Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life
By Richard Ben Cramer
Simon & Schuster, 2000, $28

I never saw Joe DiMaggio play baseball, except for a few televised Yankees old-timers games in the 1950s — but even then, in his 40s, with a bad back and legs patched together with tape, he was the most graceful player I ever saw.

In his heyday, he was the best. Usually playing injured, he compiled a lifetime batting average of .325 and a slugging percentage of .579 (sixth best all-time), with 361 home runs in 13 seasons. No one ever saw DiMaggio throw to the wrong base or make a baserunning goof. At his peak, he lost three seasons to World War II; give him those seasons back, and his records would be monumental.

DiMaggio was the consummate team player, who led by example and by urging, cajoling, and shaming his teammates to play their best. He saved his own best efforts for key games against the archrival Boston Red Sox. And DiMaggio was a winner: 13 seasons, 10 World Series, nine Series titles.

DiMaggio lived his life with the same grace that he exhibited on the field. Dignified, impeccably dressed, soft-spoken, he may have been the most universally respected American of his time.

But according to Richard Ben Cramer, in the first major biography of DiMaggio since his death in 1998, he was a hero with feet of clay.

Cramer draws a portrait of a lonely man whose jealousies and suspicions ruined his relationships with teammates, friends, lovers and family members. He became angry at his first wife at their wedding reception (because she cut her finger while slicing the wedding cake), and, when they left on their honeymoon, the bride drove the car and the bridegroom sat in the rumble seat. His brief marriage to Marilyn Monroe broke up after he became jealous of passersby watching her film the scene in “The Seven Year Itch” in which air from a subway grating blows her skirt up around her waist. It’s probably true, as Cramer asserts, that DiMaggio and Monroe planned to remarry (and had scheduled the wedding for what turned out to be the day of her funeral) — but their relationship was always troubled, he was jealous of her popularity, he beat her, and they probably would have failed at marriage the second time around, too. The saddest thing is that Marilyn had paid attention to Joe DiMaggio Jr., as Joe never did, and after her death the boy’s life spiraled downward into addiction and dissipation (he died a few months after his father).

Mobsters handled DiMaggio’s finances during his playing years, and later a succession of fawning hangers-on made sure that, wherever he went, he had female companionship and never had to pay for anything. They gave him meals, clothing, apartments, cars, even nine World Series rings to replace the ones that DiMaggio claimed were stolen. (Cramer says DiMaggio, who wore his 1936 ring, sold the other nine or traded them for favors or merchandise; Cramer interviewed the collector who bought the 1940 ring from DiMaggio and still has it.)

DiMaggio was tight-fisted with money. As a player, he never picked up a check and rarely carried cash, often borrowing money from lower-paid teammates and neglecting to repay them. When he had to rely on military pay, he sold his interest in the family restaurant, Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto, to his brother Dom, center fielder for the Red Sox — and made Dom remove the word “Joe” and the picture of a baseball player from the restaurant sign. (After Dom’s autobiography came out with Joe and Dom pictured on the cover, Joe refused to speak to Dom, feeling that Dom had used him to sell books.) In his later years, multimillionaire DiMaggio would carry his laundry down the street to a Laundromat rather than use the washing machines in the basement of his apartment building in Florida — those cost 15 cents more to run.

By virtue of his heroic status, DiMaggio created the market for baseball autographs — and drove up the prices for his own autographs so that high that the market couldn’t bear them and several distributors went bankrupt. It wasn’t enough for DiMaggio to make money off his name: He had to be sure that no one else would. Ironically, Cramer claims, DiMaggio’s last financial adviser siphoned off souvenirs from DiMaggio’s cache and stands to make a killing on them now that DiMaggio can’t sign any more. If that’s true, DiMaggio must be spinning in his grave. (An appendix to Cramer’s book reproduces a letter from attorneys representing the financial adviser, threatening to sue Cramer if he prints his claims.)