would talk to one another about it. Did he hit one today? You know, that sort of thing. Did he get another hit? Did he get another hit? That was unbelievable, that thing. The day he went for the record, Dorothy was in the throng at Yankee Stadium.
with writers and photographers assigned to record her every peep. Now at last, here was the limelight that had lured her from the good Midwest. When Joe came to the plate in the fifth, Dorothy rose and acted her anxiety. When he hit a home run, her words made ten million papers. As always, she spoke for them both.
Beautiful, wasn’t it? Hey, Peg, who’s that walking up to the plate? Joe DiMaggio. Started baseball’s famous streak. He’s got us all aglow. He’s just a man and not a freak. Joe, Joe DiMaggio. Joe, Joe DiMaggio. We want you on our side. From coast to coast, that’s all you hear is Joe’s the mad G.O. We want you on our side.
From coast to coast, that’s all you hear is Joe, the one man show. Every day the streak went on, 45, 46, 47, leading the papers, leading everybody’s conversation. The entire country seemed to be emotionally involved in this streak, which at one time, when it got to about 50 or 52, seemed endless. What can I say? He was the closest thing to an icon at that time.
We’d repair to the Fox Star on 107th Street and Lexington Avenue, and it was a dime to get in, and then probably you’d see King Kong on the screen, and then you’d see the movie Tone News would come up, and then you’d see, invariably, you’d see DiMaggio, you know, and then a cheer, a cheer would go up in the theater.
There’d be a cheer at everything he ever did. He was just the man. And I felt great being in the movie with all different denominations there, all different nationalities. And when DiMaggio came on, everybody, even my Spanish friends were screaming. I said, but I’m really Italian. But it was universal.
The love that people had for DiMaggio was universal. By the time the streak ended, at 56 games, Joe DiMaggio belonged to us. News of him had jumped from the sports page to the front page. We wanted to know everything about him, and that was his dread. In the middle of it all, Joe was wound tighter than ever.
He was ulcerated, coffee-jangled, sleepless, and lonely. He had millions of fans, thousands of acquaintances, hundreds of pals, and not one friend in whom he would confide. He was the most famous man in America, a man at every moment watched, and there was so much about his life that he didn’t want anybody to see.
Well, when Joe and Dorothy Arnold were going to be married in November of 1939, my mother and dad were invited to the wedding in San Francisco. Dad took his 16 millimeter camera into the church to film the wedding, which was a candlelight wedding. And the whole church was in darkness, except for the candles.
And that’s all he got was a candle. Mom came back from the wedding. She was in the picture with a big red hat on. When she came back from the wedding, she presented this piece of wedding cake to Bina, because she knew Bina was keeping all this stuff. And it was wrapped in cellophane with two paper clips.
With paper clips. Which was up on the top shelf of her closet. But she already also brought the two columns. Oh, there were columns and rows? This column and a rose. And in my scrapbook, the picture was there with these pieces. So it all authenticated the cake and everything. There wasn’t an ant? When she found this piece of cake in the closet, it was perfectly preserved.
Perfectly preserved. If you want to preserve something, you put it in cellophane. Cellophane. With two paper clips. No scotch tape, no saran wrap. We didn’t have scotch tape at that time. So that’s where she wrapped it, and it stayed perfect. Joe DiMaggio wasn’t going to let anybody see that marriage was eating a hole in his stomach.
That ulcer again. When Joe Jr. was born in October 41, Dorothy hoped her husband would settle in and settle down. He thought maybe Junior’s arrival might finally keep his bride at home. She was still talking about a comeback. She was still thinking about her future. movie. Joe thought, how’s she gonna get a part? He knew about the casting couch.
He said, I don’t want her to do the things she has to do to get ahead. If they did go out, Joe’d take her to touch shores where you could bring your wife if you didn’t make a habit of it and if she was decorative and not too loud. Dorothy was loud. Mostly, Joe left her home. He was very jealous. There was one episode where he didn’t like the dress she had on.
And he told her to take it off. He didn’t like the plunging sweetheart neckline. And he said, take that GD dress off. He didn’t like the plunging sweetheart neckline, and he said, take that GD dress off. Dorothy was just as beautiful as ever, but there wasn’t any glamor about her at that point. She was strictly at home.
And he was, at that point, getting out a lot more. He would take off at night and go out, leave her alone, and just ignored her. If he’d get upset with something, he wouldn’t talk to her for days at a time. Dorothy couldn’t handle it anymore. They’d been married three years when she ran off the first time, middle of the 42 season, and Joe sank like a stone first time in his life he was batting 250 that’s why the Yankees had to get her back and of course all the writers had a field day with that after that season
Dorothy hightailed for Reno and a quickie divorce. Joe had to go out and beg. That made all the papers too. The worst was the speculation that Joe only patched it up to protect his draft status. Married, father of one.
When that made the papers, Joe had to sign up before they called him a coward in the headlines. Joe, age 28, waives his 3A draft status and asks for immediate action. The slugging outfielder of the New York Yankees is pronounced in perfect condition. So the $50,000 a year Joe DiMaggio becomes a $50 a month guy named Joe. DiMaggio says, I just wanted to do my part. A year and a half later, Dorothy left him again.
And this time in open court, she called him indifferent and cruel. Joe was too proud to fight her in public and too proud to give her up. She was his. But what could he do about it now? Sergeant Joe DiMaggio was shipping out to Hawaii. As wars go, Joe’s was a piece of cake. A little baseball and a lot of feel-good publicity for Uncle Sam.
How do you like playing for the Army, Joe? I don’t mind it very much at all. As a matter of fact,good publicity for Uncle Sam. How do you like playing for the Army, Joe? I don’t mind it very much at all. As a matter of fact, I’m quite enjoying it. Although I’m looking forward someday to getting back with the Yankees.
But killing time in his Quonset hut, Joe seethed. The way he saw it, the war had taken his whole life and cost him $130,000 in big time, big league wages. I remember we was laying in the barracks one day and just talking and he says, and when I go back they’re going to pay me.
And I said, well Joe, the GI Bill of Rights guarantees you your job back, your salary back and everything. He said, yeah, but they’re going to pay me for the three years that I spent in the service. ROBERT STACKLIN, Demagio meant to grab hold again of everything he’d lost. Before he’d even got out of the army, Joe prevailed on the generals to post him to Atlantic City, where the wartime Yankees just happened to train.
And not too far from New York, home to Miss Dorothy Arnold and Joe DiMaggio Jr. He was still trying to get back in Dorothy’s life, even after they were divorced. I remember she had this book called How to Improve Your Word Power. She gave it to Joe to read. And so this particular night, we were going to go out to dinner.
And Joe said, let’s go to Longchamps and get some of that insatiable food. And you know know he was trying he never ever gave up on nothing i’d go out with him and i’d hit him fly balls to the outfield line drives anything at all just keep hitting him you know And then when he was having trouble, he thought he wasn’t hitting real good.
He’d hit there until his hands were all blistered. Spring training 1946, Joe was back in pinstripes and battering the fences. He said Dorothy was waiting for him in New York. He said they were getting back together. He said, well, he said more than he’d ever said before. He was like a kid, like he’d learned to smile.
Then, before the season even started, Dorothy dumped him to marry a stockbroker. Now baseball was all Joe had, and even that didn’t feel so solid. For the first time in his career, he would finish the season below .300, and the Yanks would finish a distant third. He was 31 years old, 32 years old. He didn’t have the same skills, of course, that he had before the war.
It really damaged his career, losing those three years. 1946 was a very tough season for him. I think it ate him alive at times. If he didn’t perform, if he didn’t do the job, if he didn’t think that he was better than everybody everybody else and he did it better than everybody else i don’t think that that worked for him i really think he had to be perfect and it’s impossible joe couldn’t put his world back together this was a new age night baseball travel, every game on the radio? The Yankees had three different managers in 46 alone,
and new owners. Would they know how to win? How could Joe win with bone spurs in his heel now, an open wound where the surgeons saw it away? When the 47 season began, DiMaggio couldn’t even walk. He’d look down the dugout bench, and suddenly half the team was kids looking at him to make them winners.
