The DiMaggios

by Tom Clavin

  Through June, Boston kept bashing opponents—demolishing the St. Louis Browns 15–2, 20–4, and even 29–4, going 11–5 over the Indians, and thrashing the White Sox 17–7 and 12–0 in consecutive games. In one nine-game stretch, the Red Sox scored 119 runs, and they would plate a record-breaking 1,027 that season.

  The output wasn’t enough, however, to cheer McCarthy. He had not been able to recover from the bitter disappointments of the 1948 and ’49 seasons. Drinking heavily again, he quit the Red Sox after 59 games. Joe Cronin replaced him with Steve O’Neill, a coach who fingered rosary beads in the dugout. His prayers were heard as Boston kept pounding the ball. The Sox feasted on the Yankees’ Whitey Ford when he made his major league debut on July 1 at Fenway Park. The young lefty lasted four and two-thirds innings, giving up five earned runs on seven hits and six walks as the Sox lashed the Yanks 13–4. Yet for all their phenomenal hitting, the Sox were giving up too many runs and still trailed the Yankees and Tigers.

  The All-Star Game was a dark day in Boston. In the first inning, while making a fine catch of a Ralph Kiner drive to left, Ted Williams collided with the left-field wall and broke his elbow. Somehow he played nine innings, even hitting a single in the eighth, but X-rays the next day told the tale. He would not play again until mid-September.

  The gutty Red Sox did not fold. On July 18, their 12–9 win over the Tigers at Fenway Park brought them to .500 at 39-39. In the next 59 games they went 47-12. On September 12, when they beat Chicago for their 24th victory in 27 games, Boston was a game behind the Tigers and a half-game behind the Yankees. Three days later, Ted was back in the lineup. He celebrated by going 4-for-6, with a homer and three singles in a 12–9 win over the Browns. On the 18th, defeating the Tigers 3–2 in Detroit put Boston ahead of the Tigers and a game behind the Yankees.

  Then Boston’s pennant hopes died, rather abruptly. On the 20th, the Indians beat them twice. They lost five of their next nine games. The late-season swoon proved fatal. The Red Sox finished with 94 wins, but four games out of first.

  Dominic had clearly been their most valuable player. He might have won the American League MVP if the pitching hadn’t let the team down.

  “He was valuable off the field too, which people didn’t see,” says Jimmy Piersall, who at only 20 had been called up in September as a backup outfielder. “He was fine with young players asking him about playing in this park or other, against this hitter or that hitter. I talked to him as much as I could and watched how he played center. He badly wanted the Red Sox to win, and sharing his knowledge was part of that.”

  Though the Yanks were in first place for much of the season, Joe and Stengel were not getting along. No doubt Casey did not hold Joe in the same respect, even awe, that Joe McCarthy had. Bucky Harris had seen Joe produce some great performances when he was hurting. But Stengel had inherited a fading star who wasn’t making the great catch or getting the key hit often enough to warrant special treatment. Joe could understand that. But it angered him that Stengel still couldn’t bring himself to speak to him directly.

  For his part, Stengel knew that to keep his job in New York he had to win championships. Joe’s ego and past exploits weren’t going to make that happen. The Yankees were winning with a team effort that balanced hitting and pitching. Berra had settled in as one of the league’s best catchers and with a few stints in the outfield would play in all but three games in the 1950 season. Billy Martin was a restless utility man in the infield. Reynolds, Raschi, Eddie Lopat, and Tommy Byrne were workhorse hurlers, leaving little room for the untested lefty Ford and righty Lew Burdette, and Joe Page still ruled the bullpen.

  The Yankees were strong across the board, but by August it looked like the Yankee Clipper didn’t have the three or four good years left he had suggested to sportswriters before the season. His average was near .300—respectable, but nothing like in his healthy years. Every so often his legs cramped for no apparent reason. A really good fastball could be in the catcher’s mitt before he got around on it. He ceded more of left-center to Gene Woodling, a former San Francisco Seal. He was humiliated when Stengel benched him for six games that month. Joe spent most of those games in the tunnel leading from the dugout to the locker room, silently and sullenly smoking cigarettes.

