Read Online 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports by Kostya Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kostya Kennedy
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different for the DiMaggios—better, to be sure. Though for Dom nothing would replace those childhood years with Joe, before they started to drift, when the days stretched long and he felt like he had his big brother all to himself.
The three of them ate that evening in the dining room of the penthouse, not saying much beyond the small talk that Dorothy facilitated. Dom knew not to point out the improbable fact of their current respective batting averages—when the daily DiMag-o-Log came out in The San Francisco Chronicle the next morning it would have Dominic on top at .339, Joe at .319 and Vince at .266. It was Joe, though, who brought up baseball during the meal, saying: “You’re playing a little shallow in centerfield, you know, just a couple of strides.”
Dom stiffened. “I’m just fine playing where I do, Joe,” he said.
Joe paused and looked impassively at his brother, as if to say “suit yourself.” But he didn’t say anything. He just let the moment pass and turned back to his plate.
After dinner Dom said goodbye, took the elevator down and stepped out onto the street below the ginkgo trees. Before he could even ask, the doorman had hailed him a cab and Dom rode back to the Hotel Commodore to get some rest for the next day’s game.
Anyone would have to say that the brothers played to a draw that weekend, which for Dom was an achievement in itself. Joe’s two-run single helped ensure a 7–6 Yankee win on Saturday—that was four wins in a row, plus the tie—but on Sunday, Dom doubled and scored three times as Boston’s old Lefty Grove, appearing in very good, if not vintage form, won his 296th career game, 10–3. Joe produced an inconsequential first inning single. That afternoon, May 25, Bill (Bojangles) Robinson attended and celebrated his birthday by dancing on the dugout roof. Near the end of the game, in what one newspaper the next day would call “a reminder of serious things,” an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the personnel of the U.S.S. George E. Badger , a destroyer docked nearby, needed to get back to their ship.
For these last two games of the series, Dom made a small change. Upon getting out to centerfield on Saturday afternoon he surveyed again the huge expanse of Yankee Stadium grass, an area he had played on often before. Then, during the first inning, sometime before the number 2 batter, Red Rolfe, strode to the plate, Dom quietly took two long steps back toward the fence just as Joe had suggested he should.
________
1 Vince DiMaggio, playing for the Pirates in Pittsburgh, covered centerfield brilliantly too, and could hit home runs. But he never put up much of a batting average and he struck out way too often, becoming the butt of running jokes among sportswriters. For Vince, the eldest of the three younger DiMaggio boys and the brother who’d first paved the way into pro baseball, Joe’s shadow was long and dark.
Chapter 6
America’s Voice
T HINGS WERE GOING badly in England. During the past two years the Nazis had taken the better part of Europe, run over nation after nation with astonishing and terrifying force. After overwhelming France, the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, Japan—had turned their sights and the German war machine on Great Britain, the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean. The Luftwaffe’s ongoing blitz upon England, which by May of 1941 had been unleashed off and mostly on for 10 months, had taken an audacious turn. Having already bombed the Port of London and many of England’s other harbors—Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and more—the Nazis now let fly upon London’s most sacred sites.
Bombs fell on the Houses of Parliament, destroying the House of Commons. The British Museum was hit, as was the centuries-old St. James’s Palace and then Westminster Hall itself. When the smoke at Westminster lifted, the very site where kings and queens had been coronated for more than 600 years lay under a mountain of bricks and ashes and shards
The three of them ate that evening in the dining room of the penthouse, not saying much beyond the small talk that Dorothy facilitated. Dom knew not to point out the improbable fact of their current respective batting averages—when the daily DiMag-o-Log came out in The San Francisco Chronicle the next morning it would have Dominic on top at .339, Joe at .319 and Vince at .266. It was Joe, though, who brought up baseball during the meal, saying: “You’re playing a little shallow in centerfield, you know, just a couple of strides.”
Dom stiffened. “I’m just fine playing where I do, Joe,” he said.
Joe paused and looked impassively at his brother, as if to say “suit yourself.” But he didn’t say anything. He just let the moment pass and turned back to his plate.
After dinner Dom said goodbye, took the elevator down and stepped out onto the street below the ginkgo trees. Before he could even ask, the doorman had hailed him a cab and Dom rode back to the Hotel Commodore to get some rest for the next day’s game.
Anyone would have to say that the brothers played to a draw that weekend, which for Dom was an achievement in itself. Joe’s two-run single helped ensure a 7–6 Yankee win on Saturday—that was four wins in a row, plus the tie—but on Sunday, Dom doubled and scored three times as Boston’s old Lefty Grove, appearing in very good, if not vintage form, won his 296th career game, 10–3. Joe produced an inconsequential first inning single. That afternoon, May 25, Bill (Bojangles) Robinson attended and celebrated his birthday by dancing on the dugout roof. Near the end of the game, in what one newspaper the next day would call “a reminder of serious things,” an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the personnel of the U.S.S. George E. Badger , a destroyer docked nearby, needed to get back to their ship.
For these last two games of the series, Dom made a small change. Upon getting out to centerfield on Saturday afternoon he surveyed again the huge expanse of Yankee Stadium grass, an area he had played on often before. Then, during the first inning, sometime before the number 2 batter, Red Rolfe, strode to the plate, Dom quietly took two long steps back toward the fence just as Joe had suggested he should.
________
1 Vince DiMaggio, playing for the Pirates in Pittsburgh, covered centerfield brilliantly too, and could hit home runs. But he never put up much of a batting average and he struck out way too often, becoming the butt of running jokes among sportswriters. For Vince, the eldest of the three younger DiMaggio boys and the brother who’d first paved the way into pro baseball, Joe’s shadow was long and dark.
Chapter 6
America’s Voice
T HINGS WERE GOING badly in England. During the past two years the Nazis had taken the better part of Europe, run over nation after nation with astonishing and terrifying force. After overwhelming France, the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, Japan—had turned their sights and the German war machine on Great Britain, the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean. The Luftwaffe’s ongoing blitz upon England, which by May of 1941 had been unleashed off and mostly on for 10 months, had taken an audacious turn. Having already bombed the Port of London and many of England’s other harbors—Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and more—the Nazis now let fly upon London’s most sacred sites.
Bombs fell on the Houses of Parliament, destroying the House of Commons. The British Museum was hit, as was the centuries-old St. James’s Palace and then Westminster Hall itself. When the smoke at Westminster lifted, the very site where kings and queens had been coronated for more than 600 years lay under a mountain of bricks and ashes and shards
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