The DiMaggios

by Tom Clavin

  Since a 1956 Old-Timers’ Day was scheduled for August 4 at Wrigley Field, and the San Francisco team was to be the opponent in the regular game, someone had the bright idea of having a squad of former Seals play former Angels. Vince was all for it. He reached out to Joe and Dominic. They realized that this would mean a lot to Vince, who had ongoing problems adapting to life after baseball, so they agreed to show up. When the Seals old-timers took the field, Vince trotted out to left, Joe headed to right, and Dominic was the center fielder.

  It was a wonderful day for Vince. Before and after the game, Joe, the tallest and broadest of the three, posed for one photo after another, his left arm across Dominic’s shoulders and his right draped around Vince’s. The brothers were entering middle age, but in the three-inning game they played like youngsters on the sandlots again. Dominic patrolled center field seemingly as fast as ever. Joe singled twice in two plate appearances. And with a man on, Vince reminded fans of his power by launching one into the stands. The Seals alumni won, 3–2, thanks to that two-run homer.

  The fans at Wrigley Field loved it. Vince had a great time being with his brothers. It would be six years before they got together on a ball field again, and Joe would regret it.

  As their playing days receded into the past, Vince, Joe, and Dominic grew increasingly distant from one another. We might compare them to their fictional second-generation Sicilian-American counterparts, the Corleones—with bats, baseballs, and gloves their weapons instead of guns and bullets. Vince was like Fredo, the well-meaning, endearing brother who lost his way and needed some looking after because he was too vulnerable to other influences. Joe was Sonny, the stud middle brother. He lived an increasingly reclusive life, looking out for himself and no one else (including his own son). Dominic was like Michael, the youngest Corleone son, the smart and decisive businessman who became the caretaker of the DiMaggios, his sense of old-world obligation matched by the compassion of a man with a big heart in a comparatively small body.

  Vince and Madeline continued to live in Pittsburg, which, fittingly, became the sister city of Isola delle Femmine, with a replica in its downtown area of the fisherman’s statue in the Isola town square. Joanne got married and had children. Vince held on to the liquor sales job for 15 years. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he drank and smoked too much and was angry a lot. He never got ahead with money. It didn’t help that he gambled away too much of what he did earn. He was frustrated that he hadn’t become a professional singer, that he hadn’t been a better baseball player, that Joe didn’t bother with him anymore even when he was in San Francisco. If it hadn’t been for Vince, there wouldn’t have been a Great DiMaggio, yet he was the DiMaggio no one knew, and that was never going to change.

  What little contact he had with Joe was in its way humiliating.

  “When Joe got tired of his clothes, he’d send them to my dad,” recalls Joanne. “My dad would send them to a tailor and get them fitted. Dominic, the same thing. Times when my father had to get dressed up, he could look pretty sharp.”

  Vince even had a bone to pick with Dominic. As the American League player representative, Dominic had helped persuade the baseball owners to create a pension plan. It took a lot of pushing and pulling, but it happened. However, the owners wouldn’t make it retroactive, because suddenly giving pensions to all the players since at least 1900 would have cost many millions. The compromise agreed to was every player on a major league roster from the 1947 season on was entitled to a pension. That was the year after Vince last played in the majors. Vince, the one brother of the three who could have really used the pension, couldn’t have one. He felt his little brother had not looked out for him, and it rankled.

  By 1970, both Joanne and Vicki were married, and Vince and Madeline had four grandchildren. They lived in Daly City, having moved from Pittsburg so Vince, soon to turn 58, could be closer to DiMaggio’s Grotto, where he now worked mostly in the basement, handling the buying and receiving for Tom. Reporter Dennis Lustig found him there that July. Vince claimed that he was 42 and that “I sing three times a week and I plan to sing for money and soon.” Lustig told readers that Vince went upstairs to sing at the restaurant every morning at eleven, and “Joe D. probably will be there too.” Sometimes it was even true.

