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

by Cramer, Richard Ben

  One day, batting practice, he came out of the cage—Daig still got first licks in BP—and Bauer was waiting there. DiMaggio sidled up. “What am I doin’, Hank? What am I doin’ wrong?”

  Bauer thought: Why’s he asking me? But Bauer wasn’t one to mince words. “I think you can’t get around anymore.”

  “Bullshit!” DiMaggio barked. He walked away, stiff with indignation. “Load-a BULLSHIT.”

  AT LEAST STENGEL was playing him steady—and batting him cleanup. Maybe he had to. Someone upstairs may have sat on Ol’ Case.

  Before a twin bill against Philadelphia, the rookie Gil McDougald came into the dugout after infield practice, to check the lineup and see where he was hitting. There it was: McDougald at cleanup, and DiMaggio fifth. The kid went white, turned to his coach, Frank Crosetti. “Crow, he musta made a fuckin’ mistake.”

  Crosetti looked like he had a bad stomach. “No. He didn’t make no mistake.”

  McDougald was almost pleading. “Anyplace but that.”

  Crosetti said grimly, “No. You’re cleanup.”

  So Gil batted cleanup—went four-for-four, drove in every runner he could find on base. And he was thinking: “This is it!”

  Game two, he ran in from infield to see where he was hitting. He was eighth. Dago was back at cleanup. McDougald looked at Casey—and he could see the rage in the old man.

  So the Yanks played on toward autumn with DiMaggio at cleanup—batting .260, leaving his teammates to wither on base—with two lousy homers in the whole month of August. No wonder the Yankees still trailed the Indians (by a game, two games, two and a half—depending on which day you checked). And by September, Boston was right on their necks, too. No wonder Stengel was looking so sour—as Cannon once wrote, “like an eagle that had just flown through a sleet-storm.” No wonder DiMaggio was lunging at the plate, trying to smash every pitch through a wall somewhere. It was his job to carry the Yankees. And he felt like he was a weight on their backs.

  He felt the weight on him, every time he took a swing—like an unseen hand was pressing on him, making him slow. He changed his bat from his old thirty-seven-ounce, down to a thirty-five-ounce—a Babe Ruth model—then he sanded the handles, trying to put the whip back into his wrists. But he wasn’t fighting the weight of his bat. It was the weight of his expectations and doubts—and those he could feel from the dugout and press box, from the stands, from fans in New York and every other town . . . everyone (as he imagined, as he knew) watching, judging him, concluding that he wasn’t what he used to be. For the first time, the game was humbling him—as it did every other man.

  That September, as the Yanks left town on the train, McDougald and Rizzuto wandered into the dining car. There sat DiMag, alone at a four-top table, with his mail spread out in front of him. Of course, they went to another table. “Hey, come over here,” DiMaggio said.

  They sat across from him, their hands in their laps. DiMaggio glanced down at his mail. “Here,” he said, and flipped a sheaf of papers across the table. They were all offers—a hundred thousand for this or that, fifty a year for three to five years—to be vice president, do the ads, be the spokesman . . . . And Dago said: “I wish I could give one of these to you, and one for you. Then you could forget about this goddamn game.”

  But how would he forget, if he left it a loser?

  September 16, the Indians arrived in New York for two games. The Yankees were now one behind—they’d have to win both. And the first game, they’d be up against Bob Feller (best in the league, with twenty-two wins). At that point, Casey couldn’t sit still—he’d rather be fired. He shook up the order, top to bottom. Mantle was back from K.C. for the stretch run. He would lead off. (Let him use them fine young legs to beat out a hit.) Rizzuto was demoted to eighth. McDougald was moved up from eighth to third. And Yogi Berra would hit cleanup. DiMaggio was shoved down behind him, to fifth.

  At the start, Casey looked like a genius again . . . when Yogi’s first-inning triple gave the Yanks a run—and they scored two more to take a 3–0 lead. But like all the great ones, Feller only got tougher. Cleveland started chipping away against Allie Reynolds. It was 3–1 when the Yanks came up in the fifth. And then Feller would make a mistake—not with his arm: his head did him dirty.

  Mantle got on with a drag bunt down the first base line. He was bunted over to second base. McDougald took a good shot at driving Mantle home, but the Indians’ Sam Chapman robbed him at the left field wall. So Berra, the cleanup batter, stepped in with two outs and Mantle on second base. That’s when Feller started thinking . . . and walked Yogi intentionally—to get to DiMaggio.

