Give thanks for Joe DiMaggio
Posted: Monday March 08, 1999 04:00 PM
In a perfect, sensible world, we would bow to give our thanks for a
multitude of blessings and include Joe DiMaggio, somewhere midway.
Arnold Palmer would've been 12 when the Great Yankee Clipper hit in 56 straight
games. How appropriate, indeed, that this hero, before Snead and Hogan and the men of his
sport, was a man who combined consistency with grace and power.
Joseph Paul DiMaggio remains, a half century later, a hero of the largest
sort, far transcending baseball. He's a symbol of class and magnificence,
the last of his kind. A graceful dinosaur with a difference. Joe D seems
immortal.
In the turbulent '60s, when Paul Simon scribbled down his famous line --
"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to
you," -- he was expressing a nation's yearning for a less complicated time;
he was looking for a hero, someone in whom to believe.
Santiago, on the waters of the Caribbean, mused in "The Old Man
and the Sea:" "I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing . . . they say his
father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would
understand."
It seemed so fitting that Hemingway, this giant of literature,
would pause in his narrative to honor DiMaggio.
Joe DiMaggio reminds many of a less complicated time. AP |
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There is a Nanci Griffith song called Marilyn Monroe: "The sun will stop
Shinin' . . . hearts will stop poundin' . . . the screen is so lonely tonight . . . then
men are out prayin' . . . the women are sayin' . . . she died for the loss of her
prime, and lived on DiMaggio time."
We all have, from the moment he quietly stepped forward in woolen
pinstripes and captured our souls. He was all things to all people at a
time when all needed something, during an era when our world was collapsing, hearing the distant
drumbeats of war, desperate for a moment of cheer.
Decades later, after the war and Mantle and Marilyn and Mr. Coffee, after
a thousand ceremonial first-balls and an occasional old-timer's game,
there was DiMaggio in line, the only guest specifically requested by the
Emperor of Japan at a state dinner.
Decades later, the only athlete invited when President Reagan hosted
Gorbachev.
Decades later, still the man.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
In reality, nowhere. He remains as much with us today as he did a half
century ago. Then, we followed long-distance, on the radio, in
newspapers and magazines and news reels.
Today, he is much closer, deep within.
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