Summer of '49: The Yankees and the Red Sox in Postwar America

by David Halberstam

  DiMaggio flew immediately to Johns Hopkins, thinking he might undergo another operation. Because of his status as the nation’s number-one athletic hero, there was a horde of writers and photographers waiting for him at the airport. He had traveled to Baltimore on a fatiguing series of flights in old-fashioned prop planes; on one leg of the journey he had flown through a terrible series of storms. Almost everyone on the plane, including DiMaggio, had thrown up. When the plane finally landed he looked at himself in a mirror in the airplane washroom. He was shocked by the white-gray color of his face and the hollow look to his eyes. He was in no mood to face either reporters or photographers. The questions were all the same anyway: Joe, how’s the heel? Joe, what are the chances of recovery? And the worst question of all: Joe, do you think this is it? Do you think it’s all over? Again and again he heard that last question. It was, he believed, like asking a man who had just suffered a heart attack, “When do you expect to die?”

  At the hospital they quickly prepared him for emergency surgery, strapping him to a table. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man in street clothes coming at him. Suddenly there was a camera. Then the pop of a flashbulb. DiMaggio finally exploded. “Look,” he yelled, “I’ve always played ball with you. Why did you have to do that right now? What’s my family going to think if they see a picture of me like this?” That was a rare outburst for a man who prided himself on being in control.

  Joe DiMaggio was the most famous athlete in America. In fact, he seemed to stand above all other celebrities. Soon after he retired as a player, he returned with a group of friends to the Stadium to watch a prize fight. He was with Edward Bennett Williams, the famed trial lawyer, Toots Shor, the saloon-keeper, Averell Harriman, the politician-diplomat, and Ernest and Mary Hemingway. Suddenly an immense mob gathered. Hundreds of kids, a giant crowd within a crowd, descended on DiMaggio demanding autographs. One kid took a look at Hemingway, whose distinctive face had graced countless magazine covers. “Hey,” the kid said, “you’re somebody too, right?” Hemingway said without pause, “Yeah, I’m his doctor.” For even Hemingway, then at the height of his fame, could not compete with DiMaggio. Endless magazines sought DiMaggio’s cooperation to place his picture on their covers. Already two hit songs celebrated his deeds and fame: a light ditty about “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” commemorating his 1941 hitting streak (“Who started baseball’s famous streak/That’s got us all aglow?/He’s just a man and not a freak/Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio ...”); and “Bloody Mary” from the 1949 hit musical South Pacific (“Her skin is tender as DiMaggio’s glove ...”). Still to come was a generous mention in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea: Manolin fears the Indians of Cleveland, but Santiago, the older man, reassures him: “Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.”

  His deeds remain like a beacon to those who saw him play. More than thirty years after DiMaggio retired, Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, one of the most distinguished anthropologists in the United States, was still fascinated by him. He had first seen him play in 1949, when Gould was seven. Opening Day, he wrote in an essay for The New York Times, is not merely a day of annual renewal, “it evokes the bittersweet passage of our own lives—as I take my son to the game and remember when I held my father’s hand and wondered whether DiMag would hit .350 that year.”

  Gould discovered that another Harvard professor, Edward Mills Purcell, a Nobel physicist, was also fascinated by DiMaggio. Purcell had run most of the great baseball records through his computer looking for any statistical truths they might produce. The computer responded that all but one were within the range of mathematical probability: that someone (Babe Ruth) would hit 714 home runs, that someone (Roger Maris) would one day come along and hit 61 home runs in one season, and that even in modern times a player (Ted Williams) might on occasion bat .406. But the one record that defied all of Purcell’s and his computer’s expectations was DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941. A .400 hitter, after all, could have a bad day and compensate the day after. But to hit in 56 straight games challenged probability, Purcell noted, because of the difficulty of hitting a small round ball traveling at a great speed with a wooden cylinder—“and where if you are off one eighth of an inch a hit becomes a pop-up!”

