Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book)

by Cramer, Richard Ben

  All those clubs (and a dozen more) were mob-run, mob-owned, or they had mob money in the mix. Didn’t matter whose name was on the license: every one of those clubs, one way or the other, was under the protection or control of Frank Costello—and he was fond of Joe. He was proud of Joe. DiMaggio was exactly the kind of Italian-American hero who should be put forward—especially in light of the terrible publicity that Italian-American business was getting. It seemed, by 1948, a proud Italian businessman could hardly do anything at all without some government snoops taking an unhealthy interest. Even J. Edgar Hoover, who was an old pal, now acquiesced in the witch-hunt on “organized crime.” Hoover couldn’t let the reputation of his outfit slip. In those days, FBI meant “Forever Bothering Italians.”

  DiMaggio had to be extra-quiet: the commissioner of baseball had his snoops, too. That’s why it was a trust account: all the money for Joe would be at his disposal after his retirement from the Great Game. Until then he could say (truthfully), he never had a dime from “unsavory elements”—those other Big Names who were news for all the wrong reasons.

  And that’s why it had to be the Bowery. That was the bank of choice for all the Names in town. Not just for the mob—politicians did their business at the Bowery, too. All the big boys from Tammany Hall (Jim Farley’s men) had their nest eggs there. (Unless they were from Brooklyn—then it was the Dime Savings Bank.) Tammany was the Bowery’s protection. In those days (with Democrats always in the White House) New York never had to suffer federal intrusion. Even when there was some huge scandal, New York would take care of its own investigations. Some Blue Ribbon Panel would be empowered from Albany—noisily, with fanfare: hearings might go on for years . . . . But somehow, despite all the furious sweeping “to clean house,” the Blue Ribbon brooms never reached into the Bowery. (As the bank’s most famous pitchman would later assure us, money at the Bowery was “safe and sound.”)

  Joe let those thousands and tens of thousands pile up, untouched, and for the most part unmonitored. He didn’t want to know more than he needed to; he couldn’t know anybody he ought not to. Sometimes, DiMaggio would depute the mannerly Frank Scott to talk to some big mobster (especially the Jewish mobsters—Big Abe, or Meyer Lansky), to ask them not to pal up to Joe so publicly. “Don’t ever say I don’t want to talk to them,” the Clipper would remind Scott. “Just say I don’t think this is the place to meet.” But Costello—“the brain” of the New York syndicate—understood perfectly. So, late at night, when Solotaire and Joe would reconvene at the Elysee, Georgie might mention, by and by: “Oh, and I saw Frank. He said to tell you he appreciates everything you been doing. He’s watching closely. And he wanted me to pass on his respects.”

  Joe understood the bargain perfectly, too. Or to put it another way: he understood the bargain with perfection. He could have honor, our adulation, the glory of the Big Name . . . he could have men to sit with him, take him around, buy for him, do for him . . . he could have any woman he fancied—fresh or famous—and no questions asked . . . he could have all the money he needed, and a tidy pile left over, growing in a dark place. He understood: we would give him anything—if he would always be the hero we required.

  AT LAST, the Yankees had also concluded, DiMag was money in the bank. Postwar prosperity had doubled attendance at the Stadium: the ’47 club that brought the World Series rings back to the Bronx had also brought in two million fans. In January 1948, DiMaggio got his first raise since before the war. Seventy thousand dollars a year would leave only Feller and Ted Williams ahead of him. And among his own coterie, Joe vowed to overtake Williams soon. “He may out-homer me,” Joe told Lou Effrat. “But I will out-percentage him, I can out-throw him, I can out-run him, and out-think him.”

  Another operation before that ’48 season took loose chips of calcium out of Joe’s elbow. Maybe his throwing arm would finally be right again. The spur in his left heel was just a small hole in the flesh: nothing to keep Joe from digging in at the plate. And the ball was jumping off his bat with a glad thwack—heard from a million radios. First series of the year, in Washington, D.C.: DiMaggio loosed a blistering throw from center field to snuff Mickey Vernon at third base. In the same game he hit a monster home run—maybe the longest in Griffith Stadium history (and that went back to 1911). DiMaggio told an AP writer that Ted Williams had better watch out for his batting crown: a .350 average should capture that title—Joe DiMaggio’s .350. “I’m really looking forward to a fine year, one of my best.”

