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

by Cramer, Richard Ben

  Langella had become a man of all work for Joe—chief of the San Francisco branch of the network—it wasn’t just letters, now. Ben would field his calls, screen his offers, put him in deals, take him to lunch, ride him around. Langella would drive Joe’s car—his Acura—to San Jose every six months, take Joe to the dealership, where Joe would sign balls for everybody who’d bought cars since his last visit. Then the dealer would give Joe a brand-new Acura. Joe would move his tape of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (it was Spencer Tracy’s voice: “I would like to fish with the Great DiMaggio. They say his father was a fisherman . . .”) from the six-month-old Acura into the new Acura. Then Ben would drive Joe home again. And they’d always stop at a fishmonger Ben knew—a Greek named Manaidas, a beautiful fish place—where they were so honored by DiMaggio’s visit that they’d load him up with fish, whatever he wanted. They’d pack the new Acura’s trunk, and put some extra in the back seat . . . until one day Manaidas asked Joe to sign something, and Joe wouldn’t do that—so Manaidas told him, no more fish. Now Ben was looking for a new fish guy. That sort of service had earned Ben his Series ticket.

  Actually, Ben had half-a-ticket, once they got in the park—they rip everybody’s ticket at the turnstile . . . everybody but Joe. DiMaggio wouldn’t let them rip his ticket. A whole ticket was worth more in the memorabilia business. (And it would not escape Joe’s notice—after the quake hit—that he had a pretty good item: the Only Series Game in History Canceled on Account of Earthquake . . . and he’s got the only mint ticket. Not bad.)

  Anyway, it was just after five P.M., a half-hour till game time, and DiMag was talking idly with Bobby Brown—baseball chat—but staring straight ahead, with a look of doleful concentration, like he had to watch all the pregame stuff. Joe knew if he sat back, or smiled, or turned and looked around, that would give fans license to approach and ask him to sign things. If even one guy got to him, there’d be a million fans on his neck all day. So everything in Joe’s countenance advertised that he was unavailable. He had his legs crossed with his arms across his knees—a bit of self-protection from his arms, on both sides. His shoulders were hunched—he was hunched all the time, now, with the scoliosis in his back. He had his great nose pointed out to center field, his dark eyes focused at a distance, as if he meant to descry the stitching on the color guard uniforms. “Look at that power alley,” Joe said, shifting his stare to the left center field wall. “What’s it say?” Brown grinned at the memory of four hundred sixty-one feet to left center in the grand old Yankee Stadium. Then he read out the number from the Candlestick fence: “Three eighty-five, Joe.”

  DiMaggio snorted. “That’s a bunt.”

  But when everything stopped, what was Joe supposed to stare at? At first, he didn’t know it was an earthquake. He didn’t feel the stands sway: he was on the field—didn’t feel a thing. What’s the hold-up? . . . Then he was annoyed. He’d got a limo to take him to the ballpark. Now they’re gonna cancel the game?

  But word from radios was sweeping the stands—this was a bad one: the Bay Bridge was out! People started leaving, and DiMaggio relaxed. It was bad enough, no one was looking at him. Then, the announcement—please file out of the stands, onto the field. That got DiMaggio up in a hurry: Sixty thousand fans, on the field with him? . . . And then, from the radios: fires raging in the Marina. That was Joe’s house! . . . Ben Langella had hustled off to call his family. So Sam Spear walked DiMag out to the Giants players’ parking lot, where the limo waited. And Joe was on his way home before most of the fans even got to firm ground.

  THERE WAS ACTUALLY a vote, in 1969, for baseball’s Greatest Living Player. It was for a dinner to celebrate baseball’s centennial—baseball writers, mostly, and mostly New Yorkers. It wasn’t official. There wasn’t any nationwide poll. Of course, Ruth, Cobb, and Gehrig were (as Stengel used to say) “dead at the present time.” But Ted Williams, the last man to hit .400, was very much alive in memory and person. The voters all had fresher visions of the modern greats—Musial and Mantle had recently retired; Mays and Clemente were present-day All-Stars . . . . Still, it wasn’t even close. Even dimmed by two decades’ distance, one name, one man stood out alone. DiMaggio walked away with the honor, as he’d won every other accolade in baseball—without apparent strain.