  Purcell’s description of the difficulty of batting was strikingly similar to one that DiMaggio himself gave after a game in St. Louis. “You know,” he told Red Patterson, the traveling secretary, as they rode to the train station, “they always talk about this being a game of fractions of an inch. Today proved it. I should have had three home runs today. I knew I was going to get fastballs and I got them and I was ready each time. But I didn’t get up on the ball—I hit it down by that much [he held his thumb and index finger about an eighth of an inch apart and then touched them just above the center of the ball]. If I got under them that much [he lowered his fingers just slightly below the middle of the ball], I get three home runs.”

  DiMaggio had size, power, and speed. McCarthy, his longtime manager, liked to say that DiMaggio might have stolen 60 bases a season if he had given him the green light. Stengel, his new manager, was equally impressed, and when DiMaggio was on base he would point to him as an example of the perfect base runner. “Look at him,” Stengel would say as DiMaggio ran out a base hit, “he’s always watching the ball. He isn’t watching second base. He isn’t watching third base. He knows they haven’t been moved. He isn’t watching the ground, because he knows they haven’t built a canal or a swimming pool since he was last there. He’s watching the ball and the outfielder, which is the one thing that is different on every play.”

  Center field was his territory—right center and left center too—for most of his career. The other outfielders moved into his domain with caution. At the tail end of the 1948 season Hank Bauer was brought up from the minors and he chased, called for, and caught a ball in deep-right center field. Between innings in the dugout, Bauer noticed DiMaggio eyeing him curiously. “Joe, did I do something wrong?” the nervous rookie asked. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong, but you’re the first son of a bitch who ever invaded my territory,” DiMaggio said. It was not a rebuke, but Bauer deeded over more of right center in the future.

  DiMaggio complemented his natural athletic ability with astonishing physical grace. He played the outfield, he ran the bases, and he batted not just effectively but with rare style. He would glide rather than run, it seemed, always smooth, always ending up where he wanted to be just when he wanted to be there. If he appeared to play effortlessly, his teammates knew otherwise. In his first season as a Yankee, Gene Woodling, who played left field, was struck by the sound of DiMaggio chasing a fly ball. He sounded like a giant truck horse on the loose, Woodling thought, his feet thudding down hard on the grass. The great, clear noises in the open space enabled Woodling to measure the distance between them without looking.

  He was the perfect Hemingway hero, for Hemingway in his novels romanticized the man who exhibited grace under pressure, who withheld any emotion lest it soil the purer statement of his deeds. DiMaggio was that kind of hero; his grace and skill were always on display, his emotions always concealed. This stoic grace was not achieved without a terrible price: DiMaggio was a man wound tight. He suffered from insomnia and ulcers. When he sat and watched the game he chain-smoked and drank endless cups of coffee. He was ever conscious of his obligation to play well. Late in his career, when his legs were bothering him and the Yankees had a comfortable lead in a pennant race, a friend of his, columnist Jimmy Cannon, asked him why he played so hard—the games, after all, no longer meant so much. “Because there might be somebody out there who’s never seen me play before,” he answered.

  To DiMaggio, how people perceived him was terribly important. In 1948 during a Boston-New York game, Tex Hughson, who liked to pitch him tight, drilled him with a fastball in the chest. It was obvious to everyone in both dugouts that the pitch really hurt. Even as he was hit, Joe McCarthy, by then the Boston manager, turned to his own players
and said, “Watch him, he won’t show any pain.” Nor did he.

  During the 1947 World Series, in a rare outburst of emotion, he kicked the ground near second base after a Brooklyn player named Al Gionfriddo made a spectacular catch, robbing him of a three-run home run. The next day while he was dressing, a photographer who had taken a picture of him kicking the ground asked him to sign a blowup of it. At first DiMaggio demurred and suggested that the photographer get Gionfriddo’s signature. “He’s the guy who made the play,” DiMaggio said. But the photographer persisted, and so reluctantly DiMaggio signed it. Then he turned to a small group of reporters sitting by him. “Don’t write this in the paper,” he said, “but the truth is, if he had been playing me right, he would have made it look easy.”

