The DiMaggios

by Tom Clavin

  Dominic still managed to send a message, though—that he was another DiMaggio who belonged in the majors. In the five games, he rapped out eleven hits to Joe’s nine.

  The two teams were back at it again a week later, this time in New York. It was Dominic’s introduction to cavernous Yankee Stadium, and his inexperience showed. After the first game, Dominic went to Joe and Dorothy’s Manhattan apartment for dinner. (She had persuaded her husband that it wasn’t good for their marriage to have her staying in San Francisco, waiting for him to come home in October.) Joe told his brother that he was playing too shallow. “That’s a big field,” Joe advised, “and the ball carries well in that part of the ballpark.”

  In the next day’s game, Dominic positioned himself ten steps deeper. Sure enough, during one at-bat Joe sent the ball screaming to center. His brother outran it, and the ball fell into his glove. When a disgusted Joe returned to the dugout, teammates heard him muttering, “I should never have mentioned it to him.”

  “It was the biggest thrill of my rookie year,” Dominic recalled, “and I was sure Mom would approve of the way I was listening to my big brother.”

  He didn’t mention what had to be another big thrill, even if he was smart enough to realize the event was just another way to sell tickets. Though he was only a rookie, July 14 was Dominic DiMaggio Day at Fenway Park. “Nineteen hundred boys of Italian descent, members of the junior division of the order of the Sons of Italy, presented Dom with a military set and the Red Sox with a floral horseshoe. The bugle band of the Lynn, Mass. Sons of Italy helped to serenade the youthful DiMaggio.” And in the second game of the doubleheader against the crosstown Braves, Dominic hit the first home run of his major league career.

  Apparently, he was already viewed as an elite outfielder, at least in one teammate’s eyes. Sam Mele was an outfielder on the New York University baseball team in 1940 who had been scouted by the Red Sox. One afternoon his coach drove him from New York to Fenway Park to participate in batting practice. He recalled the experience 72 years later:

  “One guy behind the cage, he said, ‘Take five swings.’ I take four, and the last pitch, I didn’t swing at. Behind the cage the guy said, ‘Why didn’t you swing the bat?’ I said, ‘Well, it was low.’ He said, ‘It wasn’t outside, though. Come over here when you’re done.’ I did, and the guy was Ted Williams. We walked out to left field and we were talking baseball. When I asked him about fielding, Ted said, ‘Oh no, no, no. Don’t ask me. See that little guy in center field? You go ask him.’ And he yelled over, ‘Dom, Dommie! I’m sending this kid over, and teach him all you know about the outfield.’ That was when I first met Dominic. Right away he started teaching me about getting in position, and how to be ready to charge with one foot in front of the other because you’ll throw off your strong leg.”

  After a season in the Northern League, four years in the Marine Corps during the war, and a season in the Eastern League (where he would earn MVP honors), Mele would join Dominic in Boston’s outfield.

  In a late-season game at Yankee Stadium, Dominic was in center field twice when Joe came up to bat with the bases loaded. Both times Joe launched what looked to be triples, and both times Dominic raced them down. As Joe passed his brother on the field after the second one, he hissed, “You little heel.”

  That evening Dominic visited Joe and Dorothy for dinner again. When Joe opened the door, he said, “You have some nerve coming here for dinner after what you did to me.” Suppressing a grin, Dominic said, “Joe, I couldn’t go another inch for those balls.”

  That September, Joe and Dominic found themselves at the same hotel in St. Louis. The Red Sox, on an off day, had arrived, and the Yankees, having finished up a series against the Browns, hadn’t yet left. Joe was sitting in the lobby smoking when his brother walked in. “Hello, Dom,” he said. “Hello, Joe.” After a pause, Dominic added, “I am tired, Joe. I’m going to bed.” Joe said, “Good night, Dom.”

  The battle for first that month was between Detroit and Cleveland. The Red Sox had faded, and though the Yankees had had a late-season surge, it was too late. Detroit won the pennant. The Yankees, with an 88-66 record, finished only two games out, but after the success of the last four years, it had to feel like a dozen games. Boston came in behind them with an 82-72 season.