  When the Yankees even lost to the Senators, Berra composed a poem for Joe: “Roses are red. Violets are blue. Ted Williams can hit. Why can’t you.” The next day Joe was back in center field and walloped his 22nd homer. He went on to hit .442 in the next 11 games. A four-game sweep of the Indians put the Yanks two games in front of the Tigers and two and a half ahead of the Red Sox.

  Joe’s knees were acting up again, and Stengel rested him when he could. When he couldn’t, Joe delivered. On September 10, he became the first player to slug three home runs in one game at Griffith Stadium; he also doubled for a perfect day in the 8–1 triumph. Joe hit his 28th home run two days later, but the surging Tigers moved into first by half a game. The Bronx Bombers took their case directly to Detroit and beat the home team there on September 14, with Joe blasting number 29. By the time the Yankees arrived in Philadelphia for a season-ending series, Joe had 118 RBI, 32 homers, and a 19-game hitting streak. At season’s end, his slugging average of .585 led the league.

  The pennant was New York’s again. The Yankees ended the season with 98 wins and a winning percentage of .636. The surprising star of the team was the diminutive Rizzuto. He had played in every game, had 200 hits with a .324 average, his 66 RBI were very good for a leadoff man, and no one played a better shortstop. When the voting was done, “the Scooter” was the American League MVP.

  The World Series, against the Philadelphia Phillies, was a mere formality. For the ninth time since Joe joined the team, the Yankees became world champions as they swept the Phillies.

  After the Series, Lefty O’Doul asked Joe to accompany his San Francisco Seals on a trip to Japan. O’Doul’s fascination with the country had never faded since his 1934 visit. When the Seals had ended their season in 1949, and with the war over by four years, O’Doul and his team had gone across the Pacific. “The San Francisco Seals arrived today to a thunderous welcome for their ‘bicycle series’ with Japanese and GI baseball teams,” reported the New York Times. “Tens of thousands lined some five miles of city streets to cheer the visiting Pacific Coast Leaguers—first athletes to come here since the war. It was a bigger throng than even Emperor Hirohito has attracted in recent years.”

  The tour had lasted six weeks and included a luncheon with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had ordered Korakuen Stadium emptied of the ammunition stored there so it could again be a ball field. The 11 games drew an estimated 500,000 fans and raised over $100,000 for various Japanese charities.

  The 1950 trip with Joe included exhibition games in Korea for U.S. troops who were part of the United Nations forces, commanded by MacArthur, fighting there after North Korea had invaded South Korea the previous June. In Japan the highlight was a ten-day home run contest between the Great DiMaggio and Makoto Kuzuru, labeled the “Babe Ruth of Japan.” Japanese fans were thrilled when during the first three days the hometown hero outslugged the Yank. Joe did not have his own bats from home and was trying to make do with a shorter, lighter one made of soft wood that he said “felt like an Italian sausage.” On the fourth day, however, “I got my hands on a [Louisville] Slugger that had been left over there on O’Doul’s trip the year before. I managed to win the home run derby over the next seven days.”

  NINETEEN

  For the 1951 season, Joe Cronin and the Red Sox made changes to the roster they hoped would help them dethrone the Yankees. Birdie Tebbetts was sent to the Indians. Joe Dobson and Al Zarilla were dealt to the White Sox. After Lou Boudreau was axed as Cleveland’s manager, the Sox signed him to be their starting shortstop, bumping Vern Stephens to third and putting the popular Pesky on the bench. The resulting team was weaker defensively in the infield—not good for a club with chron
ically shaky pitching.

  Boudreau homered in his first game at Fenway Park, and again Boston had a potent offense, but they gave runs back as soon as they scored them. On May 15, the franchise marked its 50th anniversary with a 9–7 loss to Chicago. When they could get consistent pitching (Parnell won 18 in 1951), the Red Sox were unbeatable—a twin-bill sweep of the Yankees on Memorial Day gave them ten victories in a row. Dominic, though 34, had fresh legs and a quick bat.

