Dimaggio: Setting the Record Straight - Hardcover

Engelberg, Morris; Schneider, Marv

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0760314829 ISBN 13: 9780760314821

Publisher: Motorbooks Intl, 2003

Synopsis

Describes the life of the Yankee Clipper, covering his thirteen-year baseball career, including his fifty-six game hitting streak, and his relationships with his teammates, family, and his ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe.

About this title

About the Author

Morris Engelberg was Joe DiMaggio’s business advisor, attorney, and confidante during the last 16 years of the ballplayer’s life. Engelberg was a devoted friend to his boyhood idol. Their close relationship gave him rare access to the private DiMaggio. Engelberg is an attorney in south Florida, specializing in tax and probate law.

Marv Schneider was a sportswriter and editor for the Associated Press for 43 years. He interviewed Joe DiMaggio several times and wrote a memorable piece for DiMaggio’s 80th birthday. Schneider broke the news of the Yankee Clipper’s death in 1999. He has been broadcasting sports stories for AP Radio since the network was established nearly 30 years ago, and he continues to serve as a correspondent. Born in Yonkers, New York, he currently lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

From the Inside Flap

Much has been written about the great Joe DiMaggio, both fact and fiction. As the man who knew DiMaggio best, his longtime friend, attorney, and business manager Morris Engelberg felt it was time to set the record straight. With additional research and interviews by co-author Marv Schneider, a veteran sportswriter for the Associated Press, DiMaggio: Setting the Record Straight offers an intimate and honest view of a cherished American figure.

Joe DiMaggio was one of the most recognizable athletes of the twentieth century, yet he was also an intensely private man who kept his cards close to his chest. Only a small number of people were privy to Joltin Joe s hopes, fears, and dreams, his intimate moments. Over the last sixteen years of DiMaggio s life, Engelberg was a near-constant companion. He was with him until the very end, there at Joe s side to hear the great ballplayer s dying words.

In this engaging new book, Engelberg provides a rare glimpse into DiMaggio s relationship with his estranged son and reveals DiMaggio s feelings about Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedys, politics, and fellow ballplayers. It is a story of deep friendship, of unquestioned loyalty by a middle-aged man exhibiting a boyish devotion to a graying American idol.

Reviews

The New York Yankees made Joe DiMaggio a household name, but it took Brooklyn-born, Florida-based attorney Morris Engelberg to make DiMaggio wealthy. Now, Engelberg puts his personal spin on the life and times of the Yankee Clipper, who died in 1999, with Engelberg by his side, after a short battle with lung cancer. But contrary to the book's provocative subtitle, Engelberg's effort is little more than a paean to DiMaggio, his childhood idol turned dream client. Engelberg writes that he regarded DiMaggio, whose affairs he managed for the last 16 years of the slugger's life, as his "best friend" rather than a client. Not surprisingly, the book reads as though it were written by a best friend, heavy on deference and light on detail-except when it comes to Engelberg's record-setting success in peddling DiMaggio to memorabilia dealers. Indeed, more baseballs are signed than swatted in this version of DiMaggio's life, while DiMaggio's legendary 13-year Hall-of-Fame career, which includes a record 56-game hitting streak and nine World Series rings, is recalled in a brisk 60 pages. Off the field, DiMaggio's famously complicated relationships, including those with his brother and rival, Red Sox outfielder Dom DiMaggio, and Yankee teammates like Gehrig and Mantle, are largely unexplored. Even chapters devoted to DiMaggio's relationships with ex-wife Marilyn Monroe, and his estranged son, Joe Jr., are shallow and disappointing. To his credit, Engelberg clearly made DiMaggio a rich man. But his almost unsettling reverence for and loyalty to his subject overwhelm any attempts, however timid, to truly understand one of the game's greatest and most enigmatic icons. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Morris Engelberg was Joe DiMaggio's best friend and constant companion over the last 16 years of DiMaggio's life. This book combines anecdotes from DiMaggio's playing days with an extensive account of his relationship with his family, including Joe Jr., who finally succumbed to a life spent battling alcohol and drug addiction, and Marilyn Monroe, who was the true love of DiMaggio's life. The DiMaggio Engelberg knew was a man whose fame made him suspicious of those who would be his "friends" and who was seldom unaware of the image--cool, sophisticated, and graceful--he needed to protect. But he was also intelligent, compassionate, a good friend, and a doting, attentive grandfather. It was in the latter role that he found the most joy late in life. Engelberg has been criticized for exploiting his friendship with DiMaggio. Anyone who reads this book will dismiss the thought out of hand. There's nothing here to diminish DiMaggio's reputation. No one sets out to become a legend; it can be a troublesome burden. DiMaggio handled it better than most. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When I was eight years old, I shocked my mother by telling her that I wished Joe DiMaggio was my father.