  It was a very odd trip home to San Francisco for Joe. He hadn’t wanted to linger in New York, to hang out at his favorite haunts—like the saloon Toots Shor had opened on West 51st Street—and face questions about what was wrong with the Yankees. He and Dorothy packed up their car and headed west. “It was a strange feeling to be driving back to San Francisco in my car and listening to World Series games on the radio,” he would recall.

  The 1940 season proved to be the turning point for Vince. For once, he was in the right place at the right time. The manager, Frankie Frisch, had decided to scrap his starting outfield of Rizzo and the aging brothers Paul and Lloyd Waner. When Vince arrived, he was installed in center field, with Maurice Van Robays and Bob Elliott on either side of him. The fans in Pittsburgh soon embraced him as the best center fielder in the National League.

  Finally too his bat was showing the same pop in the majors that it had in the minors. With regular playing time and reemerging confidence, Vince’s average approached .300.

  “Pittsburgh was where my father could finally show that he was a talented player too,” says his daughter Joanne. “He was far from home on the West Coast and not near Joe and Dominic on the East Coast—maybe that is why. They didn’t even see each other during the season, being in different leagues.”

  They weren’t seeing each other much in the off-season either. Vince had bought a house in Hermosa Beach, in Southern California, while Joe and Dominic remained in San Francisco. The DiMaggio brothers did get together between seasons, but as Dominic told a reporter in 1940, “When Joe, Vince and I get together in the winter time, it just so happens that we talk, when we do talk, about everything but baseball.”

  Vince played hard, while the Pirates generally played poorly. In one game in May the Giants scored 17 runs thanks in large part to seven Pirates errors. Frisch used three pitchers just to get out of the first inning. Small wonder that only a little more than 5,000 spectators were at Forbes Field that day. In another game against the Giants that June, the Pirates racked up another five “misplays,” as they were charitably termed. Both of Pittsburgh’s runs in that 4–2 loss came on a Vince homer. They finished the season in fourth place, a very distant 22.5 games behind the Reds.

  Vince may have been disappointed to not be playing for a contender, but otherwise he had his best season in the big leagues. He hit .289 with 19 homers (fifth in the league) and 54 RBI. His goal was to have an even better season in 1941. As he headed home to California, he hoped that he would stay with the Pirates. He had given up the thought of playing with either of his brothers. After being on four different clubs in four years, he just wanted to stay in one place.

  It had been a more satisfying season for Dominic than for either of his brothers. After a game at the end of August, when he was tied for the team batting lead with Jimmie Foxx at .313 (he finished at .301), owner Tom Yawkey gathered reporters together and declared, “You can say for me that I’m quite satisfied with the Little Professor’s work in the classroom. I only wish there were a couple more out on the Coast like him. I think I’d be tempted to offer them enough money to make them forget about fishing.”

  Though the pennant eluded the Red Sox again, they showed more potential than they had in decades. Ted Williams, Dominic, Bobby Doerr, and third baseman Jim Tabor were the young nucleus of a team that would definitely challenge the now-vulnerable Bronx Bombers. And vet Foxx had somehow alternated between catcher and first base, slugged 36 home runs, and driven in 119 runs. He and Dominic shared an apartment in Boston. Dominic remembered that “no future Hall of Famer was ever nicer to a rookie than Jimmie was to me. We ate together, and when J
immie wanted to make the night a little longer, which was his tendency, we’d say good night and he’d go on his way.”

  As 1940 drew to a close with all three brothers back on the West Coast, the news was gloomier than ever about events in Europe. President Franklin Roosevelt had signed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, initiating the first peacetime draft in the nation’s history. Vince was high on the list for his district, but it was possible that having a wife and daughter would lessen his chances of being called up. The 23-year-old Dominic seemed the most likely of the brothers to be called on if war came, but even Joe was vulnerable, having no children (though Dorothy was plotting to change that). It had to have crossed their minds that they needed to have especially good seasons in 1941, because it could be their last one for a while.

  ELEVEN

  That Vince and Dominic played in Joe’s shadow was never more obvious than in 1941. The previous year Vince had had his breakthrough season with the Pirates and become arguably the best center fielder in the National League. Dominic had an excellent season too. But today Joe is the only DiMaggio whose 1941 season is remembered. This would be the defining season of the brothers’ relationship as ballplayers. No matter what Vince and Dom did, they would not come close to equaling the Great DiMaggio.