  Ted Williams, himself caught in endless comparisons with DiMaggio, once said that the difference between the two of them was that DiMaggio did everything so elegantly. “DiMaggio even looks good striking out,” Williams said.

  Theirs was a rivalry that existed in the minds of their fans, in the minds of their teammates, and, though never admitted by either of them, in their own minds. Williams was, perhaps, the more generous of the two. Clif Keane, the Boston sportswriter, once went to New York in the late forties to cover a fight. He was staying at the Edison Hotel, which was DiMaggio’s residence. Traveling with him was a friend who was a great fan of DiMaggio. Keane called DiMaggio and asked if they could come up. DiMaggio said yes. “Joe,” asked Keane’s friend almost as soon as they were inside the room, “What do you think of Ted Williams?” “Greatest left-handed hitter I’ve ever seen,” DiMaggio answered. “I know that,” said the man, “but what do you think of him as a ballplayer?” “Greatest left-handed hitter I’ve ever seen,” repeated DiMaggio.

  Unsure of his social skills and uncomfortable in any conversation that strayed far from baseball, DiMaggio was wary of moving into a situation in which he might feel or reveal his limitations. He did not push against certain New York doors that would have readily opened for him in those years. Some of his close friends thought the reason for his behavior was his sensitivity about being an Italian immigrant’s son in an age when ethnic prejudice was far more powerful than it is today. It 1939, Life magazine did a piece on him that its editors thought sympathetic but which said, among other things, “Italians, bad at war, are well suited for milder competition, and the number of top-notch Italian prize fighters, golfers and baseball players is out of all proportion to the population.” Life found the young DiMaggio to be better groomed than expected for someone who was not a Wasp: “Instead of olive oil or smelly bear grease, he keeps his hair slick with water. He never reeks of garlic and prefers chicken chow mein to spaghetti ...” In fact, he was meticulous about his appearance, and unlike most of his teammates, who dressed casually in sports clothes, he almost always came to the ball park in a custom-tailored dark-blue suit, with a white shirt and tie. His overcoats were tailored as well, and he even took his army uniforms to be tailored during World War II.

  He was spared the normal, crude byplay of the locker room. The other players were aware that he did not like it, and they did not dare risk displeasing him. (About the only person who could tease DiMaggio was Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse man, who seemed to be as much a part of the Yankee scene as the Stadium itself. Once when DiMaggio had been examining a red mark on his butt, he yelled over to Sheehy, “Hey, Pete, take a look at this. Is there a bruise there?” “Sure there is, Joe, it’s from all those people kissing your ass,” Sheehy answered.)

  DiMaggio’s sensitivity to being embarrassed never diminished. He carried for no short length of time a grudge against Casey Stengel because Stengel, during the 1950 season, dropped him in the batting order from the cleanup position to the number-five slot, and told him to play first base, a position where he was not comfortable. His teammate Tommy Henrich noticed that when DiMaggio came into the dugout from first base near the end of the game, his uniform was soaked with sweat. Henrich knew immediately that it was not the physical exhaustion that had caused the sweat—it was caused by tension from the fear of embarrassing himself.

  After a game he would always linger in the locker room for two or three hours, in order to avoid the crowd of fans who waited outside the players’ entrance. He simply needed to sit in front of his locker, catch his breath, drink a beer, and relax. Once he was sure there were no outsiders around, he would conduct an informal seminar on the game just played. In those moments he was absolutely relaxed and unthreatened. He might turn to Shea. “Spec,” he would say to the young pitcher, “you have to stay with the game plan when you go after the hitters. If you say you’re going outside, stay outside, don’t cross us up. Otherwise we’re going to end up with a big gap out there. The other thing you were doing today is you were goosing the ball. Not really throwing it. Pushing it. Just throw it next time.” “Phil,” he might tell Rizzuto, “you didn’t get over quite quickly enough on that grounder in the third inning. I know you made the play, but that isn’t what worries me. What worries me is you getting hurt. If you get hurt, this team is in trouble. We can’t afford it.”

