played more intently. Joe never spoke much, and if his team lost, he wouldn’t speak at all.
Even the kids who weren’t playing, guys like Paul Maniscalco, the Crab King’s son, who went to the school at the church, liked to gather to watch the games. They’d sit in clusters in the shade of the evergreens or stand near the concrete wall, flipping baseball cards they’d gotten out of Cracker Jack boxes.
Sometimes there would be betting on the ball games, a dime here or there, a nickel, and nothing got Joe’s attention more than when there was a little money to be won. Then he’d really bear in, hit with a ferocity that flat-out frightened the infielders, even after they’d taken their three steps back when he came to the plate. Joe could intimidate on defense too. If a guy tried to score on him he’d throw the ball in from the outfield so hard it might knock the catcher right off his feet.
In the spring and summer, when the light lasted, they would come home late, miss dinner, and their father, old Giuseppe who never had the time—or the desire—to come down to the playground and watch the games himself, would complain that the boys were wasting their young lives, that all baseball was good for was wearing out the clothes that the DiMaggios could barely afford. Giuseppe and Rosalie spoke only Italian at home.
Joe and Dom got jobs for a while, selling afternoon newspapers—Joe the Call-Bulletin , Dominic the News —on the busy streets over in the financial district. But Joe didn’t last long at that; he was too shy, too reserved to bellow out the headlines to entice buyers. Perky Dom would sell all of his batch then come help Joe sell his too, so they could go back and play ball for nickels again, or mooch a cigarette, or head to La Rocca’s Corner Tavern on Columbus and try to wangle free plays out of the pinball machine—Joe had a trick—until the bartender ran them out. Later they would sometimes come back to La Rocca’s and listen to Vince sing opera songs. People passed the hat and said that Vince, 15 or 16 then, had the voice to be a star if he only got the chance.
There wasn’t much money in those days—Joe and Dom wore shirts that had first been passed down from Tom to Mike to Vince, and most of the money they made from selling the newspapers went straight to the family—but that didn’t matter so much to Dom.
There was always the smell of something Italian cooking in the neighborhood. As a goof some of the boys liked to hop onto the back of the grape truck that rode up and down the North Beach streets, maybe the only car that they’d see on the block all day, bringing the fruit to all the families for wine-making in their cellars. Giuseppe and Rosalie made wine too. Even in the prohibition years the law allowed wine for medicinal or religious reasons. In North Beach the grown-ups used to joke, “We have a lot of sick people, and we have a lot of devout people.”
Those early years, before they’d started playing ball with the Seals—first Vince, then Joe, then Dom—were the times that lingered richest for Dom. Joe, 27 months older, was bigger and better than he was at everything. Everything physical, that is. Of course Joe was pretty much better than everybody in everything athletic, proving deft and resilient even in the games of touch football the boys played on the horse lot. (In tennis, good lord! Joe could have gone professional if there had been any money in that.) Dom might tease Joe for never learning Italian, or for hating to go out on the boat, but none of that diminished the awe in which he silently held him.
By now, in 1941, the family had left the house on Taylor Street. Ma and Pa were living in the Marina District in the new home Joe had bought for them; a bigger place and a better address. Mike was out fishing in his blue-and-white boat, also a gift from Joe. And Tom ran the restaurant, Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto, on the wharf. Marie and Mamie were married. Things were
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