  Why? What was it about DiMag?

  Well, you could keep it simple—call it the destiny of talent. Of the five things a ballplayer must do—run, field, throw, hit, and hit for power—DiMaggio was the first man in history who was brilliant at five out of five. (One time, when Joe complained about the fuss people made—“I don’t understand all this limelight!”—his pal Eddie Liberatore said: “Look, Joe. God made Mozart and He said, ‘You’re gonna be a genius for music.’ He made Michelangelo, He said, ‘You’re gonna be a genius for art.’ He made you—‘You’re gonna be a genius for baseball.’ ” . . . Joe thought that over, and conceded: “You might be right.”)

  Or you could talk about the only attribute that Joe would bring up: DiMaggio-as-Winner. In his thirteen years, his Yankees won ten pennants, and nine world championships. That was a record unmatched by any player in history. (As his teammate the shortstop Phil Rizzuto recalled: “You’d just turn around and see him out there—and you knew you had a pretty good chance to win.”)

  Or you could talk (as the voters did, at that dinner) about what DiMaggio couldn’t do. He couldn’t misjudge a fly ball in that vast Stadium center field; couldn’t look bad on a low, slow curveball; couldn’t ever rile an umpire against him, or act in an unbecoming way toward opponents. He never seemed to throw to the wrong base, never ran the basepaths stupidly—he just couldn’t. For it wasn’t that DiMaggio was often good, he was almost never bad. (All through the thirties and forties—every time he came to the plate, through six thousand at bats—fans were two and a half times more likely to see him smash an extra-base hit than they were to see him strike out.)

  It was often said—for want of better—that Joe D. was “a natural.” In fact, he was the un-natural: over a span of sixteen years, he’d stood against the humbling nature of the game. He excelled and continued to excel, against the mounting “natural” odds. He exceeded, withal, the cruelest expectations: He was expected to lead and to win—and he did. He was expected to be the best—and he was. He was expected to be the exemplar of dignity, class, grace—expected even to look the best . . . . And he looked perfect.

  And, of course, that didn’t stop with the forties, or with retirement—that wasn’t about what he did on the field, but who he was—that was why he won that vote in a walk. You could also say that was where destiny ended, and gave way to a lifetime of doing. DiMaggio did for us—for the sake of our good opinion—through every decade, every day. He was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good. For it was always about how we felt . . . with Joe. No wonder we strove for sixty years to give him the hero’s life. It was always about us. Alas, it was his destiny to know that, as well.

  THE OLD HOUSE on Beach Street was the only home Joe had ever bought. What griped him was he had to buy it twice: first time was for his parents, after his second year in the bigs. But when Giuseppe and Rosalie died they left the house to all the kids—Joe had to buy out his siblings . . . and the second purchase cost more than the first. (After forty years, Joe was still grumbling about that deal.) Of course, now he could sell it for a million—but he wouldn’t. That would bring publicity—and taxes.

  Taxes had driven him out of San Francisco. He wasn’t a resident anymore—not officially. He got a bug up his nose about the state income tax. They had the nerve to come after him for all the cash he took for ads, appearances, autographs . . . they wanted him to pay a million dollars. So, Joe screwed them down to four hundred thousand, and changed his residence to Hollywood, Florida. Of course, it was kind of a dump, but there was no income tax, no estate tax—and Joe wasn’t sentimental about hometowns. In fact, he’d just had a go-round with the first hometown, Martinez, California. Talk
about a dump! . . . But Martinez was always trying to make a big deal out of being the birthplace—the Cradle of Clipperdom. So, lately, they’d found his old boat—the Chris-Craft Joe got on DiMaggio Day, 1949. A cousin in Martinez had kept it for Joe—but the cousin was dead, now, the boat was a wreck. The town fathers wanted to fix it up, and put it in their new waterfront park. So Joe said, okay, and they worked the boat over like a pharaonic relic—restored the wood, buffed the brass till it gleamed—and put it on a pedestal in the park. They asked Joe to come for the dedication. DiMaggio took his $24,000 tax deduction and told ’em to stick it up their ass.