  There were seventy thousand fans in the Stadium, booing to the skies, baying imprecations at Feller and plaintive encouragement to Joe—who stayed on one knee, motionless in the on-deck circle, until Berra got ball four. Then, Joe walked to the plate, scooped a handful of dirt and spent, perhaps, one extra moment, rubbing it into his palms. He was staring at nothing. His face was expressionless. You had to be a Dago-watcher to note the veins, like cords on his neck, and the ominous darkness around his eyes.

  Feller had pitched against DiMaggio since ’36. And DiMaggio had hammered him—plenty of times. But Feller figured he wasn’t facing that DiMaggio—just a .260 hitter, who couldn’t get around. Feller got one quick strike with the heater. Then, he threw one ball. He came back with the heater, and Joe hesitated—it ticked off his bat for a lousy check-swing foul, and Feller had him set up, one-and-two. He only had to blow one more by him . . . so Rapid Robert reared back and fired. And DiMaggio did what no one thought he could do anymore: he pulled Feller’s best—hammered it on a line, into the deepest reach of the Stadium. It shot past the center fielder, Larry Doby . . . and rolled, and rolled to the base of the wall, where the numbers 457 were painted. Mantle and Berra trotted home. DiMaggio pulled up at third base, and bowed his head slightly under waves of frantic fan-roar. Cleveland was finished for that day. The Yankees won 5–1. They were tied for first.

  Next day, another tough customer—Bob Lemon took the mound for the Indians. The Yankees had their smart junkballer, Eddie Lopat. Those two pitchers battled through the game . . . to a tense and terrible 1–1 tie in the ninth. The Yankees came to the plate with their cleanup man, Berra, scheduled as first batter. But Yogi topped a tame ground ball, for out number one. That brought up DiMaggio. The Stadium crowd was wailing for him. There was no Joe Page in the Yankee bullpen anymore. How long could Lopat go on? . . . DiMaggio stepped in, cocked his bat once, and stood still. Lemon fired the hard stuff that had got him past DiMag all day. But this time, Joe was ready. He turned in the box, his bat a blur, and smashed a shot down the line. It was right at Al Rosen, the Tribe third baseman. He could barely get his glove across to knock the ball down—it was simply hit too hard to field. Dago had handcuffed the sonofagun—and Joe was on first base, with the winning run, and the Yankees were up in the dugout, yelling. Woodling stepped in and stroked a single into right. DiMaggio turned it on around second base and slid into third as the ball came back to the infield. Lemon walked Bobby Brown to load the bases, and then little Phil Rizzuto stepped in. As Lemon wound up, DiMaggio streaked for home: a suicide squeeze! Lemon was no dummy. He fired that ball high and tight—a pitch that was all but impossible to bunt. But Rizzuto was the best bunter in baseball. He yanked the bat up, with the barrel at his cheek, and dropped the ball down the first base line. DiMaggio blew by the catcher, standing up—with the run that made the difference. And the Yankees stood alone in first place.

  That finished Cleveland: they would fade to five games back. But once again, the Yanks would have to clinch against Boston. They’d have their shot, September 28, in a doubleheader at the Stadium. If the Yankees won both, they would be champs again. Game one, Allie Reynolds left nothing to chance. He threw a masterpiece—a no-hitter—and the Yanks won 8–0. In game two, Boston got up off the canvas to take an early 3–0 lead. But then the Yankees came on like killers. It was 7–3 by the fifth, with the Red S
ox hanging on, trying to stay in the game—have a chance to slug it out in late innings. But they’d have no chance. Two on and two out, DiMaggio faced the lefty Chuck Stobbs, who was careful—he worked the count full, three-and-two. Then he had to come in, and DiMaggio put him away: home run over the left field wall. Three runs. End of contest. And the Yankees had their third straight pennant.

  In the clubhouse, there was a big celebration—whooping, hugging, everybody wet with spray. (In the Topping years, champagne had replaced Col. Ruppert’s beer.) But DiMaggio sat quietly on his stool. He was holding a ball—brother Dom had hit it to Gene Woodling for the final out. And Woodling ran in with it, to give it to the Dago. Joe said he’d keep that one. “My tenth pennant . . .” In the history of baseball, only Babe Ruth could ever say those words. But Ruth had won three of his with the Red Sox. For the Yankees, only DiMaggio had ten.

