And Dago was only the biggest hole in the cheese. The All-Star outfield that Casey was supposed to inherit turned out not to exist. Keller had a banged-up leg, and his back had never fully healed from a disk operation two years before. Henrich, the old pro in right, was trying to learn to play first base. And the best of the backup kids, Hank Bauer, had an injured ankle. Yogi was going to catch full-time, but he got in a car wreck and screwed up a knee. Rizzuto, the shortstop, was underweight. Casey would likely have a rookie (and a shortstop), Jerry Coleman, starting at second base. At third, another untested kid, the bonus baby and med school student Bobby Brown would share time with last year’s regular, Billy Johnson. And first base—well, if Henrich didn’t work out, there were only rookies and retreads.
One of the young writers, Len Koppett, remarked to Stengel: “I see you got four first basemen . . .” Said Stengel (with the terseness that marked him when he had something to say): “When you got four first basemen, you got no first baseman.”
The worst news was confirmed when the Yankees broke camp to barnstorm through Dixie. On April 9, at Beaumont, Texas, DiMaggio singled . . . and when the next Yankee batter stroked another single, DiMaggio kicked it into high gear and raced for third. From there, he hobbled straight to the dugout. The pain in his heel was back, and big-time. Next day, he couldn’t make it to the third inning, before he sat down.
Then, the real nightmare began. He was flown to Dallas where an august orthopedist diagnosed a “hot condition” in Joe’s right heel. It wasn’t from the surgery—this was something like an infection. He could literally feel heat in the foot. DiMaggio would have to be hospitalized. And New York fans would get the dire headline they had cursed for eight of Joe’s eleven seasons: “DiMaggio to Miss Opening Day.”
DiMaggio thought the curse was on him. He was flown from Dallas, through thunderstorms, toward the East Coast, all afternoon and through the night: three different airplanes, four takeoffs, four landings. Each time, the plane would bounce around the thunderheads. Passengers were throwing up—Joe among them. He looked awful—ashen, his eyes were hollow—as he remarked to his reflection in the airplane mirror, he even needed a damn haircut. And every time he landed, the press was at the airport, with bulbs going off in his face, and writers yelling: JOE! ANY COMMENT ON RETIREMENT? . . . JOE! D’Y’THINK YER FINISHED?
To one gaggle, DiMaggio replied: “I am not going to retire from baseball. There’s a lot of folks who’d like to see me retire. Sadistic people . . .” Then, he refused to answer more questions.
The last leg was a cab ride from Washington, an hour north to Baltimore and the Hopkins Hospital. At two A.M., they strapped him down on a gurney. They were wheeling him off for shots in his foot. Suddenly the hospital hall went lurid white with photographers’ flashbulbs. DiMaggio strained at his straps, trying to sit up, cursing a blue streak. He screamed at the cameramen: “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
“Why” was in short supply for DiMaggio. The doctors at the Hopkins couldn’t tell him why the heel had become inflamed now—or why the pain wouldn’t go away, or why he ought to stay there. The pain would stop: they promised him. But when? They were stumped on that one, too.
He asked for a placard for his door: “Do Not Disturb.” But the sign did no good. Other patients would stump right in on their casts, or crutches; wheelchair patients would roll in and gawk. They’d bribe the nurses to pester him for autographs. One time, he woke from a nap, and there were two citizens of Baltimore standing at his bedside, staring. By the time he was fully awake, they’d disappeared without a word. Jesus! Did he just imagine them? Was he goin’ nuts? . . . No, he was a public freak show.
For two days, he took it. Then he tried to sneak away. He made the lobby on crutches, and there was the press—like a posse from hell—with their lenses pointed . . . his roar echoed off the vaulting lobby arches:
“DON’T YOU THINK YOU’VE GONE FAR ENOUGH? YOU GUYS’RE DRIVIN’ ME BATTY! . . .” His crutches scattered the posse, on his way to the door. “Can’t you leave me alone? This affects me mentally, too, you know.” One of the newsmen protested: people wanted to know about the most expensive ballplayer in history! . . . Joe snapped: “I got to think of myself! This is tough on me.” He ducked into a car at the curb, and disappeared.
Opening day, he sat in the Yankee dugout in a dark blue suit and camel hair overcoat. He looked perfect—and felt perfectly useless. That was about his only appearance. He holed up in the Elysee. Georgie and Toots would bring in food and news. Joe would sit and read the papers, smoke and drink coffee all day. Then he’d limp around the suite all night. Meals were no solace. His ulcers were back. He’d turn on the radio. Then turn it off. The television was better. He could stare at that for hours. But TV quit at night. How was he supposed to sleep? He’d be up till dawn, then asleep till lunch. Georgie would come in with a sandwich from the Stage, and DiMaggio would swing his legs tenderly out of bed. He only had to touch his heel to the floor, and he knew: it was still there.
