Word: dimaggios
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...adulation, only to fall from favor and wind up mistrusted and disliked; Charles A. Lindbergh is the premiere example. Finding the genuine hero, someone whom an entire nation idolized, cared for, and most importantly identified with, is a difficult task. Yet few could contest the claim that Joe DiMaggio belongs in this last category...
Refugees from Hitler who arrived in American in the late 30's and early 40's used to say that they discovered it was easy to get around without knowing English. The only two words you had to be able to say were Joe DiMaggio. A number of ballplayers have hit for higher average, many have exceeded his home run total, a few have even had better arms, according to sprotswriters who claim to be able to quantify an immeasurable like throwing a runner out, under pressure, from deep center. But no other athlete, in fact pretty much...
What made DiMaggio so special is a combination of factors. He broke into the majors in 1936. The economy was picking up steam, the second New Deal was about to begin--working people again had work, and money to spend in their leisure time. He was a first generation American, the son of Italian immigrants, who grew to prominence in a period when Americans, and particularly ethnics, perceived of the United States, or at least wanted to, as a land of boundless opportunity. The human interest stories about DiMaggio and his too numerous to count brothers filled the newspapers, alongside...
...finally, DiMaggio was a winner: he played for the Yankees when the Yankees were a conglomerate of the best talent in the game and their consistency and durability were as steady as the tide...
Lynn is compared to DiMaggio and Williams; Rice to Henry Aaron if anybody, partly because Willie Mays wouldn't do (Rice has no connotations, yet, as a fielder), mostly because whites are always compared to whites and blacks to blacks. There really are similarities between Lynn and DiMaggio--you can feel it--but Rice and Aaron have only one similarity, and one which has little to do with baseball...