  The following year Vince’s life changed dramatically. In May he was at home listening to a speech by the evangelist Billy Graham. “I got up from my chair—I don’t think I did it on my own—and got on my knees immediately and accepted the Lord and prayed the sinner’s prayer. And I shed tears—oh, man—without any problem. Ever since then—why, I’m with the Lord.”

  For the rest of his life, Vince would tell or write anyone who would listen about becoming a born-again Christian, contending that his wife had undergone a similar conversion six months before he did. He gave up drinking, smoking, and gambling and claimed his marriage was stronger than ever. In an article in 1977, Vince reported that his daily routine was to watch Christian-based television shows until 10:00 A.M., then go to church for two hours, then return home to watch more religious programs. By then, Vince and Madeline were back in Southern California. The job at the Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant had ended, and Vince had wanted a fresh start away from San Francisco. They found a small house in North Hollywood. He sold cleaning products door to door for Fuller Brush as he waited for Social Security to kick in.

  For a time, he was a burlesque star—but this was news to Vince. In a bizarre twist, an edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1976 had captioned a photo, “Vince DiMaggio, one of the members of baseball’s most famous families, with his wife and co-burlesque star Ezrulle Sabie, now at the New Era Theater.” Ezrulle, it was reported, was really Joyce Caldwell from Alabama, specializing in onstage antics with snakes, and had been Vince’s wife of six years.

  They were, of course, phonies. The man impersonating Vince had first surfaced in Dallas a few years earlier as a partner in a restaurant. When the DiMaggio con was discovered there, he disappeared. He began to show up at burlesque theaters around the country, with Caldwell in tow. Their booking agent, Jerry Murphy of Baltimore, never suspected that he wasn’t Vince DiMaggio. He had even advanced money to “Vince,” to be paid back after the gig at the New Era, a striptease joint. A follow-up article in the Plain Dealer included a quote from the real Vince: “I don’t know what law he’s breaking, but I wish he’d stop. I found out he was doing dirty shows. That’s an abomination to our Lord Jesus. It’s 100% antagonistic to my nature.”

  No one pretended to be Dominic. He did a fine job, better than Vince or Joe, of just being himself. He worked hard at the manufacturing business in Lawrence, and it began to be successful. He watched Red Sox games because he believed they would always be his team, especially with Ted and a couple of his other friends still playing. He accepted invitations to franchise special events. He especially enjoyed being a father to his three children, though his patience could be tested.

  “As children, we always had lots of baseballs and bats around the house, so the DiMaggios’ place was the go-to yard for an afternoon pickup game,” reports his daughter Emily. “In fact, the shape of the front yard was reminiscent of a baseball field, so it was easy to lay out the bases.

  “One day, there were no balls in the bin, so we went into the den and grabbed a ball off the bookshelf. It was Dad’s 1946 pennant reunion ball with the autographs of his teammates. At the end of the game, we returned it to its proper place on the shelf. When Dad came home, he went into the den. He picked up his prized possession, turning it over and looking at the grass stains and bleeding signatures. We held our breath. He looked over his glasses and asked, ‘So, did you win?’ ”

  “He was an old-fashioned father, I guess, but to me he was just Dad and this must be how all dads are,” Paul DiMaggio remembers. “I spent almost every night with him watching TV, we were big on that. Red Sox games, of course, but other programs. He was not a modern father necessarily, but I
remember one time when I was 18 and I took him on a long car ride because he challenged me on something and I wanted to explain the facts of life as I saw them. He was cool with that. I knew it was not something that would’ve happened between him and his father.”

  Emily Sr. became a relentless fund-raiser for charities, and she was especially devoted to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Dominic helped when he could, and Ted couldn’t resist pitching in when Emily asked him. Ted retired after the 1960 season—slugging that thrilling homer in his last at-bat at Fenway Park—and after a stint as manager of the Washington Senators in the late ’60s, he spent much of his time fishing in Florida. When Emily called, Ted came running. He thought the world of her and referred to Emily affectionately as “the Queen.”

