JOE DIMAGGIO

March 8, 1999
		Baseball great Joe Dimaggio died at age 84 after complications of lung cancer surgery. Phil Ponce talks about his life with teammate Phil Rizzuto, New Yorker editor Roger Angell and essayist Roger Rosenblatt.

Sept. 28, 1998: Mark McGwire hits his 69th and 70th home run. Sept. 9, 1998: Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris' home run record March 31, 1998: The new corporate face of baseball ownership.     Cooperstown remembers the "Yankee Clipper" The New York Yankees tribute to Joe Dimaggio	BETTY ANN BOWSER: Joe DiMaggio said he wanted to live long enough to throw out the first ball on opening day at Yankee Stadium next month. But he died this morning at his home in Hollywood, Florida, at 84. He was born in 1914, the eighth of nine children in an Italian immigrant fisherman's family. He grew up playing sandlot baseball in the North Beach section of San Francisco. He never finished high school; instead he joined the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League when he was just 17. He became an overnight sensation. In his first year playing semiprofessional baseball, DiMaggio had a 61-game hitting streak, and caught the attention of New York Yankee recruiters. In 1936, DiMaggio joined the big time, playing 13 seasons with the Yankees. His career was interrupted for three years of military service during World War II. Before he retired in 1951, the man who became known as the "Yankee Clipper" and "Joltin' Joe" led the team to ten American League championships and nine World Series titles.
	Baseball's glory.
	ANNOUNCER: Meanwhile, Joe DiMaggio holds up baseball's glory. BETTY ANN BOWSER: And to this day, no one has beaten this record. DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games. And as the hits piled up, so did the nation's fascination. SPORTS ANNOUNCER: DiMaggio comes through. BETTY ANN BOWSER: But there was another record DiMaggio wanted to break. JOE DI MAGGIO: Well, I'm just taking my natural swing at the ball, but naturally I would like to break Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs. BETTY ANN BOWSER: DiMaggio never did that, but he received the most valuable player award for the American League three times. Then in 1951, he decided it was time to go. JOE DI MAGGIO: You know, the -- I've had injuries that have been too frequent. And they certainly have been no fun. And as long as the game is not fun any longer with me, I've played my last game of ball. BETTY ANN BOWSER: People who knew DiMaggio say he was quiet and very private about his personal life. He was remembered today by former teammate, Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra. YOGI BERRI, Former New York Yankee: Joe minded his own business. You followed him, what he did, you did. And he was great. I think Barry could verify on that. He's his own man, his own way, and the only man I ever see wear a suit in home game, blue suit, always wore a blue suit, white shirt, and a beautiful tie. He dressed like a gentleman. And he was great. BETTY ANN BOWSER: In 1954, DiMaggio's desire for privacy was shattered when he married movie star Marilyn Monroe. ANNOUNCER: The former Yankee slugger and his picture bride escape into the car and head for the safety of their hotel. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Although it lasted less than a year, friends say she was the love of his life. For 20 years after her death in 1962, DiMaggio sent six long- stemmed roses to her grave three times a week. In his later years, DiMaggio did a series of commercials for a bank and he became a spokesman for Mr. Coffee. JOE DI MAGGIO: -- the system that makes the perfect pot of coffee every time. BETTY ANN BOWSER: But his status as a pop cultural figure was fixed forever by Simon and Garfunkel in this 1960's song immortalizing him as one of the heroes of their childhood. SIMON AND GARFUNKEL: (singing) Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. You, you, you. What's that you say Mrs. Robinson? Joltin' Joe has left and gone away? Hey, Hey, Hey! Hey, Hey, Hey! ANN BOWSER: DiMaggio had been suffering from lung cancer. He died of complications from the disease.
	Never made a mistake.
	JIM LEHRER: And to Phil Ponce. PHIL PONCE: Joining me now: Phil Rizzuto, a teammate of Joe DiMaggio's, a former sportscaster for the Yankees, and a member of baseball's Hall of Fame; Roger Angell, longtime writer and editor for the New Yorker magazine, and author of a number of books on baseball; and NewsHour essayist Roger Rosenblatt. Gentlemen, welcome. PHIL PONCE: Phil Rizzuto, first of all, our condolences on the loss of your teammate. Mr. Rizzuto, it's been almost 50 years since Joe DiMaggio stepped away from the game. There are a lot of people around who never saw him play. As a baseball player on the field, what made him special? PHIL RIZZUTO, Baseball Hall of Fame player: Well, he did everything perfectly. He never made a mistake. Very, very rarely in five years would he make even one error. And he led the team by example. He was not one of these hollow guys like Billy Martin. Billy was great in his way, but Joe led by example. All the players would gather around. He had so much awe about him and I mean, I was a big fan of his. I idolized him. And wherever he went, as Yogi said, dressed to the nail, everything was perfect about him. People would stare. In an elevator, my gosh, he looked taller than life itself. I guess he was almost as popular as the Pope. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Rizzuto, on the field, Yogi Berra said he never made a mistake, that he never dove for a ball. What did he mean by that - never dove for a ball? PHIL RIZZUTO: Well, what he meant, you see these players, they dive on the grass or the artificial surface or like Willie Mays used to go back and his hat would fly off as he would dive for a ball. DiMaggio had an uncanny sense, like a woman's sixth sense, before the ball was even hit, he would be on the move; I never turned around when I was playing short stop and looked at him in center field was he standing still. And you get the jump on the ball. That's what Yogi means. He'd be there to catch the ball -- never had to dive, never had to fall down, reach down or anything. He was unbelievable.
