baseball

This biography is Joe DiMaggio's worst nightmare come true. Richard Ben Cramer, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, has stripped the layers of myth from an image DiMaggio spent 65 years creating. Joe did a spectacular job -- who else could have inspired major works by both Ernest Hemingway and Paul Simon? -- but the truth is now out.

Cramer depicts DiMaggio's air of Olympian detachment as the product of shyness coupled with an iron determination never to be humiliated or ridiculed. Nobody worked so hard to make baseball look so easy, and, regrettably, few have followed Joe D.'s example of retiring as soon as he couldn't be "Joe DiMaggio" any more. Cramer's especially effective describing the worlds in which DiMaggio moved, from a poor Italian community in the Bay Area through the Yankees, a show business community from which he tried to rescue Marilyn Monroe, and finally to lucrative decades as a Living Icon marketed to all comers by the loathesome Morris Engelberg.

Many of the unflattering characterizations were first aired in Gay Talese's "The Silent Season of a Hero," which David Halberstam has called "the best magazine piece I have ever read." Cramer has fleshed out the story with exhaustive research that proves, once again, that our heroes are flesh and blood like the rest of us. Unfortunately he fails to provide source notes or other documentation, which ultimately drags the book down below five-star status.

Nonetheless, this is a well-written biography which will give any reader more insight into DiMaggio -- more insight, in fact, than many hard-core DiMaggio fans will want.

No, the book was not perfect and if we are to believe ten percent of Cramer's portrayal of joltin Joe, Dimaggio was far from perfect expcept perhaps on the field of dreams, the baseball diamonds of the 1930's, 40's and early 50's. As a player, Richard Ben Cramer gives Joe his due and more. Cramer's day to day account of Dimaggio's hitting streak is one of the most compelling and well researched historical sports adventures I've read. Off the field, Cramer presents an eccentric, niggardly, money grabbing opportunist; especially in his later years when he took in huge bucks just signing bats and balls and attending card shows, and all the while never paying his own way and hording his milliions til the end. The pathos are there too. Cramer tells us about Dimag taking in a cool 50 thousand dollars a day signing autographs, while his son was in Las Vegas, homeless and sleeping in the drum of a cement mixer. Marilyn Monroe was a huge part of Joe's life, and certainly demanded and received a lot ink for this book....too much...much too much! Cramer spends far too much time recounting events germane only to Marilyn's life. As a fan of Monroe, I found it interesting reading, butis the glut of Marilyn stuff necessary for this particular biography? No. After Marilyn's death in 1962, the author moves ahead to the late 80's, leaving a void of almost twenty years. Despite the imperfections, I enjoyed the book and recommend it to all, especially baseball fans who enjoy a great sports retrospective.

Being a San Franciscan, I really appreciated the author's research and description of life in this City during the first 3-4 decades of the 20th century, including the baseball scene and the legend of Lefty O'Doul (whose bar is still open just off Union Square). There is also much to be learned for the younger readers about baseball in the 30s and 40s. Not all was a grand as today's romanticists like to portray it. How things should be is somewhere between the over-paid mediocre talent of today and the grossly underpaid---and unfree---players of those days. I can't imagine what someone of Dimaggio's caliber would be getting paid today.

The book also shined when describing not only Joe's relationship with Marilyn Monroe (brutal by today's standards) and what Hollywood and stardom was like.

Dimaggio's dysfunctional personality and apparent avarice are well-presented, as is the power he had to make men give up all dignity and self-respect simply to be his friend. While we can't simply assume everything said here about DiMaggio's attorney and "close personal friend", Morris Engelberg, is 100% accurate, it isn't hard to believe either. We had a very real taste of this man's character here in San Francisco with how he handled the whole affair of our city wanting to name the playground in North Beach for DiMaggio.

The only gap in the book for me was the leap it made from Marilyn Monroe's death all the way to the 1989 SF earthquake. I thought Cramer went pretty far in depicting the Kennedy/Sinatra involvement with Monroe and why Joe so despised them after her death. But he stopped there quite abruptly. There probably was more that could have been written to show Joe's scorn for them (like the snub of Bobby Kennedy at Yankee Stadium during an Old Timers Game introductions...Joe refused to shake his hand). Baseball-wise, I think more could have also been written about Joe's feelings for---or against---Mickey Mantle and how he felt about THAT center fielder's so completely winning the hearts of Yankee fans. If the author's intended audience was people like me and older, who are familiar with Joe's life and career, then I'm off-base. If he was hoping to have the 20-30 crowd know more about this myth, I think he could have written a little more.

Joe DiMaggio was not a good man necessarily, many people knew that before even reading this book. In today's world he would have been mauled by the press and fans and would likely not be perceived as such a heroic figure as he now is. Look at Barry Bonds, perhaps a better player overall (hard to say for those of us who never saw Joe actually play...hard to argue against 9 world championships in 13 years...versus Barry's ZERO), yet his personality is probably not too different from Joe's in his search for privacy and aloofness from his teammates. However, he is vilified by most and has precious few friends. In another day, he would have been up in the pantheon with the Babe and Joltin' Joe.