Editor's note: ESPN.com is running excerpts from Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life recently published by Simon & Schuster. This, the second of three parts from Chapter 13, details a game DiMaggio whose declining skills are evident to all.
Dissension was the sportswriter's stock-in-trade now. And even some of Joe's erstwhile boosters took this chance to pin the Yankees' slide onto the back of Number 5. Not just for his woeful hitting -- his average bouncing around the .250's.
. . . No, it was the Cold War that Joe had brought on with his silence.
The lead Yankee writer for the Post, Milton Gross, told his readers: "I did recognize a profound difference in the personal climate which surrounds DiMaggio and the Yankees this season. It is a frigid one, all because Joe, who always was a strange man, difficult to understand, is now living in a shell that is virtually impenetrable."
After that, the Cold War extended to most of the writers, too. If they were headed across the locker room toward his stool, Joe would get up, turn his back, and leave. It was only two steps to the passageway that led to the trainer's room. They weren't allowed there. Joe could wait 'em out, until his pal, Bernie Kamber, arrived to drive the Dago downtown. That summer, Bernie left work every day at four p.m., to get to the Stadium with his big Chrysler -- and make sure Joe was protected as he left for home.
Home was still George Solotaire's suite at the Elysee. Joe was the only Yankee who still lived in a midtown hotel. Most of the young guys, who'd just gotten to New York (and couldn't be sure if they'd stay), lived at the Concourse Plaza in the Bronx. It was cheap, clean, and safe up there -- and they could walk down the hill to the Stadium. More and more of the established Yanks -- Rizzuto, Berra, Bauer -- had their own houses in New Jersey. That was the postwar Yankee style: a nice new house in the Jersey suburbs. It wasn't Joe's style -- not by a long shot. But of course, all those guys were married. And now it looked like Joe never would be. For a long time, he'd kept a picture frame -- one of those folding double frames that opened like two pages of a book -- propped open on the dresser of his room. One side had a picture of the kid, the other side was Dorothy in a glamour pose. Now that frame was folded up in a drawer. That was the surest sign the reconciliation was finito.
Now, his room in the Elysee was as bare of personal affect as if he'd moved in that morning. If he took his clothes from the drawers and closet, some businessman from Milwaukee could have checked in that afternoon without a hint that Joe had ever been there. Oh, and he would have had to move his Victrola, too. That's what he did late at night, when the TV quit, when sleep wouldn't come, when he sat and smoked, smoked and sat. He'd play his song, over and over. He wore the grooves of that record into ruts.
There's a somebody
I'm longing to see . . .
It was an old Gershwin tune, sung simply, over mournful strings,
by Frank Sinatra -- or Sinat, as he was known to all the pals at Toots
Shor's.
Won't you tell her please,
To put on some speed,
Follow my lead.
Oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me . . .
Solotaire and Kamber were there to watch over him, to feed him, get his things at the cleaners or the deli -- or they'd grasp his arm and pop it back into the shoulder, as Joe would grunt and sweat with the pain. But they couldn't put the fun back in him -- or the appetite. He didn't want to go out to eat, or see a show, take in a club -- not even if they were paying into the account. Joe thought, he'd done enough for those wiseguys. And it wasn't safe anymore. Half the time he'd turn on the TV, some hood he half-knew would be runnin' his mouth to Kefauver and his posse of snoops -- trying to send Frank Costello up the river. (Joe would grunt up out of his chair and turn the channel, try to find a decent western.) In those days, you couldn't even get Dago up for a girl. He'd been spooked off broads, when one went crazy and started writing him notes every day -- how she was going to kill herself if he wouldn't love her, come to her, be with her. . . . Joe didn't even want to see the guys at Shor's. Fact was, he wouldn't talk to Toots. In a way, that was about broads, too.
Look magazine got a broad of its own, by the name of Isabella Taves, to root around into Joe's love life. Then, they promoted her story like a circus-come-to-town. "A facet of his personality we never suspected," as the press release from the magazine claimed. "Joe is a heart-throb, a lady-killer, the ideal male from the feminine point of view!
"Just bashful enough to be effective . . . Joltin' Joe is so attractive to women he has to wait in the clubhouse after each game to avoid being mobbed.
"And yet, for all his devastating charm, DiMag, Miss Taves reports, remains a shy kid at heart. He still blushes at the sight of a pretty face and his best friends are men, notably Toots Shor. To Mrs. Shor, Joe is 'Toots's Other Wife.' . . .
"Oh, fudge! That's enough for us. If you want more, read Miss Taves in Look."