"Morris, don t even think such a thing," she said. "DiMaggio? He s Italian. You re an orthodox Jewish boy."

But I was a Jewish boy without a father. At least, not one I ever knew. My father, Morris, died of an aneurysm three months before I was born. Pauline, my mother, did a marvelous job of raising two sons, but I desperately wanted a dad, like everyone else in the apartment house in Brooklyn where we lived, and like everyone in the yeshiva, the parochial school I attended. Someone of whom to be proud, someone about whom to brag.

Who better than Joe DiMaggio, the greatest baseball player in the world? The Joe DiMaggio who glided across the 11-inch TV screen in our Boro Park apartment to the outermost regions of Yankee Stadium where he effortlessly caught fly balls. The DiMaggio whose heroics were lavishly described on the sports pages of seven newspapers on the racks at the corner candy store. I read every story about the Yankees every day.

My mother s four brothers rooted for the Yankees and Giants, even though they too lived in Brooklyn, because they were raised on Manhattan s Lower Eastside. Their discussions of DiMaggio s heroics made a great impression on a five-year-old. "Nobody, and I mean nobody in the entire world can cover so much ground like Joe DiMaggio," my uncle Leo would say. "And," his brother, Morris, contributed, "he makes it look so easy, it s like he floats across the grass." "Never mind his fielding, what about his hitting? That s what he s known for," Uncle Mac insisted. "He s got a perfect swing," Uncle Harry added. "When he hits the ball, goodbye Charlie. It s gone." Their opinions became great truths to me. There was no question about it, No. 5, Joe s uniform number, was number one in my family. Even the name "Joltin Joe DiMaggio" had a nice ring to it. I proudly pasted No. 5 on my T-shirts and jackets.

It was not easy being a Yankee fan where I lived, only three miles from Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers played. Everyone in the neighborhood was caught up in Dodger fervor all summer, and when they made it to the World Series in 1947, there was no other subject for discussion.

Forever burned into my memory is the sixth game of that classic Yankee-Dodger confrontation, the first Series to be televised nationally. It was the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkoth, and in my religious home it was forbidden to turn on the television set or anything else requiring electricity. But five blocks away was Red s saloon, where I knew the TV would be tuned to the Series.

A seven-year-old could not get into Red s, but I pushed a milk bottle crate up to the window and stood on it to watch the whole game. The smells of beer and cigars and the sound of men cheering created an ambience I can recall even today.

With the Yankees leading the Series three games to two, the Dodgers scored four runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to take an 8 5 lead in the sixth game. In the bottom half of the inning, DiMaggio came to bat with two Yankees on base. A home run by Joe would tie the score. In an instant, it appeared that my silent prayer had been answered. DiMaggio took a mighty swing at a pitch from Joe Hatten and drove the ball 400 feet toward the left-field corner at Yankee Stadium. But Brooklyn s Al Gionfriddo raced to the waist-high fence in front of the bullpen, reached up, and made the catch.

The guys at the bar let out a shout of joy and threw their arms into the air. DiMaggio was almost at second base by the time Gionfriddo made the catch. When he saw that the ball had been caught, Joe kicked the dirt in the base path. It was a rare display, if not his only display, of emotion on the baseball field. I got off my crate and kicked it. The Yankees lost the game, 8 6. It was a long, sad walk home, and once I got there, I could turn to no one for solace. I couldn t tell anyone what I had seen because they would know I was off watching a game through a saloon window on a holiday. I wasn t sad for long, though, because the Yankees won the Series the next day.

The following year I had a day never to be forgotten. My uncles took me to Yankee Stadium for the first time, and I saw him, Joltin Joe DiMaggio. No one has ever seen God, not even Moses, who had to settle for a burning bush. But I saw Joe DiMaggio taking batting practice, running out to the greenest grass outfield I had ever seen, and poised at the plate waiting for a pitch in a game against the Detroit Tigers. There he was, live and in person: that picture-book wide stance, that perfect swing. and that all-out sprint to first base.

What I saw that day intensified my worship of my idol in a pinstripe uniform. As I grew older, I copied his batting stance, his running style, and the way he caught a ball even the way he combed his hair into a pompadour.

Toward the end of the 1949 season, I watched Joe DiMaggio Day on TV. Joe was presented with a Cadillac, a speedboat, two television sets, and much more. His mother was there, and because the Yankees were playing the Red Sox, so was his younger brother Dom, then Boston s center fielder. But what I remembered most was DiMaggio s son, Joe Jr., who was eight years old, a year younger than I. He was on the field with his father. How I wished I was in his place.

Edition details

• Publisher: Motorbooks Intl
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0760314829
• ISBN 13: 9780760314821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 418