The DiMaggios

by Tom Clavin

  He had a solid season, and though it was not as eye-opening as Joe’s had been in his first year in the Pacific Coast League, Williams impressed many of his teammates and rivals with his potential. Before a game against the visiting Seals, Lefty O’Doul was observing batting practice. Suddenly, he ran out of the dugout to Williams. To the somewhat startled rookie he said, “Don’t let anybody ever, ever fool with your batting stance and your hitting. You are perfect.” Then O’Doul returned to the dugout.

  By the fall of 1936, the Pacific Coast League had a new system to increase fan interest and attendance. The season was divided in half, and each city that won each half would be celebrating a first-place finish. When the regular season ended, the top two teams of each half went into a playoff for the Governor’s Cup. This year the first-round contest was between the Padres and the Oakland Oaks. During the season, San Diego had won 17 out of the 28 games the two teams played. Alas, that didn’t seem to matter. Williams homered, but the Padres lost the first game 6–3, then the second game 4–3, and the third game 5–4. They rallied for a 7–1 victory, but lost the fifth game, 7–6. Oakland went on to win the Cup, earning each team member $220.

  Back in New York, Joe played in the first of his six Subway Series games, never losing one of them. In 1936 the opponent was the New York Giants, a team seeking to restore its glory after a few lean years following the reign of manager John McGraw, which had ended after the 1932 season. The new National League pennant winner had three future Hall of Famers: first baseman and manager Bill Terry, NL home run king Mel Ott, and Hubbell, the All-Star screwballer who was also the National League MVP. The front page of the October 1 edition of The Sporting News proclaimed, “11 Series’ Vets Give Giants Edge in Experience.” Perhaps a slight edge for Joe was that his mother, escorted by Tom, made the trip east to see the World Series and New York City.

  Hubbell put on a show in the first game at the Polo Grounds, defeating the overmatched Yankees 6–1. Joe managed just one of the Yankees’ seven hits. Unfortunately for the Giants, Hubbell couldn’t pitch every day. In the second game, against Hal Schumacher, the new edition of Murderers’ Row crushed the Giants, 18–4. In the bottom of the ninth, the Giants’ Hank Leiber sent a Gomez pitch soaring to center. Joe, playing only his second game in the Polo Grounds, did an about-face and ran. He caught the ball over his shoulder and would have crashed into the fence had it not been opened to allow President Roosevelt’s limousine to exit after the last out. Joe hurtled through the opening, his momentum carrying him up the steps to the bowels of the ballpark. When he turned around, there was Roosevelt saluting him out the limousine’s window.

  The Yankees took the third and fourth games, then the Giants rallied to win the fifth, a ten-inning nail-biter. With Hubbell ready to return for Game 7, the sixth game looked like a must-win for the Yankees. Lefty Gomez was on the mound against Fred Fitzsimmons. The Yankees scored three runs early, but there was no quit in Terry’s team. The Giants pushed runs across in three different innings.

  When Joe walked to the plate at the top of the ninth, the Yanks had only a 6–5 lead. He lined to left for a single. Gehrig followed with a single, and Joe slid safely into third. It was Bill Dickey’s turn, and the veteran catcher smacked one to the right side of the infield. Terry fielded it cleanly. But Joe was already racing home. He stopped, feinted as though he was returning to third, and when Terry threw it there he bolted down the line again. Eddie Mayo at third fired the ball to Harry Danning, the catcher. Everyone in the stands held their breath, waiting for the collision. But Joe leaped, launching himself over Danning, and landed with his hand touching the plate—safe.

  The Giants went into a funk, unable to stop the ensuing carnage. By the time the Yankees were finished, the score was 13–5. It was the first world championship for the Bronx Bombers since 1932, when Ruth had still been the main attraction. Joe had rapped out nine hits in the six games.

  Joe returned to Taylor Street in triumph—a world champion, the son of an illiterate Sicilian immigrant fisherman who had been saluted by the American president. By North Beach standards, Joe was a pretty well-off guy. He had earned $14,900. From playing baseball! Giuseppe marveled.