  But first Joe (with Tom again acting as his business agent) had to come to an agreement with the Yankees on his salary. Because the team hadn’t done so well in 1940, the organization went on a cost-cutting spree. General manager Ed Barrow sent Joe and several other key players contracts with salary reductions—Joe’s from a reported $32,500 in 1940 to $30,000. Joe and Tom sent it back unsigned, and the two sides settled into sniping at each other in the press. Dan Daniel of the New York World-Telegram reported that Barrow “insists that DiMaggio does not run enough, that his legs are not in first-class condition, and these reasons explain the injuries which Giuseppe suffers each season.” Play a full season, Barrow challenged Joe via the press, and more money will be on the table. Spring training began in St. Petersburg without baseball’s best young player, but Barrow blinked first. On March 6, Joe signed a contract for $35,000, which was said to make him the second-highest-paid player in baseball behind Hank Greenberg at $42,000.

  Barrow may have been blowing smoke about Joe’s conditioning, but in truth, when he arrived at the Yankees camp, his throwing arm was sore. In exhibition games, he couldn’t launch the ball from the outfield in his usual way. He was sluggish at the plate too. Joe may have been partly distracted by the plight of his pal Lefty Gomez, who was clearly on the downside of his career and having a rough time. Joe McCarthy was quoted as saying, “This man did wonders for the Yankees. It would be rank ingratitude to cast him off like an old pair of shoes, or a broken bat.” But reporters noted that “Lefty thinks every appearance means the difference between ‘stay’ and ‘go’ and under his gay exterior he is the most harassed man on the New York club.”

  But all was well when the season got under way. The trainers treated Joe’s arm. For only the second time in his career, he was in New York’s lineup on opening day, and after eight games he was hitting .528. When he then went into a 12-game batting slump, Dominic helped him out of it. The Yankees and Red Sox met, and Dominic tripled, beat out a bunt, and doubled off the left-field wall in Fenway Park. His performance apparently woke Joe up; he began hitting again, including a 430-foot homer against the Athletics. The Yankee attack also featured Joanne DiMaggio’s former babysitter: “Phil Rizzuto, the little Flea who has taken over at short for New York, made his first hits in the American League and tried resolutely to steal the headline from Big Wop,” a sportswriter noted. Joe’s mind was eased about Gomez too. The pitcher credited with saying “I’d rather be lucky than good” would be both lucky and good enough to go 15-5 that year, his last effective season with the Yankees.

  In Boston, Ted Williams watched most of the opening day game from the bench. He had chipped a bone in his ankle in spring training. But the first regular-season game was a tight contest against the Senators at Fenway Park, and Joe Cronin, still Boston’s player-manager, called on Ted to pinch-hit during what proved to be the winning rally. In a harbinger of the season he was to have, Ted delivered a single.

  With Ted, Bobby Doerr, Dominic, and a still-contributing Jimmie Foxx, the Red Sox began the season scoring runs in bunches, collecting 14 against the hapless Senators, thrashing the Tigers 15–9, and beating the Yankees 13–5. Williams batted over .400, where he would stay into July. Dominic’s play improved for a simple reason: he could see the ball better. An ophthalmologist had diagnosed him with “myopic astigmatism with exophoria” and prescribed special corrective lenses.

  But he admitted that he still needed to toughen up his hands: “They became tender during the off-season because I spent the winter playing cards in Joe’s new restaurant in San Francisco instead of deep-sea fishing with my father and my other brothers.” Apparently, not much baseball was discussed during the card games. “Joe never volunteered any tips to me about my hitting, and I never asked him,” Dominic told Shirley Povich of the Washington Post. “It’s better that way, and we both know it. Joe’s big and rangy and I’m on the stumpy side. We have different strokes. Anyway, we don’t talk about baseball much.”

  The Boston fans were fully behind their team in the first half of the season, when it looked like the Red Sox would battle the Yankees and the Indians for the pennant. On Memorial Day, Fenway Park was packed with 34,500 people as the home team took on the Yankees. They split the doubleheader, the Sox losing 4–3, then pounding New York 13–0. Joe, who had two hits on the day, was not booed in Boston, but Dominic was the clear favorite, especially when he delivered two singles and a double. The Boston Globe ran a cartoon suggesting that with Dom hitting .382 to Joe’s .315, fans were having difficulty remembering the older brother’s name.

