“Joe, don’t be ridiculous!”
“No wife of mine is going to wear that in public. Put your shirt back on.”
“But Joe! It’s beautiful!”
“C’mon, Joe, it doesn’t matter here. Let her wear whatev—”
“You put something decent on, or I’m going.”
“Joe!”
So Joe got the keys from Lefty, jumped in the car and drove away.
Fortunately, Lefty never met a stranger, so soon he had a new friend who was thrilled to help out a famous Yankee, and he’d give them a ride back to town, take everybody home, no problem . . . . Except, Dorothy said she wasn’t going home. So she stayed with the baby on Lefty and June’s guest bed.
He’ll call, June said.
Dorothy said: he won’t call.
In those days, Joe and Lefty always rode to the Stadium in Lefty’s car. Lefty would get himself ready most days near eleven, eleven-thirty, and then he’d wave a colored towel from his terrace, which Joe could see from his window. So then Joe would be ready downstairs when Lefty swung by with the car. The day after the picnic—Tuesday, a day game—Joe had the car so he picked up Lefty. They drove to the Stadium in companionable silence. After the game, they drove home. Lefty waited for Joe to bring up Dorothy. But Joe didn’t say a word.
Next day they drove to the Stadium again. Lefty was still waiting, Joe was still silent. Thursday, same thing. Dorothy was still on the guest bed. As Lefty remembered, he thought: Friday—he’s gonna ask about her Friday. It’s not gonna go through the weekend. . . . But Lefty wasn’t going to push. Joe would bring it up himself.
Friday, they drove to the Stadium. Joe said, “Let’s take the West Side Highway.” Then, he didn’t say a thing.
They played the game, they won again. Joe took forever after a game. Lefty waited around, in case Dago wanted to talk. “Let’s take our time and go down Broadway,” Joe said . . . . Broadway was a million stoplights. Joe didn’t even clear his throat. Finally, they were near home—and Lefty burst out with it:
“Well, don’t you wanna know how she is?”
And Joe said, “Who?”
HE WAS RIGHT about one thing. He did start to hit and the jeering abated. Or he was partly right: people still made comparisons when his brother Dom enlisted in the Navy. There were scattered boos for DiMaggio on the day Tom Henrich was honored at the Stadium, before he shipped out to war. Joe never got back to the hero worship of 1941. It wasn’t the same country, after all. It was hard to care who won the batting crown when the U.S. had just lost four cruisers at Guadalcanal.
The Yankees won the pennant going away, and prepared to face a bunch of no-name kids who’d won the NL flag for St. Louis. (Who’d ever heard of Stanley F. Musial, from Donora, Pa.?) The Yankees were two-to-one favorites, and why not? Of the last six Series, the Yanks had appeared in five and won them all. But this Yankee club was not the same.
It wasn’t just that Henrich and Sturm were out of the lineup, Gomez and Russo absent from the mound. This club had lost its competitive heart: that was Joe DiMaggio. Oh, he was in the lineup—batting fourth every day—and the box scores looked fine: he ended up with seven hits, at .333 for the Series. But every hit was a single, and there was never that moment, that one big play, where DiMaggio did something to put the Yanks up for good, to break the will of the other team. DiMaggio and his Yankees had never lost a World Series. But the young Cardinals won this championship four games to one. From start to finish, ’42 was not Joe’s year—and sad to say, it wasn’t yet over.
After the Series, Joe, with Dorothy and Little Joe, set out by train for San Francisco. Even in wartime, with the rail system overworked, with the Army commandeering half the rolling stock, the DiMaggios went first-class all the way. A clause in DiMaggio’s contract required the Yankees to pay, not just for Joe’s return to the West Coast, but for Mrs. Joe as well. In a way, that would be a fateful perk. Because soon after Dorothy arrived in San Francisco, she grabbed up Little Joe, and hied herself over the mountains, back to Reno. And this time, she filed for residency, which she would need for a Nevada divorce.
