Joe DiMaggio

Baseball Player

• Born: November 25, 1914
• Birthplace: Martinez, California
• Died: March 8, 1999
• Place of death: Hollywood, Florida

American baseball player

DiMaggio was one of the greatest players in major league baseball history. In addition to generating impressive career batting and fielding statistics and leading the New York Yankees to ten American League pennants during his thirteen-year career, DiMaggio played with a verve, grace, and style that have made him a symbol of excellence on the baseball diamond as well as an American cultural icon. He was the first baseball player to earn a six-figure annual salary when he signed a contract in 1949 for $100,000.

Area of achievement Sports

Early Life

Joe DiMaggio (dih-MAJ-jee-oh) was the eighth of nine children born to Giuseppe DiMaggio and Rosalia DiMaggio, Italian immigrants who migrated to California around the beginning of the twentieth century. Giuseppe, who made his living as a crab fisherman, moved his family to San Francisco the year after Joseph’s birth. As youngsters, the DiMaggio boys worked with their father, attended local public schools, and played sandlot baseball, a sport for which they seemed to possess a natural gift. Two of Joseph’s brothers, Vincent and Dominic, also had major league baseball careers, though their older brother Tom, who followed Giuseppe into crab fishing, was said to be the family’s most proficient baseball player.

Joe DiMaggio left school during his sophomore year of high school and searched for work, which was difficult to obtain during the Great Depression year of 1931. At the time, however, his older brother Vincent was playing baseball for the San Francisco Seals of the highly competitive Pacific Coast League. Vincent secured a place on the team for Joe for the final three games of the 1932 season. By this time, DiMaggio’s baseball playing abilities were well known around San Francisco. As a teenager, he had excelled on the sandlots and in the local Boys’ Club league, and he had already been recruited by the San Francisco Missions, the Seals’ local rival.

DiMaggio became a star outfielder for the Seals during the season of 1933. He batted .340 and at midseason secured a hit in sixty-one consecutive games, a minor-league record that still stands. DiMaggio’s extraordinary achievements during that maiden professional season attracted the attention of several major-league baseball scouts. The next year, the New York Yankees purchased DiMaggio from the Seals for $25,000, but they allowed him to play one more season in San Francisco to gain additional playing experience. During that final season with the Seals, DiMaggio batted .398, hit thirty-four home runs, and was voted the Pacific Coast League’s most valuable player.

Life’s Work

DiMaggio broke into the major league with a big season. In 1936, playing for the Yankees, DiMaggio logged a .323 batting average, hit 29 home runs, and recorded 125 runs batted in (RBIs) and 132 runs scored. He helped the Yankees win their first American League pennant since 1932 and batted .346 in his team’s World Series victory over the New York Giants.

By age twenty-two, DiMaggio had grown to six feet two inches tall, and his slender adolescent frame had filled out to 200 pounds. He had developed rugged good looks, and after beginning to draw a major-league baseball salary, he started to collect a wardrobe that would perennially place him on the lists of America’s best-dressed men. In the batter’s box, DiMaggio assumed a very wide stance and generated power from a classic sweeping swing of the bat. He possessed extremely powerful wrists and forearms that enabled him to drive the bat across the plate with enormous speed and power.

DiMaggio followed his outstanding rookie performance with perhaps the best season of his baseball career. In 1937, DiMaggio batted .346, led the American League with 46 home runs, scored 151 runs, and batted in another 167. Again the Yankees won the American League pennant and bested the New York Giants in the World Series. During the next five seasons, DiMaggio established himself as the American League’s most feared hitter. He led the league with a .381 batting average in 1939 and a .352 average in 1940. In 1941, he recorded the single most noteworthy achievement of his baseball career when he secured a hit in fifty-six consecutive games (which smashed the previous mark of forty-four games). In every Yankees game played between May 15 and July 16 of that season, DiMaggio recorded at least one hit. Twice, in 1939 and 1941, he was voted the American League’s most valuable player. Each year he was named to the American League’s all-star team.

DiMaggio was more than a skilled batsman; he excelled in every phase of the game. He developed into a splendid outfielder who effectively covered the large centerfield area of Yankee Stadium. At the crack of the bat, DiMaggio seemed to have a sense of where the ball would land, and he gracefully dashed to the far reaches of the outfield to snag long drives hit by opposing batters. His smooth and fluid running stride earned him the nickname the Yankee Clipper. Until he developed a sore shoulder late in his career, DiMaggio also possessed a strong throwing arm; he was frequently among the league leaders in outfield assists. Although not blessed with incredible speed, DiMaggio was an outstanding base runner as well, and he was rarely thrown out trying to take an extra base.

DiMaggio missed three full seasons, 1943 through 1945, to serve in the armed forces during World War II. As a twenty-eight-year-old married man he had married Dorothy Arnold, an actor and singer, in 1939 DiMaggio was exempted from military service, but he joined the Air Force cadets and served in California and Hawaii during the war, though he never engaged in combat.

DiMaggio was less effective on the baseball diamond after the war. In 1946, his batting average dropped below .300 for the first time in his career, and the Yankees failed to win the American League pennant. At this point in his career, DiMaggio began to feel the effects of several chronic injuries and physical ailments. He suffered foot and shoulder injuries, and he developed ulcers. These impairments often forced DiMaggio out of the Yankees lineup and reduced his effectiveness when he was able to play. Nonetheless, he earned the respect of both teammates and opponents for often playing in severe pain.