  In June, he got news he and his siblings had been dreading: Rosalie was close to death. When Dominic had visited just before Christmas, doctors told him his mother had cancer. The 73-year-old matriarch had been failing since then. When she slipped into a coma, Tom tracked Joe down in New York and Dominic in Boston. Both left immediately for San Francisco. Joe arrived early on the morning of June 18. All four sisters and three of his brothers were there at the house on Beach Street. Three hours after Joe joined them at their mother’s bedside, Rosalie died. Dominic arrived a half-hour too late, thwarted by plane schedules.

  As they had done two years earlier for Giuseppe’s funeral mass, the DiMaggio brothers and sisters gathered at Saints Peter and Paul Church. Rosalie was buried next to her husband at the Holy Cross Cemetery, in a mausoleum the family had purchased. The next day Joe and Dominic boarded a plane together for the trip back to the East Coast.

  Dominic returned to a blazing hot Boston team. After taking both ends of a 26-inning doubleheader in Chicago, the Red Sox were in first place with a 49-29 record. The Yankees eased into first ten days later, but the resilient Red Sox kept pummeling most of their opponents. Dominic had five hits in a 13–10 win over the White Sox. Boston hovered near first through August and into September. The ageless Ellis Kinder put together a string of 29 scoreless innings. With a 12–5 victory over Chicago, the Red Sox were just two and a half games out of first.

  And then, as they had before, Boston imploded. They lost two games, won one, then lost their last nine contests, closing the season with the Yankees sweeping them in five straight games. They finished the season in third place, 11 games out. For Dominic, it was a miserable end to a season that had shown he remained an elite player—a .296 average, 72 runs batted in (two more than in ’50), and 113 runs scored, again tops in the American League.

  That winter Dominic pondered another run in 1952. He learned that any new campaign would be without one of his longtime comrades. During a cold night in Cleveland late in the season, Doerr had hurt his back charging in to field a slow grounder. If he wanted to continue playing, he would need surgery to repair disc and vertebrae damage. At 33, he decided instead to call it quits. That would leave Dominic, Ted, and Pesky of the original West Coast group to tilt at windmills.

  Joe had felt good at spring training in 1951, telling the World Telegram and Sun, “I am out to surprise those who believe I am finishing up my career.” However, he also told reporters, “This year might be my last.” A “flabbergasted” front office issued a statement: “We regret to hear anything like this. We hope he will have the sort of season which will cause him to change his mind.”

  He didn’t. Joe’s batting average stayed at a journeyman level, and he suffered from a chronic power outage. He couldn’t stay in the lineup for long stretches. When on June 8 he pulled a muscle in his left leg chasing a fly ball, it was already the third time in the season an injury had exiled him to the bench.

  Adding to his frustration, the Yankees had introduced a teenager from Oklahoma already touted as the next Big Guy. So far, though, Mickey Mantle was still struggling to figure out American League pitching and left field at Yankee Stadium. On May 30 he whiffed five times in a doubleheader swept by the Red Sox 11–10 and 9–4. On July 13, he would rack up four strikeouts and be shipped down to the Kansas City Blues.

  The Red Sox were in the hunt again. Heading toward July the White Sox held on to a slim lead atop the league. When the Yankees beat Boston 5–2 on July 1 (with Doerr collecting his 2,000th hit), the Red Sox were three and a half games behind and Chicago and New York were tied for first. Joe was back in the lineup, sore leg and all. Maybe he was prodded by columns like one from his friend Jimmy Cannon, who, being somewhat unkind to both brothers, wrote, “DiMaggio may be in his last season. Time has warped the great gifts. You must take such as his brother, Dom, over him.”

  For the 13th time in 13 active seasons, Joe was an All-Star. But with the left leg still bothering him, Stengel didn’t play him. Dominic started in his place in center field. Ted was the only other Red Sox starter. The National League found the confines of Briggs Stadium in Detroit friendly as homers by Gil Hodges, Stan Musial, Ralph Kiner, and Bob Elliott powered the senior circuit to an 8–3 victory.