Well, that sent Dago around the bend. Fudge her! And Toots, too! Where the hell did he come off? (Toots's Other Wife!) . . . But the part that put Toots into the deep freeze was a blind quote -- had to be Shor, who else? -- about how Joe couldn't hit one year, because he was mooning for his faithless wife. Toots had no business talking about that. . . . It just confirmed what Joe had been thinking -- late at night, when thinking was all he could do -- how Toots had made himself a big man, a Big Name, on Joe's back. It was that spring, it all started to figure -- about the time of those pictures in the paper -- Toots, with his arm around his pal, Mickey Mantle. . .
|  | | In 1936, DiMaggio could call his own shots with his contract. |
After that, when Shor called the suite, Bernie would answer, and silently mouth the word: "Toots." Joe would shake his head, no. And Bernie would say, smooth as silk, "He ain't here, Tootsie."
There were days when Joe seemed like his old self -- you could see it at the Stadium, the way he hit the ball. Or maybe it was the other way around. He'd get a few hits, maybe smack one over the wall, and he'd feel like himself again. The Yankees had been trailing the White Sox half the season . . . until a doubleheader, end of July, when DiMag woke up and started smacking their pitchers around. Two home runs, five runs driven in -- that took care of game one. Game two was tighter, a pitchers' duel, but DiMaggio broke the Chi-Sox' back when he raced from first to third on a single, and then slid around the catcher's tag on Gil McDougald's squeeze bunt. The Yankees won 2-zip, took the double-dip, and swept the series. Chicago would never threaten again.
The Yanks might have put away Cleveland and Boston with the same dispatch, if DiMaggio could have kept it going. But that consistency -- the weeks-at-a-stretch when no one could get him out -- that's what he couldn't seem to find. He'd have a good game or two. Every at bat a shot to left: bang, bang, boom . . . he might even smile, if one went out. Then, next day, he'd show up, same as always, and all he could do was pop up a fat pitch . . . or a stinkin' grounder on a checked swing (a doubter doesn't pull line shots) . . . then, he'd be mumbling in the tunnel again. One time, that August, it got so bad, he actually told those Yankee kids how he used to hit a ball so hard -- he could hit it dead on the third baseman's glove, didn't matter -- it would handcuff the guy. Joe said he wasn't trying to brag, but no one could field those shots. One time (it was just a couple of years ago), he hit that goddamn ball so hard -- right at the Tiger third baseman, George Kell -- it broke his fuckin' jaw. No lie. . . . The kids couldn't believe it -- not the part about Kell -- but Dago talkin' about old times.
But he couldn't turn on the ball and power it to left now. And those kids couldn't look at him without hurting for him. . . . Sometimes, even though he was late, he'd catch a ball clean, and hit it out toward the short right field fence -- two or three, he hit over that fence. The Yanks would gather to greet him on the dugout steps. "Attaboy, Joe!" "Way to go, Daig!" But DiMaggio bridled at the praise. "People don't pay to see me hit to right." He called them "piss homers . . . I could piss 'em right over that wall."
Many more of his hits were just flares to right: they'd kick up chalk on the line behind first, or drop because the other team was playing him to pull -- they hadn't caught on yet. But word got around, sure enough, that summer. Then all the pitchers were killing him with fastballs. (What were they supposed to serve him? Tea and cookies?) DiMaggio didn't expect sympathy. No, he said his swing would come back. By will, he was going to make it come back.
One day, batting practice, he came out of the cage -- Daig still got first licks in BP -- and Bauer was waiting there. DiMaggio sidled up. "What am I doin', Hank? What am I doin' wrong?"
Bauer thought: Why's he asking me? But Bauer wasn't one to mince words. "I think you can't get around anymore."
"Bullshit!" DiMaggio barked. He walked away, stiff with indignation. "Load-a BULLSHIT."
At least Stengel was playing him steady -- and batting him cleanup. Maybe he had to. Someone upstairs may have sat on Ol' Case.
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People don't pay to see me hit to right. ” |
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— DiMaggio after hitting a homer to right field. |
Before a twin bill against Philadelphia, the rookie Gil McDougald came into the dugout after infield practice, to check the lineup and see where he was hitting. There it was: McDougald at cleanup, and DiMaggio fifth. The kid went white, turned to his coach, Frank Crosetti. "Crow, he musta made a fuckin' mistake."
Crosetti looked like he had a bad stomach. "No. He didn't make no mistake."
McDougald was almost pleading. "Anyplace but that."
Crosetti said grimly, "No. You're cleanup."
So Gil batted cleanup -- went four-for-four, drove in every runner he could find on base. And he was thinking: "This is it!"
Game two, he ran in from infield to see where he was hitting. He was eighth. Dago was back at cleanup. McDougald looked at Casey -- and he could see the rage in the old man.
