by Tom Clavin
The two had also shared difficulties with their only sons. But while Joe wrote off Joe Jr., Ted and John Henry kept trying. John Henry’s management of his father in the sports memorabilia business was a strong bond between them.
“This was not necessarily the healthiest thing—a young man who had a difficult time finding his own way, and who was the son of a singularly famous and iconic father, making a living directly off his father’s fame,” wrote David Halberstam in The Teammates. “The world of baseball appearances and memorabilia is not a particularly genteel one, but even so a number of serious people in the world deeply disliked dealing with John Henry Williams, and in time some of Ted’s oldest friends felt they were being kept away from Ted because they had been critical of what they felt was John Henry’s growing exploitation of his father.”
Maybe it was because he genuinely cared for his former rival’s well-being, or he felt a special kinship with him as the best players of their era, or he felt for Dominic losing the only brother he had left. Or maybe for all of these reasons, Ted kept calling Dominic asking for updates as his brother battled cancer. When Joe died, he felt the loss deeply.
Ted’s own health deteriorated rapidly. When he had quadruple bypass surgery in 2000, Dominic flew to San Diego to visit him and encourage him to get better. By the time he turned 83 in August 2001, Ted had suffered two strokes, a valve in his heart leaked and doctors couldn’t fix it, the once-robust Splendid Splinter was down to 130 pounds, and he was confined to a wheelchair. Dominic called him every day and then relayed their conversation to Doerr and Pesky. “Dommie, you’re the only one I have left,” Ted would say when his spirits were low.
“Ted realized what Joe did—that Dominic was a much more complete man than they were in terms of he had a successful family life, children, grandchildren around him,” says Flavin. “He had this whole business that he made. He didn’t trade on his name. He worked hard and made a go of it and became a captain of industry as well as a big donor to charity. He was a much more successful man than they were. The difference was, Ted honored and loved Dominic for it and Joe resented him for it.”
There was no avoiding the fact that Ted had only months to live. In October 2001, Dominic said to his wife and Flavin during dinner that he had to go down to see him. Because of 9/11 the month before, he preferred driving. Emily was aghast that at age 84 he was proposing to drive from Marion, Massachusetts, to Hernando, Florida.
“I was sipping my second—okay, maybe third—glass of wine when this came up,” recalls Flavin, who in addition to emceeing many Red Sox events—where he would often recite his composition “Teddy at the Bat”—was an Emmy-winning commentator on Channel 4 in Boston. “Suddenly, I found myself suggesting that I drive south with him. Emily felt better about that.”
They tried to enlist Doerr from Oregon, but his wife, Monica, still hadn’t recovered from two strokes of her own two years earlier. However, Pesky, a spry 82, agreed to go along. Flavin, only 64 then, would share the driving with Dominic, with Pesky in the backseat. They set off on October 20. There was a stop along I-95 so Dominic could be the guest at a Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society event, then it was back on the road.
Ted rallied when he saw his three friends and enjoyed reminiscing about the Red Sox days one more time. He laughed, with the old twinkle in his half-blind eyes. But at one point he became despondent and began to weep. Only Dominic could get him out of it. “You’re having a bad time, but you’ve got to play the hand that’s dealt you,” he told Ted. “All the other hands you’ve been played, you played them so well. You made yourself a hero, and you’re an American hero in two wars.” Ted calmed, and the visit that day turned fun again.
On the second day of the visit Dominic, channeling his brother Vince, sang an Italian love song, which Ted so enjoyed that he asked Dominic to sing it again. He did, then Flavin sang, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” There could be no encores, as Ted was tiring.
Ted weakened that winter. It was a surprise that he was still alive at all when the 2002 season began. Dominic called him every morning that spring to describe the previous day’s Red Sox game, “and it was hard for Dominic to tell whether he was still there at the end of the line, because sometimes he would slip out of consciousness in the middle of a call,” Halberstam writes. “There had been one final call when Dominic had called in and sensed a silence at the other end and he had asked, ‘Teddy, are you still there,’ and Josh, Ted’s attendant, had said, ‘No, he’s fallen asleep.’ ‘Well, please tell him I called,’ Dominic said, and the next day Ted died.”