  NOW THE YANKS had to wait, with the rest of the Baseball Nation, while the Giants and Dodgers fought it out for the NL flag. The Giants had staged a comeback for the ages. From thirteen back in the middle of August, they played near-perfect baseball for the next month and a half (won thirty-seven games and only lost seven) to finish in a flat-out tie with Brooklyn. Then, there was a three-game playoff that ended so famously with Bobby Thomson’s homer, bottom of the ninth—The Shot Heard Round the World (and televised, for the first time, across the country) . . . . So, for the first time, these Yanks would have to face an opposing team of destiny, a club that knew it couldn’t lose. There it was in all the papers, next day, when that World Series began: God must be a Giant fan!

  Sure enough, that afternoon, the Giants could do nothing wrong—not even in Yankee Stadium (where so many NL champs had gone to die). In fact, the Giants made the Yanks look slow and stupid—from the very first inning, when Monte Irvin stole home. Meanwhile, the Giants’ fourth starter, a lefty named Dave Koslo, looked like Cy Young that day—he went all the way and beat the Yanks 5–1. DiMaggio flied out four straight times.

  In the second game, Steady Eddie Lopat hypnotized the Giants with junk. And though the Yanks couldn’t do much (DiMaggio took another oh-fer), they squeaked out a 3–1 win that brought the Series even. But still, that game brought more woe upon the Bombers. Disaster struck in inning five, when the Giants’ phenom, Willie Mays, lifted a pop fly to short right center. Mantle came racing across from right field—in full jet-car mode. As Mantle described it to his co-writer Mickey Herskowitz for the memoir All My Octobers:

  “I knew there was no way DiMaggio could get to it so I hauled ass. Just as I arrived, I heard Joe say, ‘I got it.’ I looked over and he was camped under the ball . . . .”

  (Mantle would tell friends, he thought—“Oh, shit! I’m gonna hit DiMaggio. I’ll put him in the hospital. They’ll never let me play again!”)

  “ . . . I put on the brakes and the spikes of my right shoe caught the rubber cover of a sprinkler head. There was a sound like a tire blowing out and my right knee collapsed. I fell to the ground and stayed there, motionless. A bone was sticking out the side of my leg.”

  It was a terrible price, to learn at last: you watch the Dago—play offa him . . . and to hear DiMaggio speak to him for the first time.

  “DiMaggio leaned over me and said, ‘Don’t move. They’re bringing a stretcher.’ I guess that was about as close as Joe and I had come to a conversation. I don’t know what impressed me more, the injury or the sight of an aging DiMaggio still able to make a difficult catch look easy.”

  (It was Mantle on his way to the hospital. But his knee—them fine young legs—would never be the same. Mantle would never again have that Bonneville speed. In later years, among friends, the Mick was neither so stoic nor impressed by the Clipper. The way Mantle figured, DiMaggio wouldn’t call that ball until he was damn sure he could make it look easy. Joe had to look good . . . but Mickey would never play another game without pain.)

  In that Series, the loss of Mantle put the Yanks in real trouble. And their troubles got worse at the Polo Grounds in Game Three. On a play at second base, Eddie Stanky, the bantamweight second baseman, kicked the ball from Rizzuto’s glove and ignited the Giants—they pounded Raschi for a 6–2 win. DiMaggio went hitless for the third straight game. These Yanks had never been behind in a Series. They had never been beaten up by a team as talented and tough. And for Game Four, the Giants had their best, Sal Maglie, ready to shove the Yanks into the hole for good.

  But a day of rain intervened. (Maybe God still loved the Yanks a bit.) Joe spent the day with Lefty O’Doul, who’d come to New York for the Series. And O’Doul told Joe to try an even lighter bat—and swing easy—Joe was lunging at the ball.

