Book #6: Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life

Over the summer, I finally opened and dove into a book that my Uncle Tom had lent to me before I skipped town last year. I had read the other books he had given to me while abroad, but never got to the DiMaggio biography among the bunch of books I read overseas. In any event, as a baseball fan, I had heard countless tales of the greatness of the Yankee Clipper. His name has endured the last 50 years of "greatest player ever" debates, at least held in the same conversation of Mantle, Williams, Aaron, Jackson, Griffey, Rodriguez, Jeter...only Mattingly sticks out as clearly better among players who played after Joe D (just wanted to make sure you were still paying attention).

Anyway, Richard Ben Cramer presents an account of what led to America's infatuation with DiMaggio, from his early days in the San Francisco bay area to his minor league dominance and eventual rise to superstardom playing center field for the New York Yankees. While the love affair with DiMaggio turned him into something of an icon, Cramer's account is that the Dago* wanted to be recognized for what he was: a great ballplayer; the rest of the attention, however, was not always wanted. DiMaggio may very well be the first player who reacted negativity to the microscope of celebrity, which perhaps make him responsible for ushering in America's collective insatiable appetite for people who are great at what they do (a concept which, by the 21st century, would extend to fellatio, getting pregnant, and having huge breasts and a well-endowed boyfriend).

The great Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, crushing another pitch

In any event, Cramer exposes DiMaggio's oft-justified desire to become the best-paid player in the game, based upon being the best player in the game. #5 comes across as fairly greedy, though ultimately helpless against the then-iron-fisted New York Yankees management. I also came out of this book thinking of DiMaggio as sort of a whiner, thought this of course comes from a third-person account that has its fair share of creative liberties.

As for the life the Yankee Clipper led after retirement, he seemed to accept the spoils while insisting that he be treated as the greatest living player....which he very well may have been. In the interim, however, he is presented as a character who very much got used to celebrity and accolades and his status as a symbol of America and yet he could not stand to be in the limelight. It's a story of control, and the misery and fury with which DiMaggio lived without it is the real tragedy of this book, and ultimately of the way Joe D went out.

DiMaggio was beloved by people all over the place, and so the author attempts to portray the hero as an "aww, shucks" kind of guy, which may very well have been true. But as his humble beginnings did not translate to enormous financial success, so too did that humility disappear as friend after friend try to get too much out of DiMaggio's friendship and kindness. It's as though DiMaggio fancied himself as a guy who would give anything if asked, but when asked AND if it benefitted someone else and not himself, he would go suddenly cold.

Don't be fooled...DiMaggio'd hate that Mantle is pictured first.
The 56-game hit streak is well-documented, as is his string of Championship runs, his wooing and terribly unhealthy relationship with Marilyn Monroe. The grief is pretty well-established, and you'd feel worse for the guy for being unable to avoid the limelight if he hadn't had such a temper on him. Ultimately, it's a mixed bag of a story of one of America's 20th century heroes. As DiMaggio got older and had lost the people whom he would have called friends, he got suckered in by people who were riding the big wave of popular culture and who, as a result, wanted to tap into the nostalgia market, which was DiMaggio all the way. Morris Engelberg, DiMaggio's lawyer in his later years, gets painted in an especially sour light, which may or may not be the result of a letter sent to the autho from Engelberg's law firm threatening suit against defamation, etc. It seemed a little petty to include that, though it certainly helds add to a general disdain for Engelberg.

All in all, a pretty good piece of work. I would very much like to read another book on DiMaggio before rushing to judgment on what I think about the man. As a player, as this book chronicles fairly well, he was dominant and effortlessly good. In that sense, the focus on his playing years seems shorter than it should have. Cramer makes no bones about discussing DiMaggio's post-career life, and so I guess he's justified in spending the second half of the book on what happened next, which is unfortunate, since the first half of DiMaggio's life justified the attention paid to the rest of Mr. DiMaggio's life. I recommend it for those with a healthy appetite for Americana, and of course Yankee fans. But if you're looking for strictly baseball, you may find yourself laboring through the second half of what can at times be pretty scandalous material.



* DiMaggio was referred to as the Dago by teammates. This served as a monstrous point of nostalgia throughout the book. Creative liberties included referring to DiMag as "the Dago" or simply, "the Dag". I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that much like dropping an N-Bomb, you can only get away with that with friends with whom you share that particular bond. Yikes.