THE BIG DAGO: JOE DIMAGGIO

Big Moe

     Scuttlebutt passed around by players was that DiMaggio was so quiet when he first came up to the big leagues that he’d go days without speaking to anybody and it wasn’t because he was unfriendly, or a snob, but that he was awkward and unconfident around people. He’d been very poor as a kid, like most ball players, and uneducated, spoke mostly Italian at home because his father was an immigrant fisherman. His first few years as a Yankee he had such a problem speaking he went to diction lessons with a private tutor so he wouldn’t embarrass himself around the press, because hell, he was the biggest celebrity in New York, and probably in the country, outside of heavyweight boxing champ Joe Lewis and President Roosevelt, and here the guy could hardly express himself.

     I’ve never seen a ball player make the game look so easy. He was never a guess hitter, because a guess hitter can’t be consistent (except for Rudy York), but Joe just seemed to know what was coming, had an instinct or knack for knowing a pitcher’s patterns, and it was almost scary the way he couldn’t be fooled at the plate, all spread out in his stance with a short step into the ball. Same thing on the base paths. He always knew when to go from first to third and never got thrown out, and he always knew when he could score from second on a single. Even when he booted one, he never looked bad, had a way of gliding effortlessly in the outfield. The year he hit in 56 straight games he only struck out 13 times as a power hitter! I don’t care much about statistics, because statistics do not always make a ball player, but that statistic was the most amazing.

      There wasn’t one part of Joe’s game that did not excel, and he was the best clutch hitter ever, better than greats like Ruth and Cobb, he’d break your heart every time, and nobody should ever believe Mantle or Mays are as good as he was, because they’re not, that’s just sportswriter crap, and they mostly don’t know their asses about baseball from a hole in the ground.

     Joe didn’t trust many people, just a few teammates. He was well liked by ball players, though there was a certain amount of jealousy and carping among guys who played against him, guys who liked to poke fun at him and say he was dumb and stupid and arrogant and of course he was a Yankee, and nobody liked the Yankees, they held themselves aloof from the rest of us, like they were superior, which is probably something I hate to have to admit is true.

     They were bigger men, had a great farm system, players who came up out of the same mold, so to speak, and the moment they put on those pinstripes and walked on the field, especially Yankee Stadium, they smacked of an arrogance and conceit that galled you. You hated them. They were intimidators. They were just men, like the rest of us, but they seemed special, and Joe, he was royalty, a king even among that bunch, though he never showed off and quietly went about the business of beating your brains out.

     I saw him in the hotel lobby where our ball club stayed whenever we came to play the Yankees. He had a room there. In those days, there were strict unwritten taboos about fraternizing with players on other teams. You didn’t say boo; they were the enemy. But hell, I was a rookie, and like everybody else I was in awe of DiMaggio, or the Big Dago, as he was known among ball players. He was having an incredible year, doing it all, in his prime, on top of the world. There he was, by himself in the lobby, standing browsing a newspaper, perfectly dressed and groomed, a polished man by this time.

     I just went up to him and offered my hand and introduced myself, told him how much I admired the way he played ball and respected the game. He put down his paper and shook my hand. He wasn’t the kind of guy to stare at you, being so shy, and standoffish, almost like he was embarrassed by being who he was.

     But he kept his eyes on me. “Franklin,” he said. “I know about you. You’re hitting the ball pretty good yourself.” He kept staring at me. “Is it true you’re a college man—that you got a college diploma?”

     “Why yes, Joe,” I said. “The University of Illinois.”

     Those dark eyes dropped, looked inward, then back at me, and I thought I saw real sadness. “I envy you,” he whispered.                                       

(Next Sunday installment, “The Last Good Summer.”)