The way most papers covered the story, Joe was taken completely by surprise. There wasn’t any paper that didn’t try to cover. Since the days of the The Streak, Joe DiMaggio was a public property. His marital troubles were fit matter for the nation’s readers—like his Best-Dressed wardrobe, his recommendations on what to smoke, his friendships, likes and dislikes, or his counsel on the value of war bonds. As a matter of fact, in those troublous times, a hero plunging into hot water was more satisfying than a hero on the rise. (Hey! Even up in that penthouse, the Great DiMaggio has his troubles, too! . . .)
The San Francisco writers called the house in the Marina. “No, Joe da home!” . . . Or they stopped by Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto, the famous eatery on Fisherman’s Wharf:
“Is Joe here?”
“Joe who?”
Finally, they tracked him to Reno, where he was trying to patch things up with Dorothy. Not that he’d admit that—or anything else. The raffish Examiner columnist, Joe’s old pal Prescott Sullivan, called Dorothy’s Reno apartment and Joe picked up the phone. Sullivan asked how things were going with the missus. “That’s my business,” Joe snapped. Sullivan retreated to baseball chat: travel restrictions had forced the Yankees to schedule their next spring training in New Jersey—did Joe think he could get in shape there?
“Spring training,” said DiMaggio, “won’t concern me this year.”
As Sullivan wrote the following day: “The remark brought our ears up like those of a jackrabbit.
“ ‘Wotcha mean? Gonna quit?’ ”
Joe knew he’d said too much, and dummied up. “Draw your own conclusions,” he said. And so, Sullivan did. In fact, knowing both the slugger and the missus, he correctly concluded that a hitch in the service had somehow got entangled in the marital negotiations:
“One theory—yet untested—is that Joe figures his prospects of effecting a reconciliation with the fair Dorothy might be materially enhanced by the appeal of a soldier or sailor suit, in either of which he would be a dashing figure.”
Within hours, the wires launched the news of Joe’s planned enlistment, and retirement from baseball. The story was refueled in almost every paper in the country, before it landed as a certainty in the mind of every fan.
Of course, that story was a surprise to Joe’s draft board, which had closed off enlistments. It was more than surprising to Ed Barrow, who was mailing DiMaggio’s contract for 1943. And it was something near to shock for Joe, who didn’t know what he wanted to do at all.
What should he do? Dorothy wanted him in the Army—she’d made that clear enough; otherwise it would be divorce. The thought that she would walk out on him pushed Joe to rage. She was his. Still, if he gave himself over to the Army, then nothing would be his to control. Who could tell how long this war would go on? Or what they’d do with him? He could get hurt, and that would be the end of baseball for him. He could lose everything . . . . So what should he do?
He screamed that he’d been misquoted.
“That fellow asked me a lot of leading questions, and placed the wrong interpretation on my answers,” Joe told the International News Service. He’d never said the armed forces were in his plans. “All I meant was that I’m not worried about spring training. I’ve got other things on my mind.”
And that was true enough. Because Dorothy said he couldn’t go back now—they’d be finished. There was the story in every paper in the country: Joe leaving baseball for the duration . . . DiMag to sign up with Uncle Sam. If he backed out now, it would be like desertion. She had her plans to consider, too—and they did not include being married to a famous coward.
She was always the planner—and she had this all worked out: Joe wasn’t going to get hurt, wasn’t going to get near any war. Who was running the Army? Why, men—American men, of course. And every one a baseball fan. They’d do anything for DiMaggio! They’d carry him aroun
d like a maharajah! . . . So the first thing he had to do was ask for an Army posting in L.A. That’s where Dorothy wanted to live. She was going back to work.
For the rest . . . well, you could follow the story from the news bulletins over the next few weeks—starting with a gorgeous photo of the fur-swaddled Dorothy Arnold planting a smooch on the cheek of her husband, the patriot:
“RENO, Jan. 13 (AP Wirephoto)—Love Me and Leave Me. That’s the theme song for this second honeymoon scene at Reno, Nev., yesterday. Being kissed, and loving it, is Joe DiMaggio, ex-ballplayer for the duration and almost ex-husband. On the high-voltage end is Mrs. DiMag, blonde, delicious ex-canary of night clubs and radio, who called off divorce plans. Joe said he’s back in love, and off to the wars.”
“NEW YORK, Jan. 13 (AP)—‘I wish him Godspeed and good luck,’ said Ed Barrow, president of the New York Yankees, when informed that his star outfielder . . . .”
