Word: dimaggio
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...journalistic obsession with anniversaries has reached Ruthian (or should | I say "Aaronian") proportions this year as sports pages are running day-by- day updates on the fabled 1941 season. Personally, I have already overdosed on Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and Ted Williams' .406 batting average. But if you must read one book on the subject, let it be Baseball in '41 by Robert W. Creamer (Viking; $19.95). A veteran sportswriter now pushing 70, Creamer artfully weaves his own 1941-college-boy-on-the-cusp-of -war persona throughout the narrative. There are wonderful asides, ranging from...
...year-old, 5-ft. 5-in. rock 'n' roller who still plays a court-singeing game of one-on-one and pledges allegiance to the New York Yankees. He is, after all, the man who sang yet another, still more famous question ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"). Settling in to watch the Yankees close down a dismaying season a few weeks back, he speculated on the chances for one heavy hitter to grab off a bit of individual glory. "I'm not confident he's going to hit tonight. I saw him last night, and he had that look...
...measure a baseball fan by his boyhood heroes. On the wall behind Fay Vincent's desk is the original artwork from Whitey Ford's 1953 Topps baseball card, a talisman of the bygone era when the New York Yankees symbolized success, stability and smug superiority. If Joe DiMaggio personified grace, and Mickey Mantle represented God-given talent, then Ford, the gritty little lefty ace of the pitching staff, was guile elevated to Hall of Fame standards. This quality is not lost on the baseball commissioner, who says with reverence, "He had the greatest pick-off move to first...
...surviving players Halberstam sought out, only Joe DiMaggio turned him down (not even mutual friend Edward Bennett Williams could twist his arm). Yet Halberstam's portrait of DiMaggio is the finest part of the book. The author has a tender, intuitive sympathy for the proud, remote athlete. DiMaggio does not need a writer to confirm his stature, but still he is lucky to have such a thoughtful, intelligent chronicler. Boston had its own superstar in Ted Williams, and that brings up the inevitable comparison between Halberstam's work and John Updike's classic account of Williams' last game, "Hub Fans...
...that's where DiMaggio has gone. Joe looks as cool at 74 as he used to in center field. But the Yankee Clipper knows the value of celebrity and the attraction of having the proof in writing. In the greatest reversal since Serutan, DiMaggio brought a baseball to a White House dinner last year, when Mikhail Gorbachev was visiting President Reagan, and acquired their autographs for free. "Reagan's is very precise," says DiMaggio, who once had to fight a souvenir collector at his bank to retrieve a check made out by Joe and endorsed by his then wife Marilyn...