56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

by Kennedy, Kostya

  That was what Dorothy believed. That, along with thoughts of the happy times, carried her through. When the photographers came to the apartment she put on an apron and served Joe a plate of food or lit a cigarette for him or leaned down and kissed him on the side of his face as he read the newspaper. “On edge and tense,” she said in solidarity with Joe when the reporters asked how she felt during her husband’s hitting streak.

  And on game days, in the late morning or early afternoon, Dorothy did her hair and plucked her fine eyebrows and dabbed on makeup in front of the bedroom mirror until she looked just right. She slipped on the pale blue organdy, maybe, or something yellow and short-sleeved. Then she went to Yankee Stadium. Joe would be trying to get another hit, to keep his streak alive, and whenever he got it, Dorothy would stand right up at her seat and clap her hands together and cheer.

  Chapter 15

  Next To Lefty

  WHEN DIMAGGIO GOT to thinking about things too much, about all that was expected of him and all that he expected of himself, he wanted a cigarette. He smoked whatever his mood, but especially in times of stress. Smoking gave him something to do with his hands, and lent a sense of purpose to idle moments. The way DiMaggio smoked—the way that he nonchalantly held the cigarette, then took those long, languorous drags—made him appear at ease and comfortable in a way that he might not have otherwise appeared.

  He had been smoking since grade school (at first because he wanted to look grown-up) and these days he always smoked Camels; as part of his agreement with the company they sent him carton upon carton for free. He was an ideal spokesman, epitomizing the Camel brand of “extra coolness” and “extra mildness.” One magazine ad showed DiMaggio in silhouette, taking his unmistakable swing of the bat, and below that a photo of him seated, in a suit, grinning, with an unlit Camel between the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand. “Experts call him one of the greatest natural hitters in the game,” the ad type read. “How he gets all that extra power into his bat even Joe DiMaggio himself can’t say. But you can easily see below how he gets the extras in his cigarette. ‘I smoke Camels for extra mildness and extra flavor,’ says Joe.”

  Now, as his hitting streak pushed forward, DiMaggio had taken to smoking two packs a day. He was drinking coffee in outlandish quantity, too—an oceanful before each game, always black and always a half a cup at a time. “He could drink 23 half-cups in a day,” said Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse guy.

  The daily watch of the streak brought a new kind of focused and unceasing attention on DiMaggio. His sixth-inning home run off the Tigers’ long lefthander Hal Newhouser, late in the hot afternoon of June 22, contributed to a different streak: a major-league-record 18th consecutive game in which the Yankees had hit at least one home run. (That streak had been kept alive a day earlier in the 7th inning when Rizzuto lofted a fly ball into the front of the leftfield stands—an improbable display of power from a shortstop who stood smaller than batboy Timmy Sullivan, who greeted him with a handshake at home plate.) The Yankees would go on to win the Newhouser game by rallying for two runs in the ninth inning off the beleaguered and heavily perspiring Bobo Newsom who had entered in relief and who eventually walked in the winning run.

  The Yankees were now two games behind the Indians, in second place, and smacking all those home runs. Yet it was Joe’s hitting streak that had swaggered to center stage. BIG QUESTION IS “WHO WILL STOP DIMAGGIO?” asked a headline in the New York Post. HE’S NEAR A RECORD, read another. A strange cartoon in one paper showed a squadron of fighter planes—some with propellers on the nose and wings, much like the F4F Wildcats the U.S had been building in such earnest—buzzing through the sky. The planes were inscribed with the words BRONX BOMBERS and they fired upon a gigantic globelike baseball, the ammunition labeled with both “Yanks’ Homer Mark of 18 straight games” and “DiMaggio Hits in 35 Straight Games.” Elsewhere DiMaggio’s photo appeared on a page among images of baseball’s other great hit-streakers: Hornsby, whom he’d just recently passed; Cobb who’d hit in 40 straight games in 1911; and of course Sisler with his record 41.