  The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “No first-year man ever got anything like the money that will start falling into his lap. It is estimated that the earnings of the 21-year-old . . . will amount to $40,000 or more this year. For service to the Yankees, Joe will collect $15,000. Radio appearances, advertising and ghost-written articles assure $10,000. A vaudeville tour is expected to net the rest. Joe is to tour with his brother Vince. At first it was thought the boys would merely bat fungoes into the balconies, but it develops that the DiMaggios will offer songs, funny sayings and dances. Joe practiced his tap-dance routine between World Series games.”

  The vaudeville tour never happened, but even without it, the DiMaggios had become royalty in the neighborhood. With Vince and Dominic working as professional ballplayers and bringing in money too, the Depression seemed to be well over for the DiMaggio family. Out of habit, Giuseppe would still wake at 4:00 A.M., but he didn’t go out to his Monterey Clipper boat to fish as much. He left more and more of it to Mike. With her children grown—the youngest was now 19—and with that baseball dough, Rosalie no longer had to work as hard either. Besides serving as the family business manager, Tom was looking into various business ventures in San Francisco, where there was much excitement about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  In December of that year, Vince finally made it to the majors at 24. He signed with a Boston club—not the Red Sox, but the National League Boston Bees. He would have preferred an American League team—playing with Joe on the Yankees would be best of all—but the Bees would do.

  The Seals had had a dismal year, finishing in seventh. Needing fresh blood and more fans, the team was eager to give another DiMaggio a shot. It was expected that Dominic would be in the starting lineup for the 1937 season.

  As 1936 drew to a close, there was no bigger star in American sports than Joe DiMaggio. Not Olympic star Jesse Owens, not heavyweight champion Max Baer.

  It was the best thing that could happen to the DiMaggio family. It would turn out to be the worst thing to happen to the DiMaggio brothers.

  PART II

  What does freedom mean to me? Oh my! Thank God I was born here. Thank God my folks migrated here. Look at what America has done for the DiMaggios!

  —DOMINIC DIMAGGIO

  SEVEN

  Giuseppe and Rosalie DiMaggio could now tell their neighbors on Taylor Street that they were to have two sons playing major league baseball. And what a big deal it was when the word spread—both DiMaggio boys would be in the headlines in 1937.

  Vince was going to a very different organization, however. The talented Yankees had needed only one important piece to fill the void left by the departure of Babe Ruth. The club that had signed Vince was pretty much all void.

  When he first told his friends in San Francisco that he was going to be playing for the Boston Bees, most of them didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. Whoever heard of a major league team named the Bees? Many people in Boston wished they hadn’t.

  Originally the Boston Braves, the team had some proud history. The Braves had swept the Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack, in the 1914 World Series, the first time there had been a Series sweep. When Braves Field opened the following spring, it was the largest ballpark in the major leagues. But by the 1930s, the glory years seemed over. Before the 1935 season began, the Yankees looked to unload a spent Babe Ruth, and the owner of the Braves, Judge Emil Fuchs, saw an opportunity to entice fans to fill his 40,000-seat stadium. Ruth became a vice president of the club as well as “assistant manager”—in both roles, he was to be consulted on personnel moves.

  The Babe, alas, had nothing left in the tank, and National League pitchers showed him no mercy. He was batting .187 when he had one last p
ower surge in a game against the Pirates in Pittsburgh in late May. He clouted three home runs, the last three remaining in his arsenal. Then, on June 1, he retired, ending his career in the city where it had begun when he was a teenager on the Red Sox. In 1935 the Braves posted a .248 winning percentage, the third worst in major league history. Fuchs lost control of the team, and new owners, instead of changing the team, changed its colors, to blue and yellow, and its name, to the Bees. They posted another losing record in 1936.

  Whatever the name of the team, it was a professional National League club, and Vince had a shot at cracking the starting lineup. A supportive Lefty O’Doul told reporters about the former Padre: “Vince is a marvelous outfielder, with a throwing arm second only to his brother’s, and, although his hitting is a bit weak, the ball travels when he connects.”