  For the public DiMaggio that was a remarkable speech—as near as he’d ever get to thumping his chest. He was in high spirits: he was on his way to New York to receive his award as last year’s MVP, in front of an adoring crowd at the home opener. Even so, you could hardly say DiMaggio was culpable of baring his pride in the public prints. What Joe wanted for himself wasn’t just to finish ahead of Ted Williams, a batting title, a .350 year. His ambition couldn’t be described with a line of numbers in a record book. He wanted to be, in any year, any town, on any day, any field—in every game, on every play, no matter who else was there—the best player in the park. He wanted to be the man in whose hands the fate of the game would rest. He expected to deliver that game, every game, to his team. He expected to dominate, not by doing something right but by doing everything right. Here was the difference between Ted Williams and DiMaggio: Ted wanted to be the greatest hitter who ever lived (and at times, he was cruelly mocked for saying so). But Joe’s ambition was more astonishing: he wanted to be perfect, not at something but everything—to abide, in other words, as a god.

  And more amazing was how close he came. That was the springtime when the New York press elevated DiMaggio off the ballfield, to hover in the pantheon of general genius. “A Cezanne with a finger-mitt, a Van Gogh with a Louisville Slugger,” the World-Telegram columnist Joe Williams called him. And that was a near consensus among the New York critics. The harbingers of physical breakdown, the reminders that DiMaggio was working all this while with only a mortal body, like theirs . . . made his story somehow more prodigious, with an elegiac edge of sadness that pushed the writers over the top. That was also the time when the elegant Red Smith, of the Herald Tribune, received his only reprimand from the sports editor, Stanley Woodward. “Walter!” said Woodward, peering over Smith’s copy, and freezing him (as a parent would), with his given name. “You are not writing about deities. Stop godding up the athletes.” Of course, the column was about DiMag. But if Smith, Williams, and others overreached, it was because they were on unfamiliar ground. They weren’t just trying to write what Joe did on the ballfield. They were trying to write about who he was.

  DiMaggio fueled their efforts with a stoicism that did seem other-worldly—more likely Old Worldly—when his body could not keep up with his will. The operation on his elbow went fine. But the shoulder was still lame, and always would be. DiMaggio might get off one good throw in a game. After that, he’d lob the ball in, if he could—and hope nobody noticed. And then, a week and a half into the season, he felt a pain in his right heel—the other heel. A new spur was growing there, and stabbing him with every step. DiMaggio went back to the padded shoes. But he wouldn’t say anything about that either.

  Of course, his teammates knew—but that knowledge didn’t bring them closer to the man. That was the season when admiration in that clubhouse turned to awe—DiMaggio was not like them. They’d talk to each other about the Big Guy’s arm, his stiff back, or his bum wheels . . . but not where the Dago might hear. They’d sneak glances, as he dressed in his corner. Eddie Lopat, the great lefty junkball artist, who came over from the White Sox to the Yankees that year, was stopped in his tracks when he saw the rings of raw flesh on DiMaggio’s flanks. “He had these sore marks, almost donuts on him—and it was because he slid so hard—always, his hips.” Charlie Keller would watch the doc, Sidney Gaynor, working on the Dago before a game. “He would be in that training room getting taped or swallowing some pills to kill the pain,” Keller recalled for Maury Allen
, in Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? “And we wouldn’t know if he was playing or not. All of a sudden he’d be on the lineup card and on the field, like nothing was wrong.”

  Even Spec Shea, who knew Joe liked him, would never push—he’d only ask in passing:

  “How’s the heel, Joe?”

  “Fine, Frank. It’ll be fine.”

  The skipper, Harris, wouldn’t ask at all: he just kept writing in the Clipper’s name at cleanup. Only DiMaggio took himself out of the line-up. And Joe wouldn’t sit: the Yanks were playing catch-up from the first week on.