  “I don’t really know why he called me that,” she says. “But he was always ready to help in any way he could when I asked him. Mostly, I remember Dom and me being with Ted and his wife and laughing and having many happy times together.”

  By the end of the 1950s, Dominic’s company was doing so well that he could branch out into other interests. One was football. In 1960 he was part of a group of local businessmen who founded the Boston Patriots in the new American Football League, which would evolve over time into the New England Patriots.

  In 1962 Dominic was diagnosed with Paget’s disease, which causes enlarged bones. Sometimes, to tolerate the intense pain, Dominic had to bend over, even at work and in public. Ted, still a strong and powerful man in his forties who would become even closer to Dominic as they aged and the Paget’s persisted, told David Halberstam, “It’s a real mean son of a bitch of a disease, but he’s the proudest human being you ever met. Anyone else with a goddamn disease like that loses dignity. Not Dommie. Dommie doesn’t lose his dignity.”

  It didn’t slow him down either. In 1966, at the invitation of Red Sox officials, Dominic was a spring training special assistant. The following year, after consulting with Cleveland general manager Gabe Paul (who once wrote a glowing report on Vince with the Reds) and the former Indians star Al Rosen about the success of their Wahoo Club, Dominic and 49 other businessmen founded a similar booster group, the Bosox Club.

  Now if only the Red Sox themselves could field a winning team. The 1965 edition had been the first team since 1932 to lose 100 games. The next year was only a bit better, with Boston at 72-90 and finishing in ninth place, 26 games behind the Baltimore Orioles. The club hired Dick Williams to be their manager, and his 1967 opening day lineup included good young players like George Scott, Mike Andrews, Rico Petrocelli, Reggie Smith, Tony Conigliaro, and their lone star, Carl Yastrzemski.

  An even bolder step, Dominic thought, would be new ownership, and he knew just the man for the job—himself. He put together a syndicate with the goal of raising $8 million to buy the Red Sox from Tom Yawkey. To this day it is rare that a former player owns a club; the exceptions are Michael Jordan, who owns the Charlotte Bobcats in the NBA, and Magic Johnson and his group, who purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012.

  The news that Dominic might own the Red Sox caused a lot of excitement among fans and the press, who were desperate for the team to return to its winning ways of the 1940s. Things looked good. As one newspaper reported, “Owner Tom Yawkey has indicated he would consider selling the team if he gets the right offer from the right group.” Dominic had proved he could make and raise money, and who better than the Little Professor to create a contending club?

  Imagine returning to the old neighborhood not just as a player, as he’d already done, but as an owner of a major league club, one with a long legacy. “My father would have liked that, to show what he’d achieved through hard work, realizing the American Dream,” says Paul DiMaggio. “I enjoyed going with him to San Francisco. My dad and Tom went over business matters. Dad was phenomenal with figures and finances. Tom was a great guy, I really liked him, but Dad was the brains of the DiMaggio business interests.”

  Dominic sold his 10 percent share of the Boston Patriots, which he had purchased for $25,000, for $300,000. He was also exploring building a greyhound racing track outside Boston. He and Emily had bought a home in Florida for getaways on winter weekends. A Sporting News profile in 1967 concluded: “Husband, father of three, businessman, former exec of the Patriots, prospective owner of the team—Dom is all of these things. He also is the proud bearer of one of the greatest names in baseball history.”

  Then things fell apart. Yawkey resisted selling, especially after the “Impossible Dream” season the Red Sox had in 1967, when they captured the American League pennant and lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games in the World Series. Dominic was disappointed, but happy his team was winning again. He would just have to be patient.

  Two pivotal events in 1955 directed the course of the rest of Joe’s life. One was the divorce from Marilyn becoming final. It did not close his heart to her, but it did close his heart to any other woman and just about every other person. The second was the crowning achievement of his baseball career: induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. For the rest of his life, he would be an American sports immortal.