“LOS ANGELES, Jan. 18 (Special to the Examiner)—Joe DiMaggio arrived here today with a blunt denial he intended to enlist in the Army Air Corps ground crew at Santa Ana . . . . ‘Why, I can’t do anything without consulting my draft board, and that’s in San Francisco.’ . . . ‘I’m here for a couple of days, but it’s more of a pleasure trip than anything.’ ”
“SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 17 (UP)—Joe DiMaggio enlisted in the Army at the San Francisco Armed Services induction center and was given a week’s furlough . . . . ‘I’ve been planning this since last season . . . . ’ ”
“LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 (UP)—Joe DiMaggio reported for duty today at Santa Ana Air Base. The announcement by the Army Air Force’s West Coast training center headquarters did not disclose DiMaggio’s immediate assignment.”
The only part of the story that couldn’t be divined from the press was the saddest part. Only Dorothy spoke about it, and that was long after. It was how she felt her heart shutting, finally, against her husband, Joe—when he concluded that he’d have to enlist, and he started to cry.
THE ARMY WASN’T that bad, not at first. Joe never had a problem with discipline. And as for the job, he was good at that, too.
Joe DiMag Slams
First Army Homer
Riverside, April 30 (AP)—
“ . . . His first circuit clout of the season came with two mates aboard and sailed over the 345 foot leftfield wall as he paced the Santa Ana Air Base team to a 14–8 win over March Field.”
It was almost like a regular season, except the travel was a little less, and the games could get sloppy. There were plenty of fellows he knew on the circuit. He might be playing center field behind Red Ruffing, same as always, or have Lodigiani as a teammate at third base. And there was Wally Judnich, another San Francisco boy who, in better times, played for the Brownies, and Mike McCormick, the gifted outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds. There were also plenty of fill-ins—kids who hadn’t yet gotten to the majors or players who didn’t have big-league talent. That was all right with Joe, as long as they kept their heads down, paid attention, and tried as hard as they could. If they meant to screw around, DiMaggio wanted nothing to do with them. It was still his job to win.
His attitude delighted his commanders. Every general seemed to have the screwy idea that the excellence of his ball team reflected on the excellence of his air base, his unit, his command, his own much-saluted self. They’d set a training table for the team (steaks like no civilian could buy), or they’d invite DiMaggio to dinner at their mess, or ask him to parties, ask if he needed any smokes, booze, beer . . . . They were taking such good care of him, he was putting on weight (up to two-oh-five) and he had to have his tailor work his uniforms over (fatigues, too, of course), so they looked just right. Weekends, he could always get a pass, to get off the air base and check in with Dorothy.
They’d rented a house near Toluca, out in the Valley where it was just fields and shimmering heat—easier for Joe to get home that way, and cheaper than Hollywood, or Beverly Hills. Fifty bucks a month didn’t go far, the way Joe and Dorothy ran a house. If it wasn’t for the restaurant—back in business, now that the shoreline was safe again, and probably paying Joe ten times his Army wage—he would have lost a fortune that first year. As it was, he was pressing about money. He’d get to the house, see something new, and his face would darken with anger: “Dottie! What are we spending money on?”
She didn’t have much else to do but shop, no other way to get out of the house. One producer talked to her about a part on stage—a show called Oklahoma!—but she’d just got out to the West Coast, and had her heart set on motion pictures. Still, it was one of those Hollywood stories—Dorothy was so hungry to work, no one wanted to talk to her. Either that, or they figured she’d want the moon to sign. Mrs. Joe DiMaggio—loaded with dough, wasn’t she? . . . So, Dorothy took care of Little Joe, and tried to inveigle friends to come visit in the Valley. She went for long drives if she could get gas, or long walks if she was out of coupons.
She had to save gas to take Joe back and forth from the air base. And if there was a weekend game, she’d take him there, too. She’d sit in the grandstand with Little Joe. At one ballpark, the two-year-old climbed over the box seat rail, and carried his toy fungo bat onto the field, calling, “Play ball! Play ball!” Little Joe was excited whenever Dad was around. Mornings in Toluca, while Big Joe shaved, Little Joe would be clinging to his legs. Big Joe was happy enough to see the boy, too—but not so much that he’d sit around the house and watch him.