  The Indians ran the table in April—didn’t lose a game in that month. By the time the Yankees clawed their way up the standings to where they could even see Cleveland’s back, the no-name Philadelphia A’s started reeling off victories—and shoved the Yankees into third place. Then, in the unkindest cut, the Boston Red Sox—under their new manager, Mr. Joe McCarthy—caught fire around the All-Star break. Boston went 24–9 in July, and sailed past everybody into first place . . . . Meanwhile, the World Champs were hanging on by their fingernails—never out of the race, but never on top. How could DiMaggio sit for one game?

  Well, he sat for exactly one game, the day before the All-Star break. And he took himself out of the All-Star lineup: he only appeared to pinch-hit (and drive in a run) before he tucked his aching legs under the pine again. Still, on the train back to New York, he told John Corriden, an old Yankee coach, that he wanted Harris to start him again in a day and a half, when the season resumed. Joe wouldn’t tell Harris himself. The skipper might want to talk—and Joe didn’t.

  What he did was, he hauled himself out to center field, day after day, pounding after balls in the gap, and when he got them, throwing as hard as he could. (He couldn’t tell a runner: Hey, stop, my arm hurts!) . . . He ran the bases, same as he always had. (He was supposed to score from second on a hit to the outfield. What did it matter if the photo of his slide at the plate showed his bared teeth in a snarl of pain?) . . . He hit the ball, whenever he could, harder than he ever had:

  Late May, Chicago, DiMaggio drove in six runs himself with two home runs, a triple, double, and a single, as the Yankees buried the White Sox 13–2 . . . “DiMag on Rampage!”

  Three days later in Cleveland: three home runs in one game—two of them off Feller—to silence seventy-eight thousand Tribe fans, and drive in all the Yankee runs for a 6–5 win. (“He showed his wand had not lost its magic . . .”)

  The problem was, he couldn’t hit as he expected to—as he was supposed to—all the time. It took him two months of grinding will just to push his average up from a pathetic .268 in May, to the barely respectable .300 at the end of June. There were days (felt like weeks) when he couldn’t seem to hit at all. He couldn’t get his bat around in time, or his stroke was off somehow: he’d get a pitch to hit and . . . just miss it. That was the worst: if the Yankees lost and Joe took an oh-for-four, then—watch out for the Dago. You couldn’t smile around him, or talk—forget it!—you didn’t want to be in the same train car with him. No wonder he was hitting titanic home runs—slamming balls out of the park more often than he had since 1937. Whenever he did get ahold of one, his swing had the force of cold rage behind it.

  Joe had no idea what his trouble was about. Was it over for him? At thirty-three years old? Joe Page remembered waking up at five A.M., at the hotel in Chicago, and seeing DiMaggio at the mirror, practicing his swing. Or more likely, that was the hour when Page got back to the room. That was one reason DiMaggio threw Page out—and told Frank Scott to book him a solo room from then on. Page was abject in his sorrow—he still loved the Dago. But when DiMaggio walked away, that was it. One year (half a year) in the hero game, and Page had puffed up, he’d put on weight, he was drinking, he wasn’t pitching well. He’d go into a bar and announce at the top of his high voice, “I’m Joe Page of the Yankees.” That wasn’t up to the standard. If you had to drink—okay, drink: but don’t drag the club into it. Page had gotten sloppy. DiMaggio couldn’t room with a slob.

  DiMaggio had teammates, but no mates on the team. His outfield partners, Keller and Henrich, had standing with Joe, and respect. They were serious players with serious talent—good Yankees, with tenure that stretched back before the war. The press always said they were Joe’s friends. But you’d never see Joe with them at night. They were married guys—that was part of it, but not all. People might get confused and think of the three of them all in the same breath. And that wasn’t going to happen—Joe DiMaggio didn’t have peers. Henrich played next to DiMaggio for eleven years. He recollected later that they’d never even been out to dinner.

  Sometimes, Joe would grab some rookie, and keep him by his side all night. Of course, the kid was thrilled. If Daig even said hello, you’d made the grade. Some of them thought he must want to talk, so they’d pepper him with questions—and that was their last invitation. The smart ones just had a few laughs, made no demands. You could go with DiMaggio to dinner, then out for drinks, then a midnight movie (some dumb western) . . . and by the end of the night, he hadn’t said twenty words. Joe took care of the bills. (With ballplayers, he grabbed all the checks.) If they tried to chip in, he’d slap away their money. What were they making—five grand? “No!” he’d command. “You eat with the Dago, the Dago pays.”

  He might spend time with the writers, too, if everything was off the record. The knights of the keyboard were as thrilled as the rookies—they stuck to the rules. One night, Lou Effrat recalled, he asked DiMag a question, something about his contract. “What’re you,” Joe snapped, “turning into a newspaperman?” That was the end of that. In that summer of ’48, Jimmy Cannon observed Joe in his hotel, mincing painfully down the stairs, left leg first, one step at a time. But Joe told him not to write it, and the story died there. There was no hint in the New York press of DiMaggio’s pain, confusion, anger. It took a visit from an old San Francisco pal, Curly Grieve, sports editor of the Examiner, to put a picture of DiMaggio in trouble into print.

  Grieve came east and had a chat with Joe before a doubleheader in St. Louis. He had one question for DiMag: what’s wrong with you? Then he used a whole column to quote Joe’s answer. Even to Curly, Joe insisted that his body was “a hundred percent better than last year . . . .

  “And yet, I’m in the worst slump in my ten active seasons in the big leagues. I’ve had only two good days all season. Am I over the hill? Am I just another hitter? Is that my best figure, .290? I don’t think so because I know I’ve lost something that I can regain. I’ve lost my timing. I’m not getting that bat around as fast as I should. I’m swinging behind the ball. I hit some balls as hard as I used to. But not nearly as many. I’m fouling off the ball I should be hitting. Is this going to continue all year? What’s the cure?

  “I’ve said it once and I insist it’s true. We just don’t get any batting practice. I never get a chance to iron out my swing. What happens before a game? Well, today, I had to take ten or fifteen pitches before getting a ball I could hit. One would be under the chin, another on the outside. I was ducking and weaving and getting madder by the second. The batting practice pitcher then started to press in an effort to get the ball over. He was worse than ever. You know, we don’t call it batting practice any more. We call it pitching practice. Some of those pitchers actually try to develop new pitches during batting practice. And they pitch to spots instead of grooving it. I used to hit a couple over the fence in batting practice. Now I’m lucky to get ahold of it.

  “Why don’t I do something about it? I would if I could. I’ve tried hustling kids and getting out in the morning when I’m at home. But it isn’t effective. They can’t groove the ball either. Last year, just before the World Series, Frankie Crosetti came out to the park and pitched to me for a half hour. He was perfect. That tuned me up for the World Series. My swing was back where it belonged.

  “I’m convinced that’s what I need now. I guess I’ll have to hire a batting practice pitcher myself.”

  T
hen, Joe D. went out and hit three more home runs to sweep two games from the Browns. The third of those homers was the one Joe would remember. It was the two hundred sixty-eighth of his career, which pushed him past Rudy York of the Red Sox, and past every other active player—Joe was alone at the top of the list.

  Next day, in Cleveland, Joe hit another round-tripper. But that one was like dust in his mouth. Spec Shea, on the mound, couldn’t hold back the Indians, who won 5–2 and shoved the Yankees three and a half games back. Shea was another guy who couldn’t follow up on his one great year. With that loss in Cleveland he was three-and-eight for the season. So Joe wasn’t talking to Frank as much, either.

  He couldn’t understand why these young guys couldn’t buckle down on themselves: pay attention to the goddamn job. In those years, the divide in that dugout was always prewar or postwar, McCarthy-men or after-McCarthy. It was the old guys who judged and enforced the Yankee ethic. Chandler would keep the pitchers in line (before that bastard, Weiss, gave Spud his walking papers at the start of ’48). For the everyday players, the high court consisted of Keller, Henrich, sometimes Lindell (he’d come on in ’42, but he was squirrelly half the time, too). Rizzuto was prewar, but Scooter was still like the mascot: someone was always stuffing worms in his glove, or stuffing him into an equipment trunk. Of course, the Dago was the Chief Justice.