Dominic had one more funeral to attend in July 2002.
As Dominic approached 90, he was reasonably healthy—though there were still pains from the Paget’s disease—and he remained active in charity work, sometimes in collaboration with his aging former teammates. In May 2004, he and Doerr and Pesky were honored by the North End Community Health Center and the North End/West End Neighborhood Service Center with a new award named for Dominic. The following year the three were honored again, this time for their 50 years of support (and Emily’s) for the Dana-Farber Institute, which treats and seeks a cure for pediatric cancers.
In between, there had been a long-awaited triumph—a Boston Red Sox world championship, the first since 1918. In the 2004 World Series, the Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals. “That first time the Red Sox won the World Series, President Bush invited all the players to the White House, and Dominic and I went with them,” Jimmy Piersall recalls. “And the president said, ‘I’m really glad to see DiMaggio and Piersall here.’ Dominic was thrilled by that. And I was thrilled to be sitting next to him. He was a wonderful man, and he had a tremendous wife.”
He and his tremendous wife were “absolutely inseparable,” says Flavin.
“It was rare for my parents to not go somewhere or do something together,” agrees Paul. “They were pretty much inseparable.”
Dominic turned 90 in February 2007 and received birthday wishes not only from his three children and six grandchildren but from what had become a widely extended DiMaggio family. “I’m the last one of the 11 DiMaggios of Taylor Street,” he said in a radio interview. “We all must go. I luckily survived. I’ve had a truly fabulous life. I have no complaints.” He said that he played bridge, followed the stock market, and managed money for his grandchildren. “I’m having a problem moving around, and I’m trying to stay as close as I can to home. I have good days and bad days. After all, at 90 you can’t expect to feel good every day. After being so active, you feel it. You start slowing down. You’ve got to give in a little bit.”
When asked if he was still contacted by people wanting information about Joe DiMaggio, Dominic replied, “Every once in a while.” He continued: “If I had to be the brother of somebody, I couldn’t think of a person I would like to be the brother of other than Joe.” Asked if he had any goals, Dominic said, “Reach 91.”
Later that year the Red Sox won another world championship. Dominic did not get to Fenway Park much anymore, preferring to watch games on television from home. When he and Emily were in Florida, he went to spring training games when he felt up to it. The last one he attended was with his friend Dean Boylan in February 2009, when he turned 92.
Later that month, his health faltered. He developed pneumonia. It was decided that he and Emily should head up to Marion to be near their children and his doctors in Boston. He couldn’t shake the congestion and felt weaker and weaker. Eventually, as with Joe, the doctors decided Dominic would be most comfortable at home, where he wanted to be. Emily was always there, as were nurses when he became too weak to get out of bed. Children and grandchildren visited, always bringing a smile to his face.
On the night of May 7, 2009, a Thursday, Paul had just conducted a business seminar. Before heading home across the border in New Hampshire, he called his wife, who was with his parents at the house in Marion. She asked him to come down a
nd stay the night there. Dominic was in and out of consciousness, watching the Red Sox against the Cleveland Indians at Fenway Park.
“I said, ‘Sure, I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ ” Paul remembers. “I wasn’t that tired, and I wanted to see all of them anyway.”
When Paul arrived, Dominic was propped up in the bed in the den, with a view of Buzzards Bay. The game was over, a 13–3 thrashing by the home team, but a replay had just begun. Paul sat down to watch it with his father. He could hear Dominic acknowledge every Boston tally on their way to victory. As the game was drawing to a close, the nurse on duty that night checked on Dominic and said, “I think he stopped breathing.”
“I went upstairs and got Mom,” Paul says. “We bent over and kissed him. He was gone.”
The last of the DiMaggio brothers had died peacefully at home, with family.