  DiMaggio knew Cobb from back home in California, where Cobb was living in retirement. It was he more than anyone who had encouraged DiMaggio to defy Barrow and hold out for more money in his first Yankees contract—Cobb’s tenacity clearly not limited to the ballfield. Now, in the summer of his 55th year, Cobb was playing a few rounds of charity golf alongside Babe Ruth to raise money for the USO. And if DiMaggio had any doubt that the game’s greats were now paying attention to his run at Sisler’s mark, that doubt was dispelled when Cobb, en route to the links, said to reporters, “A better fellow couldn’t do it. DiMaggio is wonderful. I like to see records broken.” But Tyrus Raymond Cobb would never be a man to lavish unqualified praise. “DiMaggio is a hell of a ballplayer, but I’m disappointed in him,” Cobb went on. “I know he could be greater. . . . If he only conditioned himself in the winter by walking or hunting to keep his legs in shape, he’d be so far ahead of the others that it wouldn’t even be close.”

  It was true that DiMaggio didn’t exercise much. To what end? He played ball. He practiced his swing. He practiced running down flies in centerfield, then throwing the ball in on a line to second or third or home. DiMaggio might run the bases here and there to make sure he was cutting the angles just right. But exercise in the off-season? Hunt?

  Cobb was destined to stay disappointed. DiMaggio, in the shape he was in, was about a week shy of Sisler’s number.

  JOE’S SISTER MARIE and young Bina Spatola certainly were not the only ones keeping scrapbook chronicles of DiMaggio. All over New York City and San Francisco kids kept scrapbooks, and in other places too: Kansas City, St. Louis, Philadelphia, D.C., wherever fans had baseball on the brain. In Jackson Heights, Squeaks Tito could get beside himself with excitement over DiMaggio’s streak; he’d get so worked up you worried he’d spit on you when he talked. In South Jamaica, Mario Cuomo left the family grocery store, grabbed a pal, Willie or Artie, and went for the box scores every evening. Down in Ocean City, Gay Talese, upstairs and out of any adult’s earshot, fiddled with his radio. And in Bensonhurst, N.Y., an enclave of Italians and Jews near the western reach of Brooklyn—Dodger country, full-bore—nine-year-old Maury Allen kept a scrapbook of his own. Dodgers or not, this was another neighborhood where the boys told the barbers to cut their hair and slick it back, like DiMaggio’s, and where kids would grip a broom handle, stand astride the sewer top that was home plate and pretend that they too were on a hitting streak.

  Maury was crazy for baseball, a gift handed down from his father and older brother Sheldon—but from his mother not so much. When the Allens went to ball games they usually went to Ebbets Field, but early in the 1941 season, just before DiMaggio’s streak began as it happened, someone had given them tickets to see the Yankees and the Indians up in the Bronx. They were told to pick up the tickets at a booth outside Yankee Stadium, near third base. To which Frances, Maury’s mom, replied: “Where’s third base?”

  At about seven o’clock each night, Maury got his newspapers down the block at Joe’s Candy Store, and even if he turned first to the sports pages like all his friends did, he could not miss the headlines in the news. You might see the score of the Yankees game or the Dodgers game on Page One, or a picture of DiMaggio, and you might see a headline like this, in big type, an inch and a half high: GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA; TROOPS MOVE.

  Maury knew about the Nazis, and about how Hitler hated the Jews. His parents talked about this sometimes in their low adults-only voices. But Maury was Jewish! And so were a lot of his friends! It was a strange thing to be nine years old and learn that the leader of a big, famous country, a man who has never met you, hates you, and might want to kill you even. The word Hitler cut through any whispering or any conversation like a line of barbed wire. There were photos in the paper of Nazi soldiers with their guns pointed at the backs of Russian people, forcing them to march.

  Still, the war seemed far awa
y. “This doesn’t really affect us,” his parents told the kids. Jews may not have been allowed to hold good jobs in Germany, but Maury’s dad, Harry, sure had one, selling coffee and tea to hotels and restaurants. The Allens rented a comfortable five-room apartment that Frances kept in fine order. Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was a safe, happy place and to Maury the war was a distant malevolence. It got scary only when he let himself think about it too long. He might see that headline, the Nazis on the move or the Luftwaffe dropping bombs, but then he could turn back to the sports pages and see that DiMaggio, his hero, had hit in another game, a home run this time on a line into the right centerfield seats. The hitting streak was alive and Maury read all about it and then clipped out his favorite articles and the best of the photographs, to save, he imagined, forever.