	Private in the middle of the most public.
	PHIL PONCE: Roger Angell, what could Joe DiMaggio do that other players could not? ROGER ANGELL, The New Yorker: I think what he could do was to be private in the middle of the most public of all sports and out in the middle of it in center field. He was a little removed even from his teammates. There was a sort of classicism, an elegance about him. He wanted to obscure his own personality so that he could show us how baseball really could be played. You get that impression about him at every at-bat, every time he was in the field. And backing up what Phil Rizzuto just said, his manager Joe McCarthy, once said, you never saw him make a great play. He was always there when the ball came down. PHIL PONCE: Roger Angell, following up on what you just said about his distance or his reserve, do you think of baseball as a team sport that didn't impact evidently his ability to get along with his teammates. ROGER ANGELL: No. I think he personified the Yankees, too, of that era for a long time. These were people, I mean, some of them were cheerful, some were exuberant even, but these were players that got the job done. And they were deadly. When he arrived, the Yankees immediately began winning. They won 22 pennants in the next 29 years. And until Mickey Mantle came along, they were his team. And this elegant perfectionism almost mechanical -- it wasn't mechanical, but it was a deadly feeling they would beat you, they would get it done. And he was at the middle of it. PHIL PONCE: Roger Rosenblatt, your first recollection of Joe DiMaggio, you were pretty young, I take it? ROGER ROSENBLATT: I was six years old, a mother of another kid in my neighborhood took us all up to the stadium to see what would be our first game. He hit a home run to right. As I'm talking to you now, I can see where the ball landed in right field. I can see the swing, I can see the ball. And my friend's mother said to me, "Roger, you will never forget this." And, of course, she was right. That's the kind of effect he had on people. PHIL PONCE: And, why did what he did on the field transcend baseball? Why did he get to be such a bigger figure than simply a sports star? ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, there were two things. One we might talk about a bit because you don't want to go over it too quickly; he was a hero and he was a celebrity. The distinction in my mind being a hero is somebody who really does something and a celebrity just is. But what DiMaggio did in baseball, as Roger and Phil Rizzuto know far better than I, was truly amazing. He hit 361 lifetime home runs, he only struck out 369 times during his lifetime, which is just beyond reach. He won the MVP three times; the one year in 1941 in which he won it, Ted Williams him a mere 406. He never won a Golden Gloves because there were no Golden Gloves, but he would have won one every year -- were it not for the three years in the service, his stats would have gone through the roof. So, he was a hero who really did something. Then, after he married Marilyn Monroe, he became a celebrity, but as Roger Angell said, a celebrity with so much aristocracy of the spirit, so much dignity, so much quiet, he didn't talk so much, that he became attractive simply by being passive. What we didn't know about him was more interesting than most of the things we know about celebrities now.
	When the streak stopped.