Rugger Ardizoia, a minor league pitcher (and later a Yankee) who played on Joe’s Santa Ana club, remembered the day all the stand-out players suited up and went into the city for Joe E. Brown’s annual all-star game. They packed the Hollywood stands and donated all the money to buy sports equipment for the troops in the Pacific. DiMaggio was the star of the show: four-for-four with two home runs. After the game, the fellows went out together: Joe put a twenty on the bar and they drank all afternoon, telling old stories. Every fifteen, twenty minutes, Dorothy would come in: “Joe, it’s time to come home, now. Joe, you’ve got to come home.” As Ardizoia remembered more than fifty years later: “She was a nice, down-to-earth girl, but Joe didn’t want anything to do with her, really.”
About six months into Joe’s Army hitch, Dorothy came to the same conclusion. She didn’t run back to Reno, this time, but filed for divorce in Los Angeles. In open court, she accused Joe of cruelty. She asked for custody of Little Joe, with six hundred fifty dollars a month to take care of her and the boy.
Joe got the case delayed—he said he couldn’t get a pass to attend. Joe could have a pass whenever he wanted. He was playing for time, trying to talk Dorothy into sticking it out. But this time, she was obdurate. After a month, she got her court date. And Joe didn’t bother to show up. He wasn’t going to show the world his dirty laundry. Let her have the courtroom to herself—and get it over with. As it stood, the papers were having a field day:
“He may have been the idol of the baseball field, but as a husband he was strictly .000 . . . .”
“Bursting into tears in the witness stand as she told how when baseball star husband, Joe DiMaggio, home run king of the New York Yankees, made her a stooge and wrecked their marriage by his ‘cruel indifference’ to her blond beauty, Mrs. DiMaggio . . . .”
Joe was too proud to fight her in public. Either that, or they’d worked out a straight deal: he wouldn’t fight, and he’d pay her the money. She wouldn’t tell how she’d had him tailed by detectives, or show the gumshoe reports on the women in hotels. Still, Dorothy played to the hilt the only role she’d been able to land—the lovely and lamenting young wife.
“The beautiful actress drew her costly mink wrap about her as though chilled by the memory and wept as she told Judge Most how she had a baby thinking the advent of a child of his own might make Joe ‘realize his responsibilities as a married man.’
“ ‘But the event of the baby’s arrival didn’t change him,’ she said. ‘He became ill-tempered, refused to talk to me for days at a tim
e and several times asked me to get out of our home.’ ”
By May 1944, she had the judge convinced. “As a rabid baseball fan it is difficult for me . . .” said Judge Stanley Most. “But the evidence is so overwhelming it must be done.” He granted Dorothy a lump sum of fourteen thousand dollars in cash, plus one hundred fifty a month for the care of Little Joe. In addition, DiMaggio would have to maintain a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance policy for the benefit of his son.
The way DiMaggio saw it, he had to write out a check for fourteen thousand—as much as he’d paid for his family’s house—just for the privilege of paying more every month. And that money would come from his own pocket—he’d have no way to earn it back. There was only one piece of good news. What Dorothy had won in court was an “interlocutory decree.” It would run for a year, during which time, Joe and Dorothy would still be legally married. The way Joe figured, that gave him one more year to talk to her, reason with her, promise her he could make things better. If she’d come back to him, that would end the money woes—and stop the churning in his stomach. He never knew how much he wanted to keep her until she’d walked away. He never gave up on what was his. One more year . . . . With the same quiet confidence that always marked his goals and plans, DiMaggio vowed he would have her back.
AND THAT WAS the moment the Army chose to send Sergeant Joe DiMaggio off to Hawaii, to return—well, nobody knew when. U.S. soldiers, sailors, and airmen were fighting their way west toward Japan, and the despatch of their baseball heroes to Honolulu bespoke a couple of truths—sort of a good-news-bad-news thing. It testified, on one hand, to the safety of Hawaii: the Nipponese navy was on the defensive, maybe on the run. But the other truth was more ominous: it was still a long way to Tokyo. So these baseball stars might be gone for years, playing for the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of American boys who would take and hold the islands across the Pacific.
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book) Page 26