  When he was sure that most of the crowd at the players’ entrance was gone, he would get ready to leave. The call would come down to the gate people: “Joe’s ready to go.” A taxi would be called and a group of attendants would form a flying wedge so that he could get out with as little harassment as possible.

  Although DiMaggio was largely suspicious of newspapermen and reserved with most of them, his relationships with them were actually rather good. The last line of the last column of the greatest sportswriter of two eras, Red Smith, concluded: “I told myself not to worry: Someday there would be another DiMaggio.” The writers were, of course, wired to DiMaggio. They treated him as the White House press corps might treat a wildly popular president: They understood the phenomenon, what caused it and what made it work, and they were delighted to be a part of it, mostly because their readers wanted to know all about DiMaggio. Besides, the writers respected DiMaggio; for many of them he was the best all-around player they had ever seen. He frequently carried the team and he always did it modestly.

  If DiMaggio wanted them at a distance, they readily accepted that. For one thing, even if he might not have been the perfect interviewee (when he first came up, he was so unsophisticated, he liked to recall, that when the sportswriters asked him for a quote, he thought they were talking about a soft drink), he was a gent. As he took his own dignity seriously, he generally accorded the writers theirs. On questions about baseball, he was generally candid. He was also aware of the uses of good publicity, and he was, if anything, closer to some of the writers, particularly the columnists, than he was to his teammates. He understood that if he gave too little of himself, the press would rebel. He never upbraided a reporter who transgressed, as Williams did, but he was, in his own way, just as tough. If a reporter displeased him, even slightly, DiMaggio would ruthlessly cut him off.

  W. C. Heinz, one of the best writers of that era, thought that his colleagues were different with DiMaggio from the way they were with other athletes. As they entered the Yankee locker room, they were cocky, brash, and filled with self-importance. Then, as they approached DiMaggio’s locker, they began to change from men to boys. They became reverential, almost apologetic for even asking questions. You could, Heinz thought, hear the rustle of the paper in their notebooks as they steeled their courage to ask him how he felt.

  DiMaggio had good reason for being suspicious of the press. In his first two seasons as a Yankee, he had been nothing less than brilliant, leading New York back to the pennant after a hiatus of three years. In his second season he hit .346 and 46 home runs, and knocked in 167 runs. He had been paid only $8,000 for his first year, and for his second, $15,000 plus, of course, his World Series checks, which Yankee management viewed as part of his salary. For his third year he decided to ask for $40,000. The Yankees offered him $25,000. Ed Barrow, the general manager, told him that $40,000 was more than the great
Lou Gehrig made. “Then Mr. Gehrig is a badly underpaid player,” DiMaggio answered. The Yankee management turned its full firepower on him. This was the Depression, and, typically, the ownership did not view the question in relation to how much money the Yankees had made, or to how many millions Colonel Ruppert was worth, but rather to DiMaggio’s salary as measured against the wages of the average American.

  The assault was surprisingly harsh. He was privileged and spoiled. “DiMaggio is an ungrateful young man and is very unfair to his teammates to say the least,” Colonel Ruppert said. “As far as I’m concerned that’s all he’s worth to the ball club, and if he doesn’t sign we’ll win the pennant without him.” Then Ruppert added: “Is it fair for him to remain home while the other boys are training down South? No! Absolutely no!” DiMaggio himself remained adamant, which made Ruppert angrier. As the holdout progressed he added, “I have nothing new on DiMaggio. I’ve forgotten all about him. Presidents go into eclipse, kings have their thrones moved from under them, business leaders go into retirement, great ballplayers pass on, but still everything moves in its accustomed stride.” Why, said the Colonel, if you included World Series checks, DiMaggio had averaged $20,000 a year since he came up.