The Full Biography
Joe DiMaggio. Center fielder. The fisherman’s son who made a fifty-six-game habit into an American climate, then spent the rest of a long life deciding what the name would sell.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a Yankee in center, a streak on a radio, a man who married Marilyn Monroe. What the still cannot show is Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio of Martinez, California, a Sicilian boat he would not board, thirteen seasons in the Bronx, and a silence he kept after the marriage ended and the roses did not.
He was born on November 25, 1914, in Martinez, the eighth of nine children of Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio, immigrants from Isola delle Femmine, Sicily. The family fished. When Joe was small they moved to North Beach, San Francisco. The father wanted sons on the boats. Joe got seasick. Giuseppe called him lazy. At ten the boy was playing third base at the North Beach playground and hiring himself out to neighborhood teams for two dollars. He left Galileo High without a diploma. Two brothers, Vince and Dom, would also become major-league center fielders. The house produced a position.
The door was the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Vince talked the manager into letting the kid fill in at shortstop in October 1932. In 1933, as a rookie, he hit safely in sixty-one straight games, a Coast League record. “Getting a daily hit became more important to me than eating, drinking, or sleeping,” he said of that streak. A knee torn on a jitney in 1934 nearly ended him. Yankees scout Bill Essick kept after the front office. New York bought him for $50,000 and five players and left him in San Francisco for 1935. He hit .398. The Seals won the pennant. He was the league’s most valuable player. The majors were a formality.
He debuted on May 3, 1936, batting ahead of Lou Gehrig. The Yankees had not been to a World Series since 1932. They won the next four. In 1937 he hit 46 home runs. In 1939 the broadcaster Arch McDonald nicknamed him the Yankee Clipper, after a new Pan American airliner, because of the ground he covered. That year he won his first batting title and his first Most Valuable Player award. A second batting title came in 1940. Then the summer the country still recites.
From May 15 to July 16, 1941, he hit in fifty-six consecutive games. Cleveland stopped him. No one has matched the number. He won his second M.V.P. The Yankees won the Series. The streak sat in a year that was already walking toward war. It is the civic object. It is not the whole file. He was, for a stretch, the most complete elegant force the league had hired: a right-handed hitter who struck out 369 times in a career of 361 home runs, a nearly even ratio no slugger of his rank has lived with since. He was named to the All-Star team in every season he played.
On February 17, 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces in San Francisco. He rose to staff sergeant. He was stationed at Santa Ana and then in Hawaii, in Special Services, playing ball for the Seventh Air Force and the service leagues. He did not see combat. He lost three seasons. He came back in 1946 rusty and proud, then won a third Most Valuable Player award in 1947, the year the Yankees took another Series and the year the league learned he could still be the center of a club that no longer had Gehrig in it. In 1949 he signed for $100,000 and became the first player to break that number. A heel spur kept him out of the early season. He returned in late June against Boston at Fenway and the old machine started again: four extra-base hits in a three-game set that the papers treated as a restoration. The Yankees of his years took ten American League pennants and nine World Series. He retired after 1951, at thirty-seven, saying that when baseball was no longer fun it was no longer a game. The career line is 361 home runs, 369 strikeouts, a .325 average, and an All-Star selection in every season he played. Cooperstown took him in 1955, on the fourth ballot.
I’d like to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.Joe DiMaggio
The rookie year, 1936, was already a full season: 29 home runs, 125 runs batted in, a pennant, a Series. In 1937 he hit 46 home runs and drove in 167. In 1939 he hit .381 and took the first batting title and the first MVP. In 1940 he hit .352 and took the second batting title. Then 1941. The streak began on May 15 against Chicago. It ended on July 17 in Cleveland, Ken Keltner’s backhand plays at third and a Bob Feller night that the country still recites. He hit in sixteen of the next seventeen. The fifty-six is the climate. The rest of the year is an MVP and another Series. He lost 1943, 1944, and 1945 to the Army Air Forces. He came back. In 1947 he was MVP a third time. In 1949, after the heel, the June series at Fenway restored the machine in public. In 1951 Mickey Mantle arrived and DiMaggio left, thirty-seven, nine rings in thirteen seasons.
Lefty O’Doul had managed him on the Seals. Vince had talked him onto the club. The 61-game Coast League streak of 1933 is the blood, he said, the summer baseball got into him. A knee torn on a jitney in 1934 nearly ended the purchase. Bill Essick kept after the Yankee office. New York bought him for $50,000 and five players and left him in San Francisco for 1935 so the knee could finish healing. He hit .398 that year. The Seals won the pennant. He was the league’s most valuable player. The majors were a formality. Toots Shor’s restaurant became the New York room. The elegance people remember is a Sicilian fisherman’s son who got seasick and would not board the boat. Giuseppe had called him lazy. The Stadium called him the Clipper. Dom went to Boston. Vince bounced. Three brothers, one position, one dock they had all been told to work.