Maybe he would if his old bones permitted, but he’d sure as hell make them Yankees with a dose of that old-time pinstripe religion no mistakes he’d say you know like say for instance I pitched that day he’d say okay we had a meeting before the game and you said you were gonna pitch this guy inside you pitched him outside a couple of times.
And you had the outfield in the wrong position, the infield in the wrong position. And therefore, we let that ball get through us. And we had to break our necks to get over to keep him from going to two bases, because you pitched the wrong pitch. You made the wrong kind of a pitch. And you’d say, well, the ball got away from me.
It shouldn’t get away from me. You’ve been in the major leagues. Now you’re here, and this is where you’ve got to do these things perfect. He always talked quick, you know, very sharp. He didn’t spend a lot of time communicating. But his command, his presence, his stature on the field, you know, one word, one grump, one look spurred you on.
I’ve had people say to me, boy boy that must have been a lot of fun and I say you mean that death struggle we had every day because we either won or we lost there were no second place back in the lineup at last Joe went on a tear in May. He hit almost 500. Around the All-Star break in July, the Yanks won 19 straight, and Joe was the league’s number one hitter, first time since 1940.
DiMaggio led the Yankees back to the pennant and a shot at another world title. shot at another world title. To Yankee Stadium comes the biggest series crowd in baseball history for the opening game of the 44th World Series. That series was an all New York affair, the Yanks against the Brooklyn Dodgers and their new star, Jackie Robinson.
and their new star Jackie Robinson. 1947 also marked the baseball debut of the Hero Machines potent new engine, television. In front of the largest audience in baseball history, DiMaggio showed America he still had it. When the Brooklins drew even at two games apiece, it was Joe’s home run that won game five and put the Yanks on top.
We come back into the clubhouse, and we’re sitting there, and DiMaggio comes over, and he’s so happy about the whole thing, he gives me a big kiss. He said, boy, he said, Frankie, you pitched one hell of a ball game today. And I said, yeah, but if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have won it. That home run was something else, you know.
I never figured it would go seven ball games. I’m tickled to death, however, that it did go to seven, and we did win it. Against the odds, against even time and age, Joe DiMaggio had clawed his way back to the top. Of course, we looked down and never saw the struggle. Our hero had to win with the favor of heaven, not with clenched teeth.
America had come through depression and war. Now we were flush. We didn’t want to know about struggles. This was our age of ease, wealth, and power. And there, right on cue, was our post-war hero. Rich, elegant, strong, a winner. He was our Broadway Joe, squiring those free and easy showgirls at the Stork Club.
Of course, they paid him to show up at the St club we’d get in the car in the morning and he’d have his mail with him and he always sat in the front seat and I’d say to him which way we going today Joe he’d say let’s go up the West Side Highway so we’d drive up the West Side Highway down over by the polo grounds and down into the ballpark and And while he was there, he’d be opening up his mail.
He’d open up a check from Chesterfields for like $2,500 for a T-shirt company for $1,500. And one morning he opened them up on the way out. One morning, we remember, $9,200 he got in checks that day. There was Yogi, Hank Bauer, Cliff cliff Mapes and myself in the car he got more than any one of us ever made for two years he lived like royalty with courtesans great and small toots always had his table ready where Joe could be seen but never touched.
Anybody bothered Joe in his joint, Toots would be there. Get out of here before I bounce you out. Even men of sense and substance gave over their lives to serve Joe. To carry his bags, meet his train, get him tickets, or a blonde. These favors Joe saw as his due he played the game and played it full-time and Joe understood the bargain we would give him anything if he always looked like the hero we required Joe DiMaggio was probably during his playing time and maybe for the rest of his life one of the most
elegant human beings in the world there was never a hair out of place he never wore a suit that didn’t fit he never wore a pair of shoes that weren’t shined Joe was pretty immaculate well every time we went by a mirror he used to look in the mirror and see how we looked. How’s my shirt? All right? How’s my snot? Joe, you look great.
That’s what people would always say to Joe. There’s an old story that Tutshaw used to tell, that when Joe DiMaggio died, they would lay him out at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and 200,000 people would walk by his casket, and everybody would say the same thing. Joe, you look great. Joe, you look great. Joe, you look great.
Joe said he hated the attention, but he wouldn’t give it up. What else did he have? His marriage was gone, and he barely knew his only son. Joe didn’t even talk to his little brother, Dommy, who played center field for the Boston Red Sox. He robbed Joe of too many hits. See, in the hero game, you couldn’t just hold on.
You had to win every year, every day. And in his last three seasons, championship years every one for the Yanks, there were some days Joe could barely get out of bed. Someone would say to him, Joe, are the heels bothering you? I said, they’re all right. And he had other injuries too. He had his back. His back was bothering him one time.
And never wanted to come out of the ballgame. You know, he always wanted to say, no, he always wanted to say no i’ll be all right over here and he’d managed to get uh two or three hits in them games and you say to yourself when a guy is such in such bad shape how is he doing so good By 1949, the Yankees were Joe DiMaggio’s team.
You could not establish yourself on that team unless Joe gave the nod that you could play hard and you were one of our guys and you could help us win. Now, here comes Casey Stengel, who immediately took over the personality of the team, talked a great deal about himself, talked a great deal about his managerial genius, and Casey’s great line was, when he won the pennant that year he said i never could have done it without my players and it was a kind of thing that angered DiMaggio no one had a safe job on Stengel’s club one day Casey stuck a kid in center field and sent DiMaggio out to play first base.
He’s worried all over. He’s afraid of making a dumb play because he’s not familiar with first base. It would have killed him to make a stupid play. Joe did lose his footing and ended up on the ground and in the papers. There he was crawling around in the dirt. Not a thank you from Stengel, not a word.
The next thing Casey tried was dropping Joe out of the cleanup spot where DiMaggio had hit since 1939. For Joe, this was shame. There was a game in Philadelphia when he was like 299.9 or three right at the borderline of 300 and he had a line drive daddy juice was playing a shortstop right at the tag end of the season maybe two or three games to go and it was caught and he’s mumbling his way he always talked to himself a little bit he said how He said, how do I look? How do I look? And I’m thinking, why is he asking me how he looks?
I said, Joe, you look great. But I think he needed this confidence builder from anybody, anywhere. And maybe he just needed that comment to say, Joe, you look great. He knows he’s gone, and he didn’t want anybody to see him having a bad year because of age he reached a point where he wasn’t a ballplayer in 51 that he was in 36 no contest No contest.
Maybe he let it go a year too long. At spring training 1951, the spotlight turned from Joe to illuminate the blonde brush cut of a country boy from Oklahoma. Mickey Mantle had everything Joe D. had 15 years before. All the speed, the power, the fresh good looks. Here was the replacement for Joe DiMaggio.
I think that for Joe, watching this halo around his shoulder sort of slip away, realizing that he was now a mortal man and was not above all the rest of the players I think that hurt him more than the physical part of it what was left for Joe once Life magazine got a hold of a Brooklyn scouting report and printed it for five million readers DiMaggio had said had only one good throw in his arm.
He couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t get around on the fastball, couldn’t hit for power and wouldn’t bunt. You know the fake, I’ve had injuries that have been too frequent and they certainly have been no fun and as long as the game is not fun any longer with me, I’ve played my last game of ball. After the 1951 season, Joe DiMaggio turned 37 years old and walked away from baseball as the biggest winner in history.
In 13 seasons, his Yankees won ten pennants and nine World Series. Still, DiMaggio, like stars before and after, might have faded from our view. But Joe wasn’t done with the hero game. I had this scrapbook that I felt that DiMaggio was last year or two, and I was going to keep an accounting of everything he did.
And then, onto the, onto the, into the picture came this beautiful blonde lady. And I fell in love with her, and I started to keep in a scrapbook, the back of the scrapbook of Marilyn Monroe. And this is before they had a relationship? This is before they ever knew each other. Oh, wow. And the scrapbook came, and until the scrapbook got…
On some subliminal level, you might have brought them together with the scrapbook. Well, maybe I did. Maybe I did, but… And my mother used to always be looking at the scrapbook that I kept, and I wouldn’t let nobody touch it. In fact, when my mother passed away a few years ago, my sister brought the scrapbook back to me.
And when the pictures got together, and you could put no more pictures in it, somewhere in that area, DiMaggio and her met and later on got married. So when I first started that scrapbook, they were as far away as two people could be from being with each other. And by the end, when that scrapbook was filled, they met each other so like eddie says i may have had something to do with that kismet she really overflowed with a lot of sexuality.
I mean, physically, it was there. It was very powerful. But the sweetness of the girl and the genuineness and the refreshing qualities she had became endearing to people. I mean, the truck drivers, simple workers, guys, they all fell in love with this girl. In a sense, they were both the same way. Marilyn Monroe says, apparently this guy is the most glamorous baseball player in the world.
DiMaggio knows who she is. Maybe I could say he felt there was a feather in his cap. We figured DiMaggio was in the perfect mix, the greatest woman in the world and the greatest guy in the world. Joe was striking in himself, and of course Marilyn was the it-woman of the world in those days. It was a perfect match.
woman of the world in those days. It was a perfect match. At the time, 1952, it did seem perfect. Joe and Marilyn, Mr. and Mrs. America. How could they go wrong? We fell in love with the idea, as did Joe that very first night when her publicist arranged a blind date dinner in his silence at the table Marilyn saw solid strength he was so different from all the Hollywood chatterers she offered him a ride home and asked in the car why he’d come out to meet her surely he’d met so many famous people. Said Joe, but you’re prettier than Douglas MacArthur.
Joe never did get home that night. They were great. They were laughing, you know, a lot of time, telling stories, Joe was telling stories about when we were kids, you know, what we did and all that, and she would get a big bang out of it. And I think that Joe and Marilyn that, and she would get a big bang out of it.
And I think that Joe and Marilyn were, in a roundabout way, well meant for each other. They had one big thing in common. Each was an enormous figure created by the hero machine. And inside that vast personage lived a small person, fearful to be seen. In their loneliness, they might have been brother and sister. Joe insisted they be husband and wife. When they got married in January 1954, Marilyn told reporters she was going to be a perfect wife.
She’d iron his shirts and make dinner. They were going to make a room in their house for Joe Jr. and a nursery. Marilyn said she wanted six kids. Of course, she also said she wasn’t giving up the movie business. When a well-known honeymoon couple arrives at Tokyo airport, a throng of 4,000 baseball and movie fans surge out of control, break through police lines.
Joe DiMaggio and his bride smile bravely at their greeters, but they don’t dare move. But their troubles aren’t over, and next day comes a press conference where the public was barred, but the photographers and reporters more than made up for that. Their questions were rough, ranging from the risque to the ridiculous, and Joe, he’s the forgotten man, which is something in Japan where baseball is so popular.
I mean, never underestimate the power of you know who. But enough’s enough, his patience is exhausted and Joe says go. While they were in Japan, the United States government, the army, asked Marilyn to come to Korea to entertain the troops and sing a few songs for them. She did that. She left the Maggio.
It was their honeymoon. He wasn’t too happy about that. Marilyn had never worked a live audience, but when those soldiers started going nuts, for the first time in her career, she said, she felt at home. And she said, I’ll always remember my honeymoon in Korea with the 45th Division. When she came back to Japan, she said to Joe, she was so thrilled by the crowd, and she said to Joe, there were 100,000 soldiers out there.