  But the house in the Marina was different. That was about who he was. He’d put the house in his sister Marie’s name—she still lived downstairs. Now, she was more than eighty years old, with one heart attack behind her—but she still kept that place pin-neat, mowed the grass in back, dragged the hose around to water the garden. (Joe wouldn’t spring for a sprinkler system, or a power mower.) And still, Marie took care of Joe’s mail—kept the letters with names she recognized in brown grocery sacks, and marked the ones from autograph seekers or anybody else: “No longer lives here.” (She had a deal with the postman, so Joe wouldn’t have to buy stamps to send those back.)

  When the earthquake hit, Marie had run out the door—didn’t even stop to grab clothes. She found her neighbor, Rose, amid the crowd on Beach Street. The dust, the smell, the noise was awful. Things were crashing in the houses. The house two doors away was coming apart, tumbling down. So Marie and Rose got out as fast as they could. (They would end up at Rose’s friend’s house, where they’d sleep for the next few days—politely declining the Red Cross food—till it was safe to stay home again.)

  By the time Joe got to the Marina, the streets were a horror show: buckled pavement, crumbling houses, broken concrete, glass, wires, fires. Military police in cammo gear had been mobilized to cordon off the area. The firemen had rushed through and broken into houses to shut off the gas. Rescue workers were already hunting for survivors who might be trapped under rubble. Any extra men were pinned down fighting, or trying to contain, the fires. No one was allowed to go in there, except for firefighters, cops, the water main guys, gas and electric . . . and Joe. A fire captain and police officer broke away to walk the Jolter in. On his block of Beach Street, there were three houses down in ruin, an apartment building was cockeyed, menacing the rest of the buildings. And amid the chaotic destruction, Joe’s house was . . . fine.

  The front gate was twisted and the door was open where the firemen had to break in, but the building looked solid, the grounds were undisturbed. And inside there was, well . . . a bit of dust. Maybe there were new plaster cracks. But nothing crumbled. Nothing burned. Nothing fell. Not one dish was broken. There was his portrait of Marilyn on the wall of the living room. And the larger-than-life painting of himself in a shoulder-padded 1950s suit. There, in its place of honor on the TV, was his proudest new possession: the baseball signed by Ronny Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, when Joe was at the White House a couple of years before. And there, in its accustomed place on the fridge, was his proudest old possession: the silver humidor engraved with the names of his Yankee teammates, who gave that gift to Joe after The Streak, in 1941. Joe took a minute to go upstairs, to his private quarters, and came back with his big right hand around the neck of a garbage bag. No, no, he said, he’d carry his own. He left the house without another glance around.

  He could see, everything was in its place, except his sister. Marie was gone, and he had no way to find her. He wasn’t seized with fear for her. Panic was never Joe’s style. It was more like the last egg in the carton—he couldn’t close the lid until he knew where his sister was. The police and fire brass walked Joe out to the yacht harbor—the open space that the neighborhood folks called Marina Green. That’s where the emergency management teams had set up shop, where residents had gathered—and the news crews, of course—who flocked to DiMaggio. And for once, he didn’t duck.

  There he was, full-frame in their cameras, standing so humbly, like all the other dispossessed. And look! The Great DiMaggio was dragging out a garbage bag. Uncomplaining—no, he didn’t want help.

  He was fine, he said to the cameras. He’d been at the ballgame. He’d find a place to stay. His house was not a worry . . . . But he’d like to get in touch with his sister.

  Within minutes, the news was everywhere in San Francisco—TV, radio, police and fire scanners, the National Guard, the mayor’s command post: Joe DiMaggio is looking for his sister!

  That was classic Joe: grace is just another word for no wasted motion. Of course, Marie got the news, she called in, to say she was all right. Before full darkness fell upon the shaken city, Joe DiMaggio’s world was back in place.