In 1948, however, DiMaggio was healthy, missing only one game, and he led the American League in home runs with 39 and in runs scored with 155. On the basis of that excellent performance, DiMaggio convinced the Yankees to offer him a contract for $100,000 for the season of 1949, making DiMaggio the first baseball player to earn a six-figure annual salary.

The next season, however, DiMaggio was troubled by bone spurs in his heel that required surgery for removal. He missed the opening months of the 1949 season and remained disabled through late June, watching the Yankees battle the Boston Red Sox for first place in the American League. On June 28, DiMaggio felt well enough to play, and he was in the Yankee lineup for a big game against Boston that evening at Fenway Park. Having missed the entire spring exhibition season and the team’s first sixty-nine games, DiMaggio felt rusty, but in his first at-bat of the game he hit a single. In his second plate appearance, he hit a home run. The Yankees won the game 5-4. The next day, DiMaggio hit two home runs in another Yankee victory. In the final game of the series, DiMaggio hit another home run that propelled the Yankees to victory. After not having played a game in almost nine months, DiMaggio had returned to the lineup to record four home runs and nine RBIs in a three-game series against the first-place Red Sox an exhibition of hitting noted as one of the highlights of DiMaggio’s baseball career.

By that time, however, DiMaggio was clearly nearing the end of his brilliant career. He played two more years and retired after the 1951 season with a .325 lifetime batting average and 361 home runs. In 1955, DiMaggio was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and, in 1969, he was voted baseball’s greatest living player. After his retirement, DiMaggio’s name remained in the headlines. Having divorced his wife Dorothy, DiMaggio commenced a romance with Marilyn Monroe. They married on January 14, 1954. The marriage never worked out, however, and the couple divorced in October of that same year, though they continued to see each other on occasion until Monroe’s death in 1962.

For ten years after his retirement, DiMaggio separated himself from major league baseball. He devoted his time to charities and worked in public relations for several businesses. In 1961, he returned to the Yankees as a spring training coach, a post that he held for several seasons. In 1969, the Oakland Athletics hired DiMaggio as a vice president and coach, but that arrangement lasted only a few seasons. DiMaggio continued to make himself present on special baseball occasions such as opening day and Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium and at the annual Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony until his death in 1999.

Significance

DiMaggio was unquestionably one of the greatest players in baseball history, but his legacy on the baseball diamond cannot be summarized effectively by statistics alone. Having played with great ability as well as grace and style, DiMaggio developed into a symbol of athletic excellence and an authentic American hero, the child of immigrants who gained fame and fortune through great skill and determination. In retirement, DiMaggio became an American cultural hero, noted in story and song as a symbol of great skill, courage, and dignity. Santiago, the old Cuban fisherman of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea (1952), invokes DiMaggio’s name to sustain his courage while he battles a huge marlin. In his hit song “Mrs. Robinson” (1968), Paul Simon laments the loss of genuine American heroes with the words, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?/ A nation turns its lonely eyes to you./ What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson?/ Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away.”

Baseball fans born decades after the conclusion of DiMaggio’s great career know DiMaggio’s achievements on the baseball diamond and respect his professionalism. When he appeared at baseball stadiums, DiMaggio was wildly applauded by young fans who never saw him play, and he was recognized on the street by people who knew little about the game of baseball. He received numerous awards and accolades, including honorary degrees from American universities. DiMaggio is among a small group of American athletes Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali whose names and legacies carry far beyond the field of sports.

Bibliography

Allen, Maury. Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio: The Story of America’s Last Hero. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. Contains first-person reminiscences from a score of DiMaggio’s teammates, coaches, opponents, friends, and family members.

Cramer, Richard Ben. Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Cramer’s biography debunks the mythology surrounding DiMaggio, revealing that the great ballplayer was a troubled and self-centered person.

Creamer, Robert W. Baseball in ’41. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. Re-creates the baseball season of 1941, the year of DiMaggio’s fifty-six-game hitting streak.

DiMaggio, Joe. Lucky to Be a Yankee. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1951. DiMaggio’s autobiography, covering his childhood and professional baseball career.

Durso, Joseph. DiMaggio: The Last American Knight. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995. A detailed biography of DiMaggio covering his life from childhood through his retirement years.

Halberstam, David. The Summer of ’49. New York: William Morrow, 1989. Re-creates the great pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox during the baseball season of 1949.

Moore, Jack. Joe DiMaggio: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. Contains a biography of DiMaggio, a review of the literature about him, interviews with three of his baseball contemporaries, a detailed statistical summary of his career, and an extensive bibliography of books and articles.

Sultans of Swat: The Four Great Sluggers of the New York Yankees. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. As originally reported by The New York Times, this collection examines the careers of DiMaggio and Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Lou Gehrig.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: January 3, 1920: New York Yankees Acquire Babe Ruth.

1941-1970: June 2, 1941: Yankee Baseball Great Lou Gehrig Dies; September 30-October 6, 1947: NBC Broadcasts the Baseball World Series; 1953-1955: Marilyn Monroe Climbs to Stardom.