The doctors said only time could cure the pain. But time wouldn’t move. April finally dragged into May, and at last, Joe got news—bad news. His father had died in San Francisco. Then it was planes across the country again, the brothers, the family, old friends . . . and every damned one asking, “How’s the heel, Joe? When you think you’ll be back?” He couldn’t even be a pallbearer for the old man. His mamma kept looking at him like—What had he done to bring the evil eye? And the hometown writers, with their sympathy—like he was the one who died. He couldn’t wait to get back to New York . . . . And May went on, like the war, forever.
The few friends who got in to the Elysee to see him reported that Joe was on edge and snappish. When hints of his mood made the papers, Joe told the hotel: no more visitors, and no calls—except for Georgie and Toots. But every week, George Weiss would announce a new date when Joe would be back—as if that meddling skinflint knew! He was only trying to sell tickets. But the writers all had to use the announcements. And all so cute! “Joe DiMaggio, the Yankees’ $90,000 invalid” . . . “The $100,000 bench warmer will don the Yankee pinstripes for the first time this season . . .” It wasn’t just kids on the ball club, now; there were a lot of kids in the press box, too: They’d bury DiMaggio happily, for a good story—as a hundred-thousand-dollar joke.
Solotaire would try to tempt Joe with tickets. “Come on! We’ll go out, get some air, see a show.” That was a banner season on Broadway, with the major league musicals that Joe used to like: Annie Get Your Gun, High Button Shoes, Show Boat . . . and the blockbuster of that spring, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific—with that lyric in the “Bloody Mary” song: “Her skin is tender as DiMaggio’s glove” . . . Even that brought no joy, just called attention to the way he was now—people in that theater, staring at him—he didn’t want to be seen.
He tried watching Yankee games on TV. But the camera distorted everything. As he told David Halberstam, for Summer of ’49, he’d see a pitch come straight down the middle—and the ump would call it a ball! He’d wait for Yogi or Stengel to protest, but no one said a word. Christ, now he’s losing his eye! He’d end up even more depressed . . . . Things got so bad he even called Dorothy—to ask if she’d let Little Joe come over. She had split up with that Schubert guy. (Lost all her money with him, too.) She wasn’t even cold to Joe, and sent the boy right over in a cab. That was good for a few afternoons. Joe got Lionel to send over a toy train. Joe and the kid played on the floor. Little Joe was eight—in a good private school—nice kid. But it made Joe think about Dorothy. Why was she being so nice? Joe thought she must feel sorry for him. Well, he didn’t want her pity. And he didn’t call for Little Joe anymore . . . . A couple of times, he got so stir-crazy, he called the Stadium, to tell them he was coming out. Maybe he could take a few swings, see some pitches. But Weiss would leak that, right away, to the writers: DiMaggio will take batting practice! It worked out great—for Weiss: May 23, thirty-seven thousand fans filled the grandst
and for a game with the hopeless St. Louis Browns. But their roar when they saw DiMaggio in uniform only embarrassed Joe. He took a few swings, got blisters on his hands, and limped off to disappear again. After another year, May turned to June.
The Yankees were doing fine. (Did that make Joe feel better, or worse?) They weren’t running away, but they held on to first place—with Boston, the big threat, leading the pack behind them. The papers still called them the Bronx Bombers. But that wasn’t how they were winning games. The only real Bomber they had left was Henrich—who was batting cleanup in the Big Guy’s absence. There never was a better clutch hitter than Henrich. That’s why Mel Allen gave him the nickname: “Ol’ Reliable.” Alas, the nickname was apt on both ends, now: Tom had already turned thirty-six. Still, he’d never had a springtime like this. In the first sixty-five games of that season, Henrich had sixteen home runs, and twelve were game-winners.
But what really kept the Yankees on top was the pitching. Stengel was being acclaimed as a genius for the way he juggled the lineup each day—platoon at third base, outfielders du jour, four or five different first basemen . . . . But with the starters (and Joe Page in relief) Casey was as regular as Army chow—Reynolds, Raschi, Lopat, Byrne—just as automatic as Joe “Push-Button” McCarthy was, in the old glory days.