  Oddly, when Joe’s name first appeared on the ballot, in 1953, he received only 44 percent of the 75 percent necessary. Apparently a majority of the Baseball Writers Association of America members felt it was too soon to enshrine him. Joe still didn’t make it in 1954. Finally, in 1955, 89 percent of the writers felt he had waited long enough.

  The induction ceremony was on July 25. Also being inducted that day were Gabby Hartnett, Ted Lyons, Dazzy Vance, Frank “Home Run” Baker, and Ray Schalk, the latter two voted in by the Veterans Committee. On hand to welcome the new Hall of Fame members were 87-year-old Cy Young, Bill Terry, Mel Ott, Frankie Frisch, and Joe’s onetime contract negotiator, Ty Cobb.

  But Joe didn’t hang around Cooperstown to celebrate with his peers. He drove back to New York to have dinner at Toots Shor’s. When he finished, he left, by himself. Watching him go, Toots said to a sportswriter at the bar, “There goes one of the loneliest men in the world.”

  As he had done with Dorothy, Joe continued to court Marilyn, hoping she would come back to him. “Joe was very distressed, and he and Dom talked a lot about Marilyn,” remembers Emily Sr. “When Joe was down, he reached out to Dominic.”

  When Joe and Marilyn did get together, they tried to stay out of public view. This was hard to do, even at Dominic and Emily’s house in Wellesley in the middle of winter. When Joe and Marilyn were there in January 1955, the press was tipped off and a crowd of reporters and photographers were waiting outside. When the couple emerged, they climbed into Joe’s Cadillac and set off back to New York. To elude the press vehicles following him, Joe floored it, passing through some towns at close to 100 miles per hour with a parade of speeders behind him. Finally, the Caddy simply outdistanced its pursuers.

  For more than seven years, Joe waited for Marilyn to come back to him. During that time, she had numerous romances, and a marriage to the playwright Arthur Miller, and the films The Seven-Year Itch and Bus Stop, and a brilliant performance in Some Like It Hot had made her a household name. But as has been well documented, the increasingly intense battles with depression and drugs took their toll. She managed another remarkable performance in The Misfits, but was unable to complete the film Something’s Got to Give. Her marriage to Miller was over. She was in a bad way and needed a lot of help.

  Joe came to the rescue. He wanted to get her away from Frank Sinatra, John and Bobby Kennedy, and all the other men he considered creeps and bloodsuckers who just wanted to use Marilyn.

  “He wanted her to feel safe with him—and that meant showing her he’d changed,” Richard Ben Cramer analyzed. “He could take care of her without taking over. He didn’t remonstrate about her habits, her friends—never said a bad thing about her work. Anyway, she didn’t have any work. She didn’t seem to have enough energy to get work, or even to want it. The years since
their marriage had changed Marilyn too.”

  In July 1962, Joe asked Marilyn to marry him again. She saw that he hadn’t changed completely—but he’d changed some. Thinking maybe he really could save her, she said yes. The wedding was scheduled for August 8. Joe was ecstatic to be getting a second at-bat with the woman he couldn’t help but love deeply. He had to fly to New York on business, where he found it hard not to tell his pals the great news—this was to be a quiet affair, with just a few friends in the backyard of Marilyn’s L.A. home. When he returned to the West Coast, he had to detour to San Francisco that Saturday, August 4, to reunite with his brothers for another Seals old-timers’ game. The plan was that he’d fly to L.A. the next day, get together with Marilyn on Monday, and they would be married two days later.

  Joe didn’t even tell Vince and Dominic, or Tom, who was also at the game. The crowd loved seeing the brothers together in Seals uniforms, and the Hall of Famer was more outgoing than usual. That night Joe went out on the town with Lefty O’Doul and several others. Finally, everything was going to be right with Marilyn again.