You never heard such cheering. And Joe said, yes, I have. I think Joe DiMaggio never really understood Marilyn’s insecurity and what she needed in her own life. Neither could Marilyn understand Joe’s fears. It wasn’t long before she was back at work, long hours at the studio Joe was home staring at his TV sure he was losing her he couldn’t let that happen she told me she says Joe is absolutely obsessed with jealousy about me he thinks that I’ve had affairs with every man I’ve ever known in the industry he doesn’t trust me he doesn’t want me out of his sight he wants me to
give up my career altogether I don’t know what to do for the seven-year itch she flew cross-country to film exteriors in New York. All Joe could do was follow. Then he watched in horror as his wife made a spectacle of herself. Photographers were lying on the tower of Lexington Avenue with their lenses pointed right up at her crotch.
Marilyn and Joe had a screaming fight, and he left town. When she got back to California, they fought again. This time it was physical. Next day, the studio sent its minions to stage manage her exit. Miss McGregor, I have nothing to say this morning. She told friends Joe had beaten her, The studio sent its minions to stage manage her exit.
She told friends Joe had beaten her, but she added, not without cause. She told a California court that Joe had tortured her with mental cruelty. She wanted divorce. Joe thought he could stop her if he could just make her see how sorry he was. I meet Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Van Heusen Joe thought he could stop her if he could just make her see how sorry he was.
I meet Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Van Heusen for dinner at the Villa Capri restaurant. In walks Joe. Frank got me over there because he knew that Marilyn and I were good friends and perhaps I could get to Marilyn and maybe get Joe to talk to her. I call the studio. She said to me, Brad, I don’t want to talk to him.
I’ve had it, and this is it. He was… He had tears in his eyes. He was crestfallen. He had tears, and he was miserably unhappy. The marriage had lasted 274 days. Joe went back to San Francisco with his two suitcases, his golf clubs, and his shade. And it would only get worse. Mr. Miller, Ms.
Monroe, yesterday you didn’t know when you were going to get married. Do you know today? In 1956, the New York playwright Arthur Miller announced that he would marry Marilyn. And she said Miller was the only man she’d ever truly loved. Friends told Joe he had to pick himself up, move on, forget her. Joe forgot them instead. For the next five years, he tried to forget himself.
He traveled, he drank, he dated not well, but with athletic vigor. Movie stars, debutantes, beauty queens, and always voluptuous blondes. An actress who won a Marilyn lookalike contest. A Miss America whose talent was impersonating Marilyn. And a Miami Beach artiste, the Marilyn Monroe of burlesque.
The real Marilyn’s marriage to Arthur Miller had broken up. She was anxious, depressed. She checked herself into a Manhattan psych ward, and now they wouldn’t let her go. She was trapped, terrified, and she called Joe DiMaggio. Joe was there next day, fierce, proprietary, as if he and Marilyn had never split up.
You release my daughter, wife, DiMaggio growled at the front desk, or I’ll take this place apart piece of wood by piece of wood. Suddenly they discovered Miss Monroe was all ready to go. The only time that I saw them together outside of spring training was I was doing shows in New York and I was walking down Park Avenue to get to my car.
And I saw this couple coming down, and Joe’s got his head up in the air and his arm around Marilyn, and they’re just daydreaming along. Never even saw me. So I didn’t bother to stop and say hello. I thought he was happy as he was leaving me alone. Mr. President, Marilyn Monroe. It was when they weren’t together that Joe worried. The minute she went back to work, she fell in with Sinatra’s posse.
They knew how to have fun. And the Kennedys. Sure, Joe knew about that. More than he wanted to know. It was like he couldn’t turn away. How could he save her from herself? She was a very, very unhappy girl. She felt that she had come to the end of the road, you see, and she was drinking heavily, and she was also taking upper and downer drugs.