Not that Stengel didn’t try to screw around with the pitchers. (No one was more convinced of Casey’s genius than Casey.) That springtime, he’d stand on the dugout steps, yelling at Berra to look over for the next sign. But Raschi and Reynolds, the big right-handers, put a stop to that. Reynolds, the Superchief (he was an Indian from Oklahoma), would stand on the mound, yelling just as loud: “Yogi! You look over there one more time, and I’ll cross you up.” Berra didn’t know what the hell to do. Stengel would be waving dollar bills in his hand, threatening to fine him, if he didn’t look over. But Yogi was as scared of Reynolds as the batters were. If he hit you with a fastball, he could hurt you bad. Raschi, if anything, was more menacing—with that game face on the mound—looked like he could bite through a bar of iron. “Yogi, goddammit, LOOK AT ME.” By May, Yogi wouldn’t ever turn to the dugout.
Lopat and Byrne were as screwy as left-handers were supposed to be. Byrne never knew where the ball was going—but neither did the hitters: no one dug in on him. “As wild as he needed to be,” was how the papers wrote him up. He’d walk three and strike out three, and stroll off the mound, whistling. Lopat walked a lot of guys, too. But he was nibbling with that junk he threw: fifteen pitches, fifteen different speeds: slow, slower, and Mississippi milk train. Hitters would mutter to Berra, in protest: “Don’t this sonofabitch ever throw a fastball?” “Don’t look at me,” Yogi would answer. “He never t’rows what I call, anyway.” Lopat used to drive Stengel crazy. One day, late innings, a tight game with Boston, the Red Sox slugger Vern Stephens was coming up. Now, Junior Stephens was no one to screw around with. He would hit thirty-nine home runs that year, and lead the league in RBIs. Of course, he was right-handed, so Stengel thought maybe he should get Lopat out of there. And Stephens was mad: he was oh-fer-the-day on Eddie’s junk. He was yelling at Lopat as he walked to the plate: “You fuckin’ Polack, get the goddamn ball up here. You haven’t got the guts to throw a fuckin’ fastball!”
So Lopat—Jesus, Stengel went white—fed Stephens an itty-bitty fastball. (There were better fastballs thrown in BP.) But of course, Lopat put it six inches inside. Stephens crushed it, four hundred feet—foul.
“Is that the best you got? I can hit you, fuckin’ Polack! . . .” Stengel was standing on the steps of the dugout—he wanted Lopat to see he was ready with the hook.
Lopat threw another fastball, more pathetic, and two inches farther inside. Stephens flattened it—four hundred fifty feet—foul. Stephens was grinding his hands on the bat, spitting abuse. Stengel was on the top step, clutching his heart—as Lopat threw a humpback, spinny-winny-weeny-whatsit-it’ll-never-get-there . . . strike three. And remarked, as he ambled into the dugout, “He couldn’t hit me in a month.”
It all looked fabulous in the next day’s box score—as long as the pitchers never hit an off day, as long as the Yankees could score a couple of runs . . . but if you leave too many games close, you’re bound to drop a few. That was why the Yankees couldn’t pull away. That, and the fact that Boston was loaded. It wasn’t just Stephens, Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio. But Goodman, Pesky, Doerr, Zarilla—every one a .300 hitter. There wasn’t any rest in that lineup. And good young pitchers: Parnell and Kinder were as tough as they came. They weren’t even playing well yet, and they were still in the race: five games back, and the Yankees had to come to them, in Boston, for three games at the end of June. That was where they planned to make their move.
But that was when it happened—just a few days before that Boston series—DiMaggio swung his legs out of bed, brushed the floor gingerly with his heel, and . . . nothing. He stood up, he walked around the suite. Nothing! No pain. Gone! He felt the heel with his hand. It was cool. He got himself dressed up. He went out and walked around the block. “Autograph? Of course! I’d be delighted . . .” He went out for lunch and dinner, too. In between, he made calls—to Al Schacht, the baseball clown, who still could throw pretty hard, and Gus Niarhos, the backup catcher, who was injured and stayed behind in New York while the Yanks went west on a road trip. Schacht and Niarhos would meet him, next morning, at the Stadium. They rounded up some neighborhood kids to shag flies. DiMaggio hit until his hands were bloody. Blisters weren’t a problem. The heel was his problem—and his problem was gone. Niarhos hit fly balls—and DiMaggio ran under them. He cut off the workout after an hour, and went back to the hotel. Tomorrow morning would tell the story. If the heel was still cool, if it didn’t hurt to walk, they would meet again, the next day, and the next.
When the Yankees came back from their road trip, there was DiMaggio, in uniform at the Stadium. Nobody asked how he felt, what he was doing there. They could see it on him like the glow around a light tower at night. Dago was back!