Hank Greenberg wrote that the only way to hit the Yankees was to hit them where Joe was not. Teammates have said he could be cold in a clubhouse and exact in center. He struck out 369 times and hit 361 home runs, a nearly even ratio no slugger of his rank has lived with since. He was named to the All-Star team in every season he played. Ten pennants. Nine Series. The 1949 contract made him the first player to break $100,000. A heel spur stole the start of that season; Fenway in June gave it back. He retired after 1951 saying that when baseball was no longer fun it was no longer a game. Cooperstown took him in 1955, on the fourth ballot. The 1969 poll called him baseball’s greatest living player. The name, after the uniform, became a job of its own: Mr. Coffee, the Bowery Bank, a price list, a wave on Old-Timers’ Day. Hollywood, Florida, was the last long address. Memorial Regional was the last hospital. Saints Peter and Paul in North Beach was the funeral church — the same parish that had seen the Monroe wedding. Holy Cross in Colma is the plot, on the peninsula with the boats he would not clean. Joe Jr. died in August 1999, months after his father. Morris Engelberg handled the estate. Number 5 stays retired. Monument Park holds the plaque. The fifty-six stays the climate. The nine rings stay the pile. The coffee spots paid the years after the uniform. The Bowery spots paid them too. He set the fee. He limited the room.
That is the public sentence. The turn is what he did with the name after the uniform came off. He had married the actress Dorothy Arnold in 1939. Their son, Joe Jr., was born in October 1941. The marriage ended in 1944. On January 14, 1954, at San Francisco City Hall, he married Marilyn Monroe. The marriage lasted into October — about nine months. He was the one who claimed her body in 1962 and arranged the funeral in Westwood. He sent roses to the crypt for years. The public treated that as a civic romance. A complete life holds the short marriage and the long loyalty and a man who did not like the meal the culture made of either of them.
Six things most people never knew
- Martinez and a fishing household, not a Bronx invention, are the first rooms. Sicilian. The elegance sits on a dock he would not work.
- The 56 had a predecessor. Sixty-one games for the Seals in 1933. He said that was when baseball got into his blood.
- He hit 361 home runs and struck out 369 times. The “just the streak” line is too small. Nine titles sit on a Yankee machine he also carried.
- Vince and Dom were major-league center fielders too. Three brothers, one position. The house produced a trade.
- The Monroe marriage was nine months; the roses were years. He claimed the body. He set the funeral. He did not become a tour guide of the marriage.
- Simon and Garfunkel made him a weather he did not write. He was uneasy about the line in “Mrs. Robinson.” The dock is the correction.
Teammates have said he could be cold in a clubhouse and exact in center. Hank Greenberg wrote that the only way to hit the Yankees was to hit them where Joe was not. Joe Jr. had a hard life and died in August 1999, months after his father. Friends from the Florida years describe a careful man with a price list for the name: card shows, golf outings, Old-Timers’ Day, an introduction as “baseball’s greatest living player,” a title a 1969 poll had given him. He protected the mystique by limiting the room. Both the Clipper and the clerk are the life.
The later years
In 1968 and 1969 he put on an Oakland A’s uniform as a coach and vice president for Charlie Finley, a strange green-and-gold coda beside Reggie Jackson’s youth and a mule named Charlie O. He did not stay. Then the 1970s made him a face again. Mr. Coffee, beginning in 1973. The Bowery Savings Bank. Twenty years of drip machines on television. The spots paid. He was careful about the name. He set the fee. A card show had a price. A golf outing had a price. An introduction as “baseball’s greatest living player,” a title a 1969 poll had given him, had a price he protected by limiting the room. Paul Simon’s “Mrs. Robinson,” in 1968, asked where he had gone; he had not asked for the question and did not love it. He still showed up, in a carefully rationed way, whenever the country needed a living monument in pinstripes — Old-Timers’ Day at the Stadium, a ceremony, a wave, then the car.
Home, for the long stretch, was Hollywood, Florida, a condo and a careful calendar, far from North Beach and far from the Bronx. Joe Jr. had a hard life that the father could not fix with a name. The Monroe file stayed closed in public: the nine-month marriage of 1954, the Westwood funeral of 1962 that he arranged, the roses he sent to the crypt for years. He did not become a tour guide of either. Friends from those Florida years describe a man who dressed for dinner and kept a list of who had used the name without paying.
On October 12, 1998, he went into Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood with a lung infection that became, in the file, lung cancer. He died at home on March 8, 1999. He was eighty-four. The funeral was at Saints Peter and Paul Church in North Beach, the parish of the neighborhood that had produced him, the same church that had seen the Monroe wedding. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, south of San Francisco, on the same peninsula as the boats he would not clean. Morris Engelberg, the lawyer who had guarded the price list, handled the estate. The Yankees hung the silence in Monument Park beside number 5.
After he was gone
Every hitting streak still pays him a tax. Every Marilyn still steals the roses. Number 5 is retired. Monument Park holds the plaque. The fifty-six is the climate. The nine rings are the pile. The coffee is the folk object. The silence is the file.
He came out of Martinez, refused the nets, hit for fifty-six, won nine, married a climate, sold a coffee maker, and died after setting a price on the name. If you only remember the streak, you have the still. If you remember the dock, the nine months, and the roses he would not explain, you have him.
Portrait: Harris & Ewing · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons