Tough Times for Joltin' Joe
by Ted Widmer
The cult of Joe DiMaggio has never been easy to explain. His numbers are less Olympian than his legend would suggest. Over the span of a 13-year career, Joltin' Joe jolted a mere 361 home runs-52nd on the all-time list, nestled between Juan Gonzalez and Gary Gaetti. His lifetime batting average is impressive (.325), but lower than that of many lesser gods in the baseball pantheon, such as Rod Carew or Wade Boggs. Many contemporaries felt that his little brother Dominic played center field better.
Yes, Joe went on a spectacular hitting tear in 1941-though Ted Williams outhit him during the same period. Yes, he played with dignity, and upheld vague ideas about what it meant to be a Yankee-but so did, say, Don Mattingly. Yes, he had a colorful ethnic background-the same background as Frank Crosetti, Tony Lazzeri, Yogi Berra and so many other Yankees who emerged during the Italian Renaissance of the 1930s and '40s.
But these mild objections bob idly in the Yankee Clipper's gigantic wake. He was always more than a ballplayer. Entertainers, pols, made guys and gorgeous women all clamored for a piece of him. Hemingway's Cuban fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea sustained himself with daydreams about "the Great DiMaggio." Simon and Garfunkel sang directly to Joe in 1968, the year so many legends crumbled, finding in him the otherwise nameless sense of what was missing in American life (weirdly, his favorite Paul Simon song was "Bookends"-the weirdness being that he had a favorite at all).
Nineteen months after his death, the question might be rephrased: not "where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" but "What are you still doing here?" Richard Ben Cramer explores both questions and more in an ambitious new biography that is worthy of its subject. DiMaggio: The Hero's Life will disturb DiMaggio's card-carrying disciples, but it will also bring new acolytes and provoke a fresh examination of a fascinating life.
Mr. Cramer spent five years interviewing former DiMaggio associates, and the result is a treasure trove of inside info that is alternatingly repellent and stirring. There is a truckload of dirt, and Mr. Cramer shows no hesitation about dishing it out, exploding many myths. It's a wonder, reading some of these stories, that DiMaggio persuaded so many fans that he was the embodiment of class. Are they all true? I imagine that will be hotly debated.
There are also long, moving stretches that re-create the heroism of his wandering life. Mr. Cramer has a reporter's eye for detail, and we enter effortlessly into the past, relearning the adverse circumstances that DiMaggio emerged from and triumphed over. Amazingly, Dago (his team nickname) delivered. Year after year, he helped his teammates exceed their expectations-even after he was badly scalded by the owners, who underpaid and ridiculed him. Year after year, he gave New Yorkers, particularly immigrants, a reason to feel proud. Year after year, he calmed an agitated nation by the simplicity with which he pursued and achieved excellence.
But of course, there's more to the legend than just a sport played mostly by children. A huge chunk of DiMaggio lore will always lie in his connection to one of the few stars more luminous than himself in the 1950s: his second wife, Marilyn Monroe. Being "Mr. Monroe" qualifies you more or less automatically as Alpha male of the American Century. Even the saintly Joe Lieberman sounded almost lubricious when he claimed that his hero was Joe DiMaggio, not just for his talent but because "it also means I might have spent part of my life with Marilyn Monroe."
In a sense, it was absolutely insane. Why would a man obsessed with privacy marry his personal antipode, a woman who craved publicity the way most of us need food? Yet, as Mr. Cramer explains, there was a peculiar logic at work. She needed legitimacy (their first date came on the day her nudie calendars were revealed). She needed toughness-and nobody knew how to handle celebrity with the discipline Joe brought to the task. And quite simply, he loved her with a passion that consumes the second half of the book.
Some will be disturbed by this portrait of a man who still sprints effortlessly across the center field of memory. It's not a book for the faint-hearted. But it tells an important story about the pressures we put on our gods. Richard Ben Cramer offers a realistic portrait of a hard life lived among hard people-but also an epic life from the Golden Age of the 20th century, and a great New York life to boot. DiMaggio's fabulous success as a ballplayer emanated from his ability to judge reality quickly, accurately and unsentimentally. Now it's time for readers to summon those skills as they position themselves before this line drive of a book.
Ted Widmer, former speechwriter for President Clinton, teaches history and is director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College. This is excerpted from a book review that first appeared in the New York Observer. Richard Ben Cramer, the author of The Hero's Life, received the honorary doctor of letters at George Washington's Birthday Convocation in February.
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