Index
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Aaron, Henry, 299
All-Century team, 299
Allen, Mel, 271
All-Star Games: (1933), 67; (1936), 66–68, 80; (1937), 85; (1938), 97; (1939), 109; (1941), 132; (1942), 150–51; (1943), 162–63; (1944), 164; (1946), 172, 177–78; (1949), 219; (1950), 231; (1951), 238–39; (1999), 299
Almada, Louis, 43, 55, 271
American Dream, 9, 19, 92, 267, 294
Anderson, Dave, 218, 222
Andrews, Mike, 267
Appling, Luke, 68
Arizona-Texas League, 36
Ashburn, Richie, 298
Association of Professional Baseball Players of America, 22, 286
Auker, Elden, 108
Averill, Earl, 31, 85, 110–11
Babe Ruth Story, The (film), 204
Babich, Johnny, 131
Baer, Arthur, 32
Bagby, Jim, 134
Baker, Frank “Home Run,” 268
Baldassaro, Lawrence, Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball, 105, 274
Banks, Ernie, 165
Barath, Steve, 55
Barney, Rex, 197, 226
Barrow, Ed, 53, 57, 86, 93, 94, 108, 109, 128–29, 146, 151, 154, 160
Barsochinni, Reno, 256
Baseball Hall of Fame, 268, 297–98
Baseball Writers of America, 145, 151, 268
Bassler, Johnny, 53
Batts, Matt, 225
Bauer, Hank, 221, 223, 231
Baum, Spider, 31
Beazley, Johnny, 152
Bendix, William, 204
Benedetti, Dante, 39
Benswanger, Bill, 135
Berg, Moe, 118
Berra, Yogi, 171, 187, 197, 201, 214, 221, 233, 240
and All-Star Games, 231, 299
and Dom, 218, 297
and Joe, 234
and Old-Timers’ Day, 288
Bevens, Bill, 196–97
Bilko, Steve, 261
Bodie, Ping, 31–32
Bosox Club, 266, 275
Boston Bees, 3, 77–79, 80–81, 85, 89–90, 99–100
Boston Braves, 56, 77–78, 159, 206–7, 211
Boston Patriots, 266, 267
Boston Red Sox:
American League championships (1946), 2; (1967), 268
and Dom, see DiMaggio, Dominic Paolo
Fenway Park, 119, 121, 201
50th anniversary of, 236
and Old-Timers’ Day (1986), 1–6, 279
ownership of, 267–68, 275–76
and player rights, 170
postwar season of, 172–73, 186
Red Sox Hall of Fame, 298
trades, 199, 236
and wartime games, 158
and Williams, see Williams, Ted
and World Series (1946), 179–81; (1967), 268; (2004), 302
and Yankees, 96–97, 103, 111, 117, 121, 122, 127, 130, 137, 170–71, 185–86, 199–200, 209–11, 218, 221–22
Boudreau, Lou, 134, 174, 205–6, 236, 246, 250, 251, 253–54
Boylan, Dean Sr., 295, 296, 303
Braddock, Jim, 91, 145
Branca, Ralph, 1, 196, 225
Brannan, Sam, 11
Brecheen, Harry, 180
Brillheart, Jim, 229
Brooklyn Dodgers:
move to Los Angeles, 261
playoff game (1951), 2
and Robinson, 161
World Series (1941), 141–42, 197; (1947), 196–98; (1949), 225–26
Brower, Frank “Turkeyfoot,” 34
Brown, Bobby, 171, 187, 206, 211, 214, 219, 226, 248, 257, 288, 292, 295
Brown, Les, and His Band of Renown, 139, 202
Bundig, Gene, 292
Burdette, Lew, 233
Burr, Harold, 106
Busch, Noel F., 104
Bush, George W., 302
Byrne, Tommy, 171, 233
Cabrera, Miguel, 1
California:
baseball in, 21–23
fishermen in, 12–13
Governor’s Cups, 30, 71, 88, 98, 99, 175, 177, 198, 261
history of, 11–12, 16
California League, 22–23, 203–4
California Ship Building Corporation, 163–64
Camilli, Dolph, 31, 141
Campanella, Roy, 219, 225
Cancro, Larry, 5
Cannon, Jimmy, 80–81, 145, 203, 209, 238