She was lost. Marilyn didn’t know what she wanted. Joe helped her get a house back in Hollywood. She’d promised to stay off the booze and pills. She’d talk about getting back together. They’d have another chance. Joe talked to friends like it was all settled. They were getting married again. When Marilyn died of a drug overdose, no one came to the house but doctors and lawyers, and they didn’t know what to do.
So they called Joe DiMaggio, and he walled away all the Hollywood players, producers, directors, acting stars, studio chiefs, and the public. How much more did he owe them? The fame had eaten up his life, and now it took from him the one person who might have understood. The way Joe said it, they’d killed his girl.
So in the chapel, safe for the moment from prying eyes, alone and bitter, Joe kissed Marilyn goodbye. Frank says, you know, Joe, Joe hates Hollywood and hates everybody in the picture business and hates anybody who had anything to do with Marilyn or even said hello to her. But I firmly believe that all the years that he made those visitations to her gravesite and left flowers, was out, he was still in love with her, but also out of a great sense of guilt.
Because I think he helped contribute to her demise. of guilt because I think he helped contribute to her demise. I’m firmly convinced that if he had behaved differently, they would have had a good marriage. He destroyed it, and he felt that guilt. Never mention her, never. No matter what, he would never say anything about it, and we dared not say anything to him about it.
You know, because that was something that wasn’t easy to, I guess, to just let go. For decades, Joe DiMaggio retreated from us. After Marilyn died, he relied on pure distance, spent a lot of time out of the country. In later years, he learned to run away without even moving the cosmic joke was the more he retreated the more our hunger for him grew if he walked away we thought less of ourselves his blankness allowed us to make him perfect in our eyes.
He never disappointed me as a fan on the field, and he never disappointed me as a fan, as a human being. And the proof of the charisma of the man is the incredible stature that, what, put the bat down 40 years ago, the incredible stature that, what, put the bat down 40 years ago, the incredible stature that he still occupies in this country and perhaps all over the world.
Whether or not it was his great feats as a ballplayer or his being a recluse, so to speak, and being away from it, from people and not sort of extolling himself to the public. Or maybe Marilyn Monroe, who obviously kept his celebrity going. I don’t know what it was, but I do know this, that when you talk about a giant in our business, the business of baseball, there’s nobody even close to him.
Everybody wanted to meet Joe DiMaggio. He and Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, went to see George Bush in the White House. You know, he hated signing balls and bats and stuff like that. They handed him a dozen balls to sign. He said, even the president wants balls. Ha, ha, ha, ha. DiMaggio had become an expensive commodity.
After a lifetime in the hero game, no one knew better how it was played. DiMaggio said, you want my picture? Come on in and put some cash down there. He knew his reputation, and his lawyer knew his reputation, and their figure was a little bit higher, considerably higher, than anybody else in baseball.
When Joe DiMaggio had an autograph session, it was probably worth a quarter of a million dollars to him for two days. Nobody else matched that. Nobody came close. A deal to sign bats made Joe three million. Lithographs, another seven-figure deal. Jerseys, a million or two more. After a while, he’d scarcely walk out his front door without being paid.
But what were all the millions for? After Marilyn, Joe never remarried, never made a family of his own. He had only Joe Jr., but father and son barely spoke. Junior drifted in California with drink or drugs. He would end up homeless. No, Big Joe’s money was not for the boy. In the end, it was mostly about him holding on with a white knuckled fist.
When biographers approached, Joe’s response was simple. Why should this guy make a buck off my life? When Paul Simon sang, Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio, Joe’s first instinct was to sue. He even stopped sending roses to Marilyn’s grave. People were stealing his roses. Big Joe was still keeping score.
Now it wasn’t hits, home runs, but dollars. He still had to win every time. He was our winner, after all. What would he be if he let that go? He died in March 1999, died as he lived, revered, extolled, subject of a frenzied commerce, in a national flood tide of sentiment. If it was only hired help holding his hands as he expired.
If he died, in fact, cut off from all his blood relations and even his old friends. If he was hard, lonely, unhappy, we didn’t want to know. He was our hero.