The Yanks had an exhibition coming up: the annual charity game with the Giants, the Mayor’s Trophy Game, June 27. Joe said he’d test the heel that day. Thirty-seven thousand New York fans cheered him, the minute he walked onto the field. When he popped one over the wall in a pregame home run derby, the ovation shook the ballpark. But in the game, his timing was nowhere. He drew one walk and popped up four times: never got a ball out of the infield. But he played nine innings. And he didn’t hurt.
After that game, the Yankees left for Boston. Joe said he didn’t think he could make it. They went for the train, and Dago stayed behind. And he might have sat out that series, if the next day’s game had been a normal afternoon affair. But it was a night game. And by lunchtime, Toots was working on the Dago—while he fed him on the cuff, of course.
“You oughta go, Daig. You know you wanna.”
“Well, maybe . . .”
“Why not? You look better strikin’ out than any of those crumb bums hittin’ the ball.”
DiMaggio caught a plane to Boston at three-fifteen P.M. He’d go out to Fenway. Maybe he’d suit up. At least he could be with the guys. Stengel saw the Dago, and stopped filling out the lineup card. He was waiting for the word. He kept sneaking glances across the locker room. DiMaggio was dressing deliberately, pensively—as if the feel of his socks would tell him whether or not to play. Stengel waited, and stalled the press: “I’m commencin’ to think about it,” he said. Finally he got the nod from the Dago. The genius manager had thought it through—and he wrote DiMaggio in at cleanup.
In the Red Sox dugout, the players watched DiMaggio gingerly warming up. He still seemed to have a hitch in his walk. His shoes had no spikes on the right heel. One of the young Red Sox offered the opinion that Joe wasn’t going to beat out any infield hits. “You don’t know him,” said McCarthy darkly. The old Skipper couldn’t seem to shake his conviction that the Yankees were somehow tougher than his boys. McCarthy’s fear did his ballclub no good.
But in those days, it hovered in the air around him, along with a vaporous hint of scotch. Once, when his outfielder Sam Mele couldn’t run down a long drive to right, McCarthy muttered, all too audibly: “Henrich woulda stuck that in his ass.” (And he shucked Mele off to the Senators.) . . . With DiMaggio, McCarthy’s convictions were almost religious. He turned on his young players now, and announced: “You watch him the first time there’s a chance for an infield hit. You watch how he runs.”
The first inning was scoreless. Reynolds for the Yankees and the young Sox fireballer, Mickey McDermott, both had their good stuff. DiMaggio led off the second: McDermott tried to throw the ball by him. And he almost did. With two strikes, McDermott kept firing at the outside corner, and Joe couldn’t get around. He hadn’t faced a real heater since April. But he wasn’t giving in to any snot-nose, either. With two strikes, he kept fouling balls off to the right. Late every time: foul ball, foul ball, foul ball—six pitches spoiled . . . until McDermott fired one that caught more of the plate, and DiMaggio lined it over shortstop for a single. They were on their feet clapping in the Yankee dugout. And not just for sentiment’s sake: Lindell walked, Bauer hit a home run, and the Yanks led 3–0.
Next inning, Rizzuto led off with a single. DiMaggio came up again. This time, McDermott dispensed with trying to get a ball past Joe on the outer edge. He tried to come in, and DiMaggio turned on the pitch and launched it over the wall—a home run into the screen atop the Green Monster. As Joe rounded third base, Rizzuto waited at the plate, jumping up and down like a kid at Christmas. There were thirty-six thousand fans in the place. (Capacity was listed at thirty-five.) Half were cheering the Great Man. Half were as lustily booing.
The Red Sox wouldn’t lie down. They hung in, like it was a World Series game—maybe this was their Series. They nicked Reynolds for two runs in the fifth, and chased him in the eighth, with another. They were playing as tough as even McCarthy could demand. Every time there was a play at second base, someone would try to kick the ball from Rizzuto’s grasp. The Sox second baseman, Bobby Doerr, simply ran over the Scooter, knocked him on his ass. But now the Dago was back. In the Yankee eighth, he got on with a walk, and when Berra hit a grounder to the right side, Doerr flipped the ball quickly to second, to start the double play. DiMaggio came into second base like the Broadway Limited (You watch how he runs) and threw himself into a slide on his right hip, left leg up. The shortstop, Stephens, was flattened like a penny on the tracks. He never even got off a throw. DiMaggio’s business was done. He trotted off to the dugout.
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book) Page 33