	PHIL PONCE: Phil Rizzuto, getting back to the things that he did accomplish on the field, the streak, the 56 games in a row in 1941. You were his teammate at the time. What was that like? PHIL RIZZUTO: It was unbelievable. But the thing, is Jim, that when he got to 44 and broke Wee Willie Keeler's consecutive game hitting streak, we didn't have a horde of reporters following us. There were only maybe four or five. And after that, he just continued with the streak. But there weren't a lot of --the ball players were more nervous than anybody else. If he didn't get a hit up to the last time up, somebody -- and he was the fourth batter, somebody would get hit intentionally with the ball, make sure they got on base to give Joe another chance. And the ball players were the ones that really were nervous about the whole streak, rather than the press and the fans. It just kept going. And when his streak was stopped, Joe wasn't - he didn't seem upset at all about it. PHIL PONCE: You were with him when the streak stopped. And this happened in Cleveland. And you have a story about how even then he sort of wanted some privacy after it happened. PHIL RIZZUTO: Yes. He asked me to sit with him until everybody had left the stadium and all the ballplayers had gone. And then he said, okay. Let's go. We went out. And he had forgotten to take his money out of the little safe they have in every locker room. And as we walked up to the hotel to Cleveland just a short ways past the bar, he said I'm going in here. And I started to follow him. He said, no, you go home. And then all of a sudden I heard him yell at me to come back, he had left his money there, and he asked me to give him all the money I had which was $16 for a two-week road trip. I mean, we ate with the Club and you didn't have to pay anything. I just wanted money to go to the movies. I didn't go to the movies for two weeks. But anyway, he wanted to pay me back many times, but I said, no, Joe you'll ruin my story. PHIL PONCE: But Phil, Mr. Rizzuto, you were not offended by the fact he wanted to be by himself. PHIL RIZZUTO: No, not at all because we all knew Joe. He was by himself; he enjoyed his own company many times. But he did take me with him a lot of times, to the movies occasionally and to dinner once in a while. He had a very select, short circle of friends. PHIL PONCE: Roger Angell, tell us -- give the streak some context. Why did it -- what impact did it have on the public? And why did do you think it had that impact? ROGER ANGELL: Well, as Phil said, it was very slow going. I was fan then. I was a fan of Joe's. I was 16 and when he came up in the major leagues, he was my first real, long-term hero. And I remember that year and noticing he was hitting a lot of games. But we didn't pay that much attention to records in those days. And then of course, when he passed 44 consecutive games, which then was held only by Willie Keeler, we did notice. And after that, it became quite thrilling. Then there were great moments along the way. I remember certainly I think it was the 38, 39th game in there, they were down in Philadelphia. A very tough pitcher named Johnny Babich warned that DiMaggio wasn't going to get a hit off him, and he'd stop the streak. And he was perfectly prepared to walk him. And I think Joe DiMaggio didn't get any hit in the first three at-bats. And he came up late in the game and Babich threw three outside pitches and Joe checked with his manager to see if it was okay to swing at the 3-0 pitch. And the pitch was away and he hit the ball between the Babich's legs for a single and pulled into first base and Joe said later, I looked over and his face was white as a sheet.
	Mr. Perfect .
	PHIL PONCE: Roger Angell, continuing with that, the significance of being able to hit in 56 straight games. ROGER ANGELL: Well, the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit the baseball. And the two hardest things in baseball are hitting the ball and playing every day. No other sport do you play every day. And he did both for 56 games. It was perfectly simple. And after he was stopped that one day, he tacked on another 17 consecutive games. The thing about the streak that we should remember and Roger Rosenblatt said this in another way, but what astounded me thinking about it just the other day is that that year, 1941, he came up to bat 541 times and struck out 13 times. It's hard to believe. I mean, this last year Sammy Sosa struck out 177 times. There's no comparison. PHIL PONCE: Roger Rosenblatt, on the issue of his personal style, as I was looking at the research today, the words that come up -- privacy, mystique, independence, a loner, did all that add to his myth? ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, you can imagine. I mean, he came from a world in which privacy was an acknowledged virtue. Now it's barely acknowledged as something that exists at all. And just by a reserve --added to the fact that he was so good -- gave him an unusual mystique. Hank Greenberg said that if he said hello to you, that was a long conversation. And the nice thing about people like that, of course, I mean, practically is that they don't make mistakes, but also you get the sense, and this I believe was true of DiMaggio, that he was quiet, not because he had nothing to say, but because he was what anyone would have said. He was as good as a baseball player as there could be. And he knew there was a public responsibility, that the suit that Yogi Berra mentioned, how he dressed, how he carried himself, mattered to people. You know, at the end of his career when he had the bone spur and he was playing hurt all the time, somebody asked him, "Joe, why are you playing hurt? Why don't you retire?" And his answer was, "Because there might be someone who hasn't seen me." PHIL PONCE: Phil Rizzuto, is there any memory in particular that you will hold? PHIL RIZZUTO: Well, I have several wonderful memories of Joe DiMaggio. One is that had it not been for Joe, I wouldn't have met my wife of 56 years. We're together still. He knew the family and he brought me over there. That was it from that day on. And then also, I mean, I was in such -- I would get a kick out of watching Joe shave. PHIL PONCE: What do you mean? PHIL RIZZUTO: I mean, I would sit -- he couldn't figure it out. I would sit down on the ground, and he would after a ball game come in and shave; and he did everything a barber would do; he put the hot towel on, put the lather on, wash it off, put it on again, and shave with a delicate stroke. Just like Roger and everybody said, he was just an -- did everything perfectly, Mr. Perfect. PHIL PONCE: Well, Gentlemen, that's all the time we have. I thank you all.