  WHENEVER DIMAGGIO NEEDED a haircut—and in summertime, when the humid air curled the ends of his dark locks, it seemed he needed one every two weeks—he liked to go to Vincent’s. The three-chair barbershop on 8th Avenue in Newark, around the corner from St. Lucy’s Church and just a few blocks from the Spatolas, had no name on the window, no fancy storefront display. Just a couple of guys with shears, a place to tarry and read the city papers or the Italian press and, quite often, breathe the scent of something cooking in the back. Vincent cut Joe’s hair for free.

  “Don’t say anything about the streak!” uncle Jimmy had warned the kids before Joe came to the barbershop that day. “Don’t ask him about it, don’t tell him you know about it, just don’t say anything at all. You understand me?” When Jimmy Ceres gave an order like that, boys like his 16-year-old nephew Larry Chiaravallo knew well enough to listen. Jimmy’s hands looked like two-pound rib-eyes. None of the boys would have dared to call him Peanuts to his face.

  Peanuts picked up DiMaggio in Manhattan and drove him to Newark, over the river, past the long stretches of green parkland and then into and through the bustling daytime streets of the first ward. The Cadillac, as always, turned heads. How could you miss it? Gun-metal gray, red leather seats, a license plate that read JOE D-5 and you-know-who riding inside. A crowd gathered as soon as the car eased to a stop on 8th Avenue. “Who wants to wash Joe’s car?” uncle Jimmy asked, stepping out into the late-morning light. They all did, of course, and Jimmy tossed one of the older boys the keys. Soon the Cadillac was in the care of a dozen loving hands, being soaped up, rubbed down, Simonized until it shone. The kids knew that DiMaggio wouldn’t pay them a nickel for the work but none of them minded. They only hoped that when DiMaggio came out of Vincent’s and saw the gleaming car, he might stop and autograph a baseball or two, or grab one of their playground bats and show them just how he liked to grip it.

  Peanuts’s nephew Larry swept the barbershop floor and tried to look casual. In a few moments Larry would put the hot towel on Joe’s face, apply the soap, get him ready for his shave. It was all that Larry could do not to ask, “So how long do you think you’ll keep this streak going, Mr. DiMaggio?” or something like that, something to tell his pals from the McKinley School, but he kept quiet.

  Peanuts took a seat near the window, DiMaggio the chair nearest the back. Everyone in the barbershop was in a good mood; the men chatted and laughed easily together. The radio played. As Joe was attended to, first the shave and then Vincent’s meticulous trim, the shop gradually began to get crowded with people who, they said, had just happened by. Oh, Joe, what a surprise. I didn’t know you were around today.

  Everyone in the place was Italian. Sometimes during the haircut Jerry Spatola would swing in, on his way to this or that, and greet DiMaggio and see if he wanted to come to the Vittorio Castle that night (Richie would love to see you, Joe), or whether there was anything else DiMaggio needed. The year before, on Joe DiMaggio Night at a Bears game in Newark, Joe and Dorothy had hung around and smoked at Vincent’s before going over to the Stadium. It was like family at the barbershop, and after getting his haircut Joe would wander back into the kitchen and say hello to Vincent’s pretty wife Carmelina who would put a plate of manicotti before him.

  They all fussed over Joe here. And he knew that no matter how many times he offered, no one would take a dime for anything. He could relax. Around Vincent’s everyone understood the importance of things left unsaid. No one asked him a lot of questions—not even when his name came over the radio in the sports news. Out here, Joe never had to think too hard or worry about what he said.

  DiMaggio and Peanuts stepped out of the barbershop and the kids gathered around. DiMaggio signed a baseball, a glove, someone’s scrapbook. The heat had broken from recent days and the high sun fell through the fluttering leaves of the ginkgo trees, casting shadows onto the street and reflecting off the polished Cadillac. An old horse-drawn ice truck clomped and rattled by.

  Across the Hudson the struggling St. Louis Browns were arriving in New York for three games and DiMaggio knew that the newspaper guys would soon be asking him about his hitting streak. He did not look forward to it. Sometimes writers phrased things in such a way that DiMaggio didn’t understand at first what was being said. He would take a few moments to be absolutely sure of the meaning of a question before he answered it. Teammates could see DiMaggio pause, his face stiff and the faintest look of uncertainty, even suspicion, in his eyes. The crucial thing to DiMaggio was to not have what he said come out wrong, to not have it betray any sense that he was somehow confused, or overmatched. He often feared that his words might make him seem like a rube—or worse, dumb. He hated the thought of being embarrassed in this way.