Casey, Hugh, 141–42, 197
Cataneo, David, 94, 282
I Remember Joe DiMaggio, 25–26, 39, 44, 45, 55, 271
Caveney, Ike, 41, 43
Chadwick, Henry, 118–19
Chandler, Happy, 231
Chandler, Spud, 171, 187
Chapman, Ben, 61, 62, 63, 95, 159
Cincinnati Reds, 65, 85, 99, 114, 118, 120
Cincinnati Red Stockings, 22
Clinton, Bill, 291
Cobb, Ty, 38, 55, 57, 60, 120, 268
Coleman, Jerry, 214, 224, 226, 231
Collins, Eddie, 103
Conigliaro, Tony, 267
Considine, Bob, 90–91, 145
Cooper, Mort, 152
Coscarart, Joe, 62
Costner, Kevin, 299
Cramer, Doc, 95, 120
Cramer, Richard Ben, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, 51, 56, 144, 171, 207, 269, 283, 286, 291
Cronin, Joe:
and All-Star Game, 132
funeral of, 277
as general manager, 199, 214, 232, 236, 251, 252
as manager, 53, 113, 118, 121, 139–40, 150, 161, 163, 170, 173, 187
as player-manager, 85, 95, 97, 130, 141, 148, 158
and Red Sox Hall of Fame, 298
resignation of, 195
Crosetti, Frank, 38, 50, 59, 60, 63, 69, 83, 89, 187
Culberson, Leon, 180
Daley, Arthur, 162, 164, 168
Daley, Bill, 133
Daniel, Dan, 62, 108, 128, 144, 145, 165, 188
Danning, Harry, 73
Daresta, Louis, 26
Deal, Cot, 200, 201
Dean, Daffy, 137
Dean, Dizzy, 67, 84, 85, 137
Delaware Valley Corporation, 253, 295
Delock, Ike, 245, 252
Dempsey, Jack, 84
Devine, Joe, 71, 107
Dickey, Bill, 131, 160
and All-Star Games, 85, 97, 109
as catcher, 63, 97, 142, 153, 171, 214
as hitter, 73, 98, 99
as manager, 172, 179
and World Series, 89, 142
DiMaggio, Adrianella [Nelly] (sister), 15, 18, 277
DiMaggio
, Dominic Paolo, 90, 250
aging, 5, 237–38, 246, 302–4
and All-Star Games, 132, 150, 172, 177–78, 219, 231, 239
and baseball, 49–50, 64–66, 87
birth and childhood, 15, 18, 26, 29
and business, 253, 255, 260, 264, 267, 275, 277, 286, 295, 300
career achievements of, 252–53
as center fielder, 50, 69, 81, 87, 98, 102, 112, 123, 124–25, 168, 178, 187, 206, 207, 216–17, 252, 253, 297, 298
compared with Joe, 2, 122, 128, 139, 145, 208, 216, 217, 252, 285, 298
death of, 304
determination of, 186, 207, 217
Dominic DiMaggio Day, 123
and Emily, see DiMaggio, Emily
DiMaggio, Dominic Paolo (cont.)
and family, 3, 6, 75, 86–87, 115, 126, 254–55, 260, 265, 276–77, 278, 285, 286, 288, 290–93, 294–95, 303
final years of, 294–96, 302–4
at Galileo High, 49–50, 119
and hitting, 82, 99, 102–3, 112, 123, 129, 131, 137, 138, 159, 189, 194, 205, 207, 211, 219, 225, 231, 247, 252, 297
and income, 170, 179, 214
injuries to, 107, 119, 120, 180, 190, 250
in Japan, 242–43
and Joe, 3, 4, 57, 122–23, 124–25, 133–34, 137, 173, 201, 210, 219–20, 222, 239, 272, 274, 281, 285–86, 290–92, 303
as the “Little Professor,” 120, 127, 159, 188, 194, 200, 217
and media, 107, 113, 120, 122–23, 130–31, 137, 138, 252
as mentor, 124, 188–89, 217, 233, 247
and military service, 143, 149, 153, 157–59, 253
and MVP awards, 115, 216, 233
as newspaperboy, 27, 218
and O’Doul, 82, 87, 98, 102, 112–13, 275
and Old-Timers’ Day, 1, 2, 4–6, 277, 279
and Paget’s disease, 266, 302
and players’ rights, 4, 95, 169–70, 200, 251, 263, 286, 297
popularity of, 2, 4, 130–31, 177, 178, 200, 252–54, 296