  It was an opportune time for Vince to get away. “My mother later told me that she threw the sheets over everything and we headed east,” says Joanne DiMaggio Webber. Vince was taking not only his wife but their baby daughter, whose birth the previous fall had prevented him from being at the World Series with his mother and brothers. Vince was in a bit of hot water again with Giuseppe. Joanne was named after Madeline’s mother, which was not according to Sicilian tradition. Once again, Vince was the rebel. And once again, he found it best to go play baseball and prove himself if he wanted to return to his father’s good graces.

  That the Bees had sent a pitcher, Jim Chaplin, outfielder Rupert Thompson, and $20,000 to the Padres in exchange for Vince meant they expected more than a benchwarmer. As O’Doul said, Vince was already an excellent center fielder—he had led all Pacific Coast League outfielders the previous year with 31 assists—and at the plate he could send the ball a mile, though even in exhibition games, opposing pitchers found they could make him miss more than he should.

  “Vince doesn’t hit as frequently as some but his bat speaks with plenty of extra-base authority,” reported the Brooklyn Eagle in its spring training update from Florida. The comparisons to Joe began immediately: “Vincent DiMaggio follows the well-defined footprints of his famous kid brother. But neither his price tag nor his name assures him a regular job in the Boston outfield. He’ll have a lot of opposition.”

  It was a happy circumstance in February 1937 that both the Yankees and the Bees trained in St. Petersburg, allowing Joe and his brother to grab dinner some days after practice and home preseason games. That Vince was the older brother and Joe already a big star in baseball made for some ribbing between the two. Both were still young enough and uncertain enough about their futures to avoid genuine rivalry. They hoped that Dominic would somehow do well enough that a big league team would purchase his contract from the Seals. Wouldn’t it be great if all three brothers were eating steaks in Florida next spring?

  The only time Vince and Joe would face off all year—unless the Bees got to the World Series, which was highly unlikely—was an exhibition game between Boston and New York. But Joe didn’t play. He was benched with a sore arm. “I couldn’t throw without pain but kept telling myself that the warmer weather would bring the arm around.”

  It didn’t. When a physician examined him, he diagnosed enlarged tonsils and an infected tooth, neither directly connected to his right arm. For the second year in a row, Joe went north by himself. He had the tonsils and the tooth removed. When he made his season debut on May 1, he went 3-for-4 and his arm was fine. Now he wore number 5, which clubhouse manager Pete Sheehy had given him. No subtlety there: Ruth had worn number 3, Gehrig number 4, and now it was Joe’s turn to join the pantheon of pinstripers.

  The press didn’t give Vince much of a grace period as he prepared to make his debut with the Bees. Writing while on a train heading north from spring training, Joe Williams began his column in the New York World-Telegram: “You get to talk with a lot of baseball people in the South—managers, scouts, old players, current stars. There were two things most of the baseball people I talked with agreed on unanimously. One was that Joe DiMaggio was going to be an enduring sensation in the majors. The other was his brother Vincent wouldn’t last beyond mid-season. And the odd part of this is the baseball people concede Brother Vincent has almost as much mechanical ability as Joe. It seems to be a question of temperament. One brother’s got it and the other hasn’t.”

  Williams continued: “Nothing ever seems to disturb Joe. On the other hand, Vincent is addicted to nervous moods. Joe plays as if he knows he’s good; Vincent as if he isn’t sure. The two brothers are alike in mannerisms at the bat and in the field. In the unimportant practice maneuvers, it is difficult to tell them apart. But when the game starts and the pressure is on, Joe stands out and Vincent doesn’t. The baseball people”—none of whom, apparently, covered the ’36 All-Star Game—“say this is a mental condition. They say Joe has made himself a great player because he has confidence in himself, something Vincent lacks.”

  Denigrating Vince by comparing him to Joe was contagious. Jimmy Cannon, who would go on to become one of the more famous sports reporters and columnists in the country (and a confidant of Joe’s), covered the May 16 game when the Brooklyn Dodgers visited Boston. After the Bees managed to tie the game against Van Lingle Mungo and send it into extra innings, Vince came up with the pitcher Danny MacFayden on second.