  It was the same reason he’d never even taken a chance on making it through Galileo High; surely the other students would have laughed at him when they saw him struggling to understand. And how would he have looked next to Dom, for whom the reading and the studies came easy?

  At Yankee Stadium, the writers sometimes spoke quickly, back and forth, bantering. Lefty or Henrich or Crosetti, or even the rookie Rizzuto seemed to have no trouble bantering back. For Joe, the words were sometimes unfamiliar, or he recognized them but wasn’t sure what they meant. He was getting better though. DiMaggio read the newspapers—headlines and parts of the stories anyway—and tried to make sense of the way the language was being used, tried to make mental notes to carry with him. His goal was to learn two new words from the dictionary each day, a practice he had begun while with the Seals in San Francisco. He preferred to learn big words for the most part. They sounded smarter. “Hey Joe, where’ve you been?” one of his Seals teammates might ask in those days. And Joe would reply, “Oh, I’ve been nonchalantly meandering down the pike.”

  He envied Dorothy that she had no troubles with such things. Just like Dom, Dorothy always seemed to know just what to say and how to say it. For Joe, when he was asked to speak to a group or at any other formal gathering, he became nervous. He brought Lefty along to banquets.

  He had decided that the best thing to do before speaking to reporters was to prepare and rehearse. It was good, he felt, to appear completely cool and unbothered by the hitting streak. As ever, Dead Pan Joe. On the day before the first of the three Browns games, he was asked whether chasing Sisler’s record was causing him concern; DiMaggio said, “Why should I worry? The only time to worry is when you’re not hitting. I’m not worried now—I’m happy. It’s no strain to keep on hitting, it’s a strain not to be hitting.” DiMaggio did not mention to the reporters that sometimes his stomach hurt; it was better to keep emotions to yourself. He was sure of that.

  The Yankees clubhouse, before games and certainly after a loss, could be quiet and serious. There was work to be done. If DiMaggio had an exceptional fluidity on the baseball field, a grace that made it seem as if playing baseball was the reason he was put on earth, he could in the game’s social circles be inartful and stiff. In the locker room, he preferred less conversation, less repartee. This was fine with McCarthy. The raucousness and joviality that had characterized the Yankee clubhouse when Babe Ruth was at the center of it had long since faded. Sometimes guys would complain
among themselves that the place had grown as quiet as a church. But that was the tone DiMaggio set, and no one wanted to behave in a way that would lead him to cast his fish-eye upon them, that look of displeasure that might mean he was shutting you out. The players by and large kept the joking and the banter to small groups and to appropriate times.

  Of course none of this applied to Lefty Vernon Gomez—Goofy, El Goofo, the Gay Caballero—who could break any silence, liven any mood, cut through DiMaggio’s shield with a simple quip. Lefty was willing and eager to lampoon anyone, to put humor into any situation, to talk an endless stream, and in 1941 he was probably the best friend that Joe DiMaggio had.

  When DiMaggio first came to New York in ’36, Gomez was the Yankees’ ace, one season removed from a record of 26–5 and as effective as just about any pitcher alive. McCarthy instinctively put the two of them together to room on the road, the silent rookie and the garrulous lefthander. Jack Sprat and his wife, the manager figured, and he figured right. The pitcher had a lightness and an ease about him that held DiMaggio in thrall. “I wish I could be like Lefty,” Joe would say, watching his friend hold court at the end of a bar. “But I can’t.”

  Lefty loved to go out at night, but the next day he came to the ballpark and won his game. He had been with the Yankees for six full seasons, had beaten the Cubs in the ’32 World Series, had roomed, for a while, with the Babe. Gomez, McCarthy made clear, was to look out for DiMaggio in the Big City. He made DiMaggio laugh and protected him as best he could from the favor-seekers and the hangers-on. When DiMaggio returned to the Yankees clubhouse early in the 1937 season wearing a suit, still sidelined after having had his tonsils and adenoids removed, Gomez hammed it up for the cameras, performing an impromptu “examination” and peering soberly down into DiMaggio’s throat. Nothing ever seemed dire when Lefty was around.