  And Joe would be comfortable that night, too—at the Presidio Club. He was an honorary member—didn’t have to pay dues. But he knew they kept a few quiet guest rooms upstairs. And he’d sleep well there—with the garbage bag, which held six hundred thousand dollars, cash.

  THE ODD THING was, the firemen, police brass, the newsmen, everybody in Marina Green . . . when they talked about the earthquake, what they brought up was: They saw DiMaggio. Of course they felt better: wherever he went, everybody else was more notable for having been there with Joe—which had been his privilege and problem for fifty years.

  That, and when they met him, they thought they knew him. That was the worst—the presumption of intimacy. Like the movie actor Aldo Ray, who walked up to Joe in the press room at the track in Vallejo—middle of a crowd of guys—and said, “Hey whatever happened t’that blonde you had? . . . I gotta blonde, too. She’s the best cocksucker you ever saw—just like that one you had.” Then he stuck out his hand, like him and Joe were gonna chew the fat about Marilyn. But DiMaggio was already on his way out the door, to the parking lot.

  The real problem was, we all did know him, somehow—he’d been with us so long. In fact, you could say that in the nation’s life, he was the first guy we knew like that—as a public person for all of us—and maybe we took liberties, as we would with any friend of our youth. It wasn’t really his doing, but he came along just as we found the means to peer into our heroes’ lives. It was only an accident of timing—small solace: you could say the same about a train wreck.

  There were moments when he tried to protest—to tell the country and the world to back off—what we were looking for, he couldn’t give . . . like the day in the 1960s, when a brilliant young writer named Gay Talese, on assignment for Esquire, tracked DiMaggio to the family restaurant at Fisherman’s Wharf. Talese simply couldn’t be ducked—and Joe got angry: “You are invading my rights. I did not ask you to come. I assume you must have a lawyer, you must have a lawyer, get your lawyer!” Talese wrote how he tried to tell Joe, he had come as a friend: “I don’t want to cause trouble. I think you’re a great man, and . . .”

  “I’m not great,” DiMaggio cut in. “I’m not great,” he repeated softly. “I’m just a man trying to get along.”

  But Joe couldn’t walk away from the hero game—not forever—what else did he have? He took a chance in the 1970s on TV ads—the Bowery Bank in New York, then Mr. Coffee, nationwide. Joe still wasn’t comfortable on TV. But the money was good, and those were scripted spots. He could do each ad a hundred times, if he chose. And the agency men wanted exactly the DiMaggio he preferred to show: quiet, dignified, solid, and calm . . . a bit aloof even from the commerce that landed him on the screen.

  It worked out brilliantly for everyone involved. The ad men and the companies thought they were pitching to an older demographic—solid citizens in their fifties and sixties (good credit risks, and coffee drinkers), who’d seen DiMaggio play ball. But they got much more, when younger folk, even kids, hooked on to Joe as a TV icon—it wasn’t about baseball, or banking, or coffeepots. It wasn’t about anything—except the power of that glowing box in the rec room. Joe became a TV thing—like Mr. Whipple squeezin’ Charmin! He was as real as the Gardol Sh
ield.

  And that would turn out great for Joe, too. He found out (as a generation of pols found, at the same time) that with TV working for you—over and over, a million screens, a million times—not only could you make your own image (and enforce it) . . . but it satisfied: people stopped asking about anything else. They wanted him to be what they knew—to validate their time, their attention. They just wanted that guy on TV . . . . Talk about a safe remove!

  And when that TV power was piled on a dusty history of real achievement—a plaque in Cooperstown . . . and there was Dad or Grampa, struggling for words to describe the grace of the Clipper in center field . . . and Mom approving, with tears in her eyes, the way that man buried poor Marilyn (and doesn’t he still send roses?) . . . well, Joe had become bigger than ever—and more distant. He hadn’t just climbed back to the top of the pile. There was the pile. And then there was Joe. It was beyond fame, to veneration. We put him in the pantheon—which, by his eighth decade, was his home address.