  Cannon reported: “By the way, it was Vincent, The Wrong DiMaggio, the Mussolini of the North Side, who chopped in the winning run in the eleventh with a well-hit single which rolled almost to the centerfield fence as MacFayden ran all the way home from second.”

  So much for Vince’s not standing out when the pressure was on. It was the beginning of a turnaround for him after struggling at the plate in the first weeks of the season. That so little was expected of him or the Boston Bees may have helped him to relax.

  Meanwhile, Dominic was on the opening day roster of the Seals, but unlike his brother Joe four years earlier, he wouldn’t be in the starting lineup. He had a lot to learn. And, it was hoped, some more growing to do. A photograph of the team at the beginning of the season shows Dominic sitting second from left in the first row, looking more like a batboy than a professional baseball player. With his fragile appearance and eyeglasses, he already had the nickname “Little Professor.” O’Doul, however, saw not only the talent in him but the fierce determination not to be left behind by his brothers.

  Richard Leutzinger, in his biography of O’Doul, wrote about Dom: “Early in his career, many thought he was a mediocre talent, trying to cash in on big brother Joe’s name and fame. The need to refute that accusation may have made him the most determined of the three brothers.”

  The Seals started Dominic at third base. That didn’t last long. Dominic recalled that “in the process of throwing [the ball] to first base it landed right up in the bleachers.” With an arm like that, the team moved him to the outfield. When he got the chance to play early in the season, he usually made the most of it, at bat and in the field. On April 23, his double drove in the winning run in a 3–2 game against the Seattle Indians. It was reported after the next game: “Like Joe, like Vince, like Dominic! The third of the DiMaggio brothers, who at 20 is playing in the outfield for the San Francisco Seals, threw out two members of the Seattle Indians when they tried to stretch singles into doubles.”

  Offensively, Dominic’s secret weapon was O’Doul. It was obvious that, unlike his brothers, Dominic would not hit for power with his comparatively slight stature. He had to be a contact hitter—more like O’Doul had been. The manager worked hard with Dominic, teaching him various hitting techniques. “Always look for the fastball, and you can always hit the fastball or the curveball off the fastball,” he emphasized to his willing pupil. O’Doul also worked on Dominic’s stance, teaching him how to square up at the plate and be balanced. “Well, I could hit, but I would not have been able to hit in the professional ranks with my [previous] stance,” Dominic realized. “I might have been a .200, .210, .215 hitter, and I would not ha
ve been hitting a lot of long balls. But the change that Lefty performed on me, that turned me completely from just a so-so hitter into a good hitter.”

  Back in action and knocking the hide off the ball batting in front of Gehrig, Joe also impressed teammates and fans with the way he patrolled center field. If anything, he was even more graceful than in his rookie year—almost every play looked easy. He was like a maturing colt, his long legs eating up long distances as he loped after towering flies and liners alike; his keen sense of where the ball was every second was helped immeasurably by reflexes and a hypersensitive hearing that allowed him to be on the move an instant after the crack of the bat.

  Joe had a slightly different outfield to learn the first few weeks of the season. In an acknowledgment that the Gehrig era was giving way to the DiMaggio era—and “Ruthlessly” so, one might say—the Yankees had made the Stadium more homer-friendly for right-handed batters. After they replaced the aging wooden structure in left-center and center with concrete bleachers closer to home plate, the “Death Valley” that had existed since Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 was not quite as imposing. The franchise was signaling that it would look after its new golden boy.

  But Joe’s maturing physical strength—he was now a lean but solid 200 pounds—and his year of experience with American League pitching were probably more responsible than changed Stadium dimensions for the ’taters flying off his bat. In one game against the Browns, he hit a Howard Mills pitch 450 feet into the left-field seats, the farthest a ball had ever been hit in that direction. On July 5, Joe hit his first major league grand slam.

  Another way the Yankees organization looked after Joe was in assigning Lefty Gomez as his roommate. Six years older than DiMaggio, the pitcher was from the Bay Area and had been with the Yankees since 1930, so he really knew the ropes in New York and the other cities where the team played, on and off the field. In several ways he took up where another Lefty (O’Doul) had left off, giving Joe on-site advice and demonstrating how to be a big league ballplayer and celebrity.