The DiMaggios by Tom Clavin

Author:Tom Clavin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

The spring of 1945 had found Joe as a physical training instructor in the Army Air Forces Redistribution Center in Atlantic City. Nearby, at Bader Field, that year’s edition of the Yankees had begun spring training. “I’d give anything to be able to take the field with the Yanks in the American League race,” he told Dan Daniel. “But if I were discharged tomorrow, I would not return to the club. I would not play ball with the war still on.”

This sounds like Joe being patriotic and showing solidarity with other ballplayers still in uniform. But then he added, “You say the fans would not hoot a man with a medical discharge. Well, I would not take the chance. I never will forget the going over some of the boys in the Stadium gave me before I went into the service.”

For the Yankees, Joe couldn’t get back from the Army fast enough. There was no shame in the Detroit Tigers winning the American League pennant (they would defeat the Chicago Cubs in the World Series), but finishing fourth, behind the perennial punching bags the Senators and the Browns, was humiliating.

Joe was finally discharged on September 14. Still being treated for stomach ulcers, he had been at the Army Air Forces Don Ce-Sar convalescent hospital in a familiar city, St. Petersburg. Two days after his discharge, Joe was back at Yankee Stadium, but in civilian clothes. He attended a doubleheader against the Browns, accompanied by Dorothy and Joe Jr. In his autobiography, dedicated “To little Joe,” Joe Sr. reports that after some fans called out, “Hello, Joe!” and “Glad to see you back, Joe!” his son said, “See, Daddy? Everybody knows me.”

He told reporters that he was heading to San Francisco that week to see his family. Reporters wondered about his being out in public together with Dorothy, but Joe wouldn’t reveal that he was trying to win his ex-wife back. He wanted to save that news to tell Giuseppe and Rosalie when he saw them again. They were not used to his failing at anything, and that included marriage.

There was another reason to be in New York—to work out a deal for his autobiography. Joe didn’t particularly want to do a book, since it would mean talking about himself, even if only to a writer (Tom Meany), but he needed the money. Missing three seasons meant he had missed out on at least $125,000 in salary from the Yankees.

In his biography of Joe, David Jones described Joe’s dilemma: “DiMaggio resented the war with an intensity equal to the most battle-scarred private. It had robbed him of the best years of his career. When he went into the Army, DiMaggio had been a 28-year-old superstar, still at the height of his athletic powers. By the time he was discharged from the service, he was nearly 31, divorced, underweight, undernourished, and bitter. Those three years, 1943 to 1945, would carve a gaping hole in DiMaggio’s career totals, creating an absence that would be felt like a missing limb.

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