  The second half of the season wasn’t much easier for Joe. In addition to the nagging injuries and anemic hitting, the New York press ran pieces that were critical of Stengel for not handling the aging superstar correctly, and critical of Joe for seeming to need special handling. Milton Gross wrote, “On Friday 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.”

  In a rare, Ted Williams–like outburst, Dominic had a “strong beef” with reporters. Visibly angry, he told them that his brother “was being crucified by New York baseball writers for no good reason.”

  Joe didn’t comment, but Dominic’s opinions clearly meant a lot to him. An anecdote from that season illustrates this. In 1951 Babe Martin was back in the minor leagues, catching for a team in San Antonio. Before an exhibition game against the Yankees, Joe emerged from the dugout and said to Martin, “Babe, are we going to have sandwiches and coffee after the game?”

  “I was thrilled to death that Joe DiMaggio would come out to see me, a minor leaguer who had been only a third-string catcher in the big leagues,” Martin recalls 61 years later. “During that game, the pitcher knocked me down. I got up and hit a homer on the next pitch. Later, Joe and I are eating together and he says, ‘Babe, that’s the way you’re supposed to do it.’ Why did Joe go out of his way to see me? Because he knew Dom and I had become close friends, and for Joe, there wasn’t a better recommendation about a man than that.”

  It’s hard to say what gnawed at Joe more in the summer of ’51. From the days at the Horse Lot he had been a gifted athlete, and now more than injuries were conspiring against him. His skills had seriously eroded. Since his first full season in the Pacific Coast League 18 years earlier, he had enjoyed a generous to adoring press, and now reporters and columnists were turning on him. He had just lost his mother, who with his sisters had doted on him. His marriage was long over, he was more a loner than ever, and he didn’t see his son nearly enough (which was not only Dorothy’s fault). His immediate future looked to be a choice between eking out one more year on the field and possibly humiliating himself or trying to find out what life was like without putting on a uniform. He had bled pinstripes, the good Lord had made him a Yankee, yet the club might not even want him back—if this Mantle kid straightened out, the weight of the team might shift to his shoulders, just as Joe had once assumed it from Gehrig.

  No surprise then that after he hit a homer and a triple but the Yankees still lost to the lowly Senators, Joe lashed out at reporters. “You are darn right that I wanted to make you writers look bad. I’ll always try to make you look bad. Just because I have had a bad day, you guys want to fire me. Some of you guys are the ones who had me washed up in 1946. But here I am, five years later. How are you going to explain the hits I made today? Are they going to fire me every time I have a bad day?”

  As the Yanks battled the Red Sox, White Sox, and revived Indians, there were a few more flashes of the old Yankee Clipper. In the first game of a twin-bill sweep of the White Sox, Joe blasted two home runs. Gradually, day after day, the rivals fell back in September. Berra led
the Yanks in RBIs, and Woodling and a returned Mantle did their parts. Pitching again made the biggest difference, with Reynolds, Raschi, Lopat, and whoever Stengel thought would give him innings bearing the burden. (Whitey Ford had been drafted into the Army.)

  Reynolds pitched many big games in his career as both a reliever and a starter, but perhaps none was bigger than the one on September 28 at Yankee Stadium. He already had a no-hitter in the ’51 season, beating Bob Feller and the Indians 1–0. This Friday the Yankees needed two wins to secure their third consecutive pennant, and they had to do it against the Red Sox. Dominic, irritating Reynolds by taking time to wipe his glasses, worked a walk to open the game—he would like nothing more than to beat Reynolds and at least delay another title for New York. But Pesky lined into a double play, and Ted struck out. Reynolds retired the next six batters. Ted walked in the fourth but was left stranded. After four innings, it was 4–0 Yankees. A Woodling homer in the eighth tacked on one more run. In the top of the ninth, with one out, Dominic walked again. Pesky whiffed, bringing up Ted. He popped out, and Reynolds became the first American League pitcher to hurl two no-hitters in the same season.