  Still, by June 25 the Yankees were at the top of the American League. They had homered in 20 consecutive games, but that wasn’t the streak people were talking about. Joe had hit in 37 straight games, only four games behind the American League record set by George Sisler in 1922. (In baseball prehistory, Wee Willie Keeler had hit in 44 straight games in 1897.) Joe’s performance lifted the spirits of the whole team, who had been saddened by Lou Gehrig’s death on June 2, a couple of weeks short of his 38th birthday. At the funeral in Christ Episcopal Church in the Bronx, Joe sat in a pew with Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey, Joe McCarthy, and others who had been Gehrig’s teammates over the years.

  On June 28, the Yankees were in Philadelphia for a doubleheader. In the first game, A’s pitcher Johnny Babich tried to kill Joe’s streak by throwing only balls, but with the count at 3-0, Joe reached way across the plate for a hit. He had another hit in the second game. His streak was now at 40, just one shy of Sisler. That day he went to visit a young fan in a Philadelphia hospital: 10-year-old Tony Norella, who was near death with an inoperable spleen illness. DiMaggio told Tony to stay tuned to his radio and he’d break Sisler’s record for him.

  The next day the Yankees were in Washington for a doubleheader against the Senators. “Fans Come from Miles Around to See DiMaggio Make History” was typical of that day’s headlines. The Washington Post reported, “Spectators were lined up outside the park when Joe arrived before the game. When he stepped onto the field, they swarmed from the stands, pulling and tugging at him, pleading for autographs.” Joe singled off Dutch Leonard in the first game and off Walt Masterson in the second, for a 42-game streak. Sadly, word came that little Tony Norella had died that morning before the games were played.

  Even before the streak began, Joe had been as celebrated as any athlete in the United States. Now he crossed over to becoming a legend. Though he told reporters that every pitcher in the American League would be “trying double” to stop the streak, he declared with confidence that he would keep it going indefinitely. Against the Red Sox and in front of a regular-season-record 52,832 spectators at Yankee Stad
ium, Joe had hits in both ends of a doubleheader to tie Keeler at 44 consecutive games. When play halted for the All-Star Game, the streak was at 48.

  Joe was no doubt glad for the All-Star break. For the first time, he would not be the only DiMaggio on the American League roster. Dominic, along with Ted Williams (batting .405), Bobby Doerr, Joe Cronin, and Jimmie Foxx, would represent the Red Sox. At the top of the seventh inning, Dominic was in right field, joining Joe in the outfield in a major league game for the first time, and Williams was in left. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Joe doubled (unofficially, his 49th consecutive game with a hit) and his younger brother drove him in with a single. In the ninth, Joe went to the plate with the bases loaded. He could manage only a grounder that scored one run. Williams followed him and smacked a soaring homer that struck the roof of the double-decked stands in right field.

  “It was the kind of thing a kid dreams about and imagines himself doing when he’s playing those little playground games we used to play in San Diego,” Ted wrote in his autobiography. “Halfway down to first, seeing that ball going out, I stopped running and started leaping and jumping and clapping my hands, and I was just so happy I laughed out loud. I’ve never been so happy, and I’ve never seen so many happy guys.”

  When Giuseppe looked at the next day’s newspaper, he slowly read: “From the San Francisco angle, we are unable to judge which was the mightier hit—Ted Williams’s home run that won for the American Leaguers yesterday in the ninth inning, or Dominic DiMaggio’s single in the eighth, driving in brother Joe.”

  With Joe’s and Dominic’s money helping to support the household, as well as revenue from Joe’s restaurant, which Tom ran, Giuseppe was no longer rising at 4:00 A.M. to fish. Mike continued to fish, but his income supported his own family of five. One of the San Francisco newspapers visited Giuseppe and reported on “the jolly, rotund man of 68”: “Now that he is a man of leisure, the elder DiMaggio gets up at 7 A.M., putters around the house, then goes down to Joe’s restaurant. At noon, he goes home again where Mama cooks his lunch, then he returns to the Grotto for an afternoon session [or] stays home to pick up the reports of the games over the radio presented to him by his friends in North Beach’s Italian colony. The big moment of the day comes at 5 o’clock, when Pop gets the late editions of the afternoon papers and checks up on the hits made by Vince, Joe and Dom.”