So the Yanks played on toward autumn with DiMaggio at cleanup -- batting .260, leaving his teammates to wither on base -- with two lousy homers in the whole month of August. No wonder the Yankees still trailed the Indians (by a game, two games, two and a half -- depending on which day you checked). And by September, Boston was right on their necks, too. No wonder Stengel was looking so sour -- as Cannon once wrote, "like an eagle that had just flown through a sleet-storm." No wonder DiMaggio was lunging at the plate, trying to smash every pitch through a wall somewhere. It was his job to carry the Yankees. And he felt like he was a weight on their backs.
He felt the weight on him, every time he took a swing -- like an unseen hand was pressing on him, making him slow. He changed his bat from his old thirty-seven-ounce, down to a thirty-five-ounce -- a Babe Ruth model -- then he sanded the handles, trying to put the whip back into his wrists. But he wasn't fighting the weight of his bat. It was the weight of his expectations and doubts -- and those he could feel from the dugout and press box, from the stands, from fans in New York and every other town . . . everyone (as he imagined, as he knew) watching, judging him, concluding that he wasn't what he used to be. For the first time, the game was humbling him -- as it did every other man.
That September, as the Yanks left town on the train, McDougald and Rizzuto wandered into the dining car. There sat DiMag, alone at a four-top table, with his mail spread out in front of him. Of course, they went to another table. "Hey, come over here," DiMaggio said.
They sat across from him, their hands in their laps. DiMaggio glanced down at his mail. "Here," he said, and flipped a sheaf of papers across the table. They were all offers -- a hundred thousand for this or that, fifty a year for three to five years -- to be vice president, do the ads, be the spokesman. . . . And Dago said: "I wish I could give one of these to you, and one for you. Then you could forget about this goddamn game."
But how would he forget, if he left it a loser?
September 16, the Indians arrived in New York for two games. The Yankees were now one behind -- they'd have to win both. And the first game, they'd be up against Bob Feller (best in the league, with twenty-two wins). At that point, Casey couldn't sit still -- he'd rather be fired. He shook up the order, top to bottom. Mantle was back from K.C. for the stretch run. He would lead off. (Let him use them fine young legs to beat out a hit.) Rizzuto was demoted to eighth. McDougald was moved up from eighth to third. And Yogi Berra would hit cleanup. DiMaggio was shoved down behind him, to fifth.
At the start, Casey looked like a genius again . . . when Yogi's first-inning triple gave the Yanks a run -- and they scored two more to take a 3-0 lead. But like all the great ones, Feller only got tougher. Cleveland started chipping away against Allie Reynolds. It was 3-1 when the Yanks came up in the fifth. And then Feller would make a mistake -- not with his arm: his head did him dirty.
Mantle got on with a drag bunt down the first base line. He was bunted over to second base. McDougald took a good shot at driving Mantle home, but the Indians' Sam Chapman robbed him at the left field wall. So Berra, the cleanup batter, stepped in with two outs and Mantle on second base. That's when Feller started thinking . . . and walked Yogi intentionally -- to get to DiMaggio.
There were seventy thousand fans in the Stadium, booing to the skies, baying imprecations at Feller and plaintive encouragement to Joe -- who stayed on one knee, motionless in the on-deck circle, until Berra got ball four. Then, Joe walked to the plate, scooped a handful of dirt and spent, perhaps, one extra moment, rubbing it into his palms. He was staring at nothing. His face was expressionless. You had to be a Dago-watcher to note the veins, like cords on his neck, and the ominous darkness around his eyes.
Feller had pitched against DiMaggio since '36. And DiMaggio had hammered him -- plenty of times. But Feller figured he wasn't facing that DiMaggio -- just a .260 hitter, who couldn't get around. Feller got one quick strike with the heater. Then, he threw one ball. He came back with the heater, and Joe hesitated -- it ticked off his bat for a lousy check-swing foul, and Feller had him set up, one-and-two. He only had to blow one more by him . . . so Rapid Robert reared back and fired. And DiMaggio did what no one thought he could do anymore: he pulled Feller's best -- hammered it on a line, into the deepest reach of the Stadium. It shot past the center fielder, Larry Doby . . . and rolled, and rolled to the base of the wall, where the numbers 457 were painted. Mantle and Berra trotted home. DiMaggio pulled up at third base, and bowed his head slightly under waves of frantic fan-roar. Cleveland was finished for that day. The Yankees won 5-1. They were tied for first.
Click here for next excerpt.
From JOE DIMAGGIO by Richard Ben Cramer. Copyright ® 2000 by Richard Ben Cramer. Reprinted by persmission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Richard Ben Cramer is the author of the bestselling What It Takes: The Way to the White House, which was acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on American politics. His journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Time and Newsweek. His dispatches from the Middle East for the Philadelphia Inquirer won the Pultizer Prize for International Reporting in 1979. with his wife and daughter, he lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
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ALSO SEE
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