  Game Four, DiMaggio ended the Yankee first when he took strike three from Maglie. But it was strike one that sent a jolt around the Polo Grounds: the Clipper had crushed a ball down the left field line (out of the park but clearly foul). The game was tied 1–1 in inning three, when DiMaggio stroked a single to left—his first hit for twelve at bats in the Series. But he died on first, when Maglie got Woodling on a pop to left. By inning five, the Yanks had scratched out another run, and led 2–1—when Berra singled to right. Now, the scowling Maglie had to put away DiMaggio, and wasn’t going to let him turn on another pitch—like that line single, or the one hammered foul in the first. So Maglie worked him away, away, away. But DiMaggio wouldn’t lunge. The count went to three-and-one. Maglie came in with a low curveball—and DiMaggio flattened that ball, but good. It shot on a line between third and short, out to left field, and kept rising . . . Monte Irvin, in left, had turned and started racing back—but he stopped after a couple of steps. The ball was already over his head, still climbing—as it cleared the wall, and slammed into the left field seats. When Joe trotted home, Berra was bouncing up and down at the plate. He almost jumped into Dago’s arms. The Yanks had lost Mantle, but they had the Big Guy back.

  That was the game—and the Series, as it turned out. The next day, Joe had three hits, and McDougald broke the Giants’ back with a grand slam, as the Bombers won in steamroller style, 13–1. Day after that, back at the Stadium, it was Koslo again—but not Cy Young. The Yankees touched him up for four runs. DiMaggio had a double in two at bats. (And the Giants had seen enough—Koslo walked him twice intentionally.) . . . When Sal Yvars’s liner to right disappeared into Bauer’s glove, the Giants’ last comeback of the year fell short . . . and the Yanks won the Series in six games.

  The clubhouse was just like old times: packed with happy hangers-on, wet with spray, and loud with song. (It was a new generation, but still “Roll Out the Barrel.”) . . . DiMaggio had never sung along, and he didn’t now. He sat on his stool, amid a ring of writers—answered some questions (“Yup, a thirty-four-ounce bat . . .”) and ducked the big one (“I have no announcement on my plans.”). Bernie Kamber hovered at the edge of the ring, in case the Big Guy needed anything. And it was Bernie whom Gil McDougald took aside.

  “I just wanted to tell him what it was like to play with him—what it meant to me.”

  What he really wanted was for Kamber to tell Joe. Gil could never tell the Big Guy himself.

  Other Yankees did talk to Joe. One by one they came, to say congratulations, and shake his hand. But it was much later—the crowd was gone, the clubhouse was quiet—when Spec Shea sat down next to DiMag, and softly brought up the big question: “What about it, Joe? . . .”

  Just as quietly, DiMaggio said: “I’ve played my last game.”

  Then, all the players came back to him—they came out of the showers, came over from their lockers. A few brought balls, then some brought bats—and hats, T-shirts, their own gloves . . . they clustered around him, like boys, and asked for his autograph.

  THERE WAS STILL hope—at least in the papers. Topping said Joe might change his mind if he got a good rest in the off season. Weiss drew up contracts for another hundred G’s. Daniel had a piece in the Telegram, totting up the Clipper’s World Series records: most Series games, most for one team, most Series
at bats . . . and the one Joe valued, the last one—most times as a World Champ. In the history of the Series, only DiMaggio had won nine times. Then Daniel offered this intriguing coda: “It is believed that DiMaggio will come back in 1952 . . . .” (Believed by whom? Did the old coot know something?)

  And then, hope faded, when the new Life hit the newsstands one week after the Series. The magazine had obtained the Brooklyn Dodgers’ scouting report (prepared when the Dodgers still thought they had the pennant, and a World Series with the Yanks ahead). Andy High, an old and able judge of baseball talent, had written about DiMaggio:

  “He can’t stop quickly and throw hard. You can take the extra base on him . . . .

  “He can’t run and won’t bunt . . . .

  “His reflexes are very slow, and he can’t pull a good fastball at all.”

  It was a brutal assessment, and damn near true. (The only thing High missed was how DiMaggio could still beat you, somehow.) . . . The good part for Joe was, he didn’t have to answer. He was on an airplane, bound for Japan with Lefty O’Doul and fifteen other “U.S. All-Stars”—and a two-month schedule of exhibition games.

  Their plane made the Tokyo airport at dusk. Magnesium flares lit the skies to signal the arrival of the diamond gods. They were driven in a cavalcade of open cars to the middle of town—the Ginza—where pandemonium ensued. A storm of paper scraps fluttered down from windows on all sides. Raking spotlights and a fusillade of flashbulbs lit the startled Americans in stroboscope freeze-frames. College boys and high school girls flung themselves onto the cars. Lefty and Joe were in the lead convertible, which was finally stopped dead by a million screaming fans: Banzai DiMaggio! Banzai O’Doul! . . . Japanese police and U.S. soldiers had to plead with the crowd to let the car move.