Joe DiMaggio

His father fished, as DiMaggios had for generations, and expected his sons to. Joe could not stand it. The smell of dead fish on the boat made him sick, and Giuseppe called him lazy and good-for-nothing for saying so. He found the North Beach playground instead, took up baseball at ten, and was soon moving between neighbourhood teams for two dollars a game as a hired bat. He dropped out of Galileo High School. His brother Vince talked the San Francisco Seals into playing him at shortstop at the end of 1932, and in 1933 he hit safely in 61 straight. Then he tore the ligaments of his right knee climbing out of a jitney, and the Yankees, on their scout Bill Essick's insistence, bought the damaged goods anyway.

He debuted on May 3, 1936, batting in front of Lou Gehrig, and hit 29 home runs as a rookie, a Yankee record that stood until Aaron Judge broke it in 2017. Across 13 seasons he was an All-Star in every one of them, won three Most Valuable Player awards and nine World Series, and finished at .325 with 361 home runs and, unusually for a slugger, more walks than strikeouts, 790 against 369. From May 15 to July 16, 1941 he hit safely in 56 consecutive games, batting .408 with 15 home runs inside the streak. Two backhand stops by the Cleveland third baseman Ken Keltner ended it on July 17. He started another the next day and ran it 16 games, which is 72 hits in 73 games. He retired on December 11, 1951, at 37.

While he was in the Army Air Forces putting on ten pounds on an athletes' diet in Hawaii, the government classified his parents as enemy aliens. Giuseppe and Rosalia carried photo identification booklets, could not travel five miles without a permit, and Giuseppe, who had fished the water for decades, was barred from San Francisco Bay and had his boat seized. DiMaggio, embarrassed by how comfortable his own war was, asked for a combat assignment and was refused. Eight years later he married Marilyn Monroe. The biographers Donald Spoto, Sarah Churchwell and Lois Banner all document his jealousy, his need to control her and his physical abuse of her. She filed for divorce nine months into the marriage and wept openly through the proceedings.

He arranged Monroe's funeral in 1962 and kept the Kennedys and most of Hollywood out of it, then sent half a dozen red roses to her crypt three times a week for 20 years and never married again. He also spent four decades insisting on the introduction, the Greatest Living Ballplayer, and once punched Billy Crystal in the stomach for leaving it out. He died on March 8, 1999, after lung cancer surgery and 99 days in a Florida hospital. His lawyer reported last words about seeing Marilyn again, which his brother Dominic disputed. Joe Jr. died five months later at 57. In 2006 his son's adopted daughters auctioned the estate. Monroe's passport went for 115,000 dollars.

Joe DiMaggio's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The 56-game hitting streak other
  Stephen Jay Gould called it the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in American sports 1941
• The Joe DiMaggio Show television
  Ten-minute programmes beginning in April 1952 1952
• The Bowery Savings Bank campaign television
  He was the bank's face from 1972 to 1992 1972
• The Mr. Coffee campaign television
  More than 20 years as the spokesman, beginning in the 1970s —
• Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital building
  Opened at Hollywood, Florida on September 17, 1992. He raised more than 4 million dollars for it. 1992

• November 25, 1914 aged 0 Born at Martinez, California, the eighth of nine children His parents had emigrated from Isola delle Femmine in Sicily.
• 1933 aged ~19 Hits safely in 61 straight games for the San Francisco Seals Baseball didn't really get into my blood, he said, until I knocked off that hitting streak.
• May 3, 1936 aged 21 Major league debut for the Yankees He batted ahead of Lou Gehrig and hit 29 home runs as a rookie.
• November 19, 1939 aged 24 Marries Dorothy Arnold as 20,000 people jam the street outside
• July 17, 1941 aged 26 The 56-game streak ends at Cleveland Ken Keltner made two backhand stops at third base.
• February 17, 1943 aged 28 Enlists in the Army Air Forces His parents had been classified as enemy aliens the year before.
• December 11, 1951 aged 37 Announces his retirement at 37
• January 14, 1954 aged 39 Marries Marilyn Monroe at San Francisco City Hall She filed for divorce in October, nine months later.
• March 8, 1999 aged 84 Dies at his home in Hollywood, Florida, at 84

• Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962
  Actress and cultural icon whose blend of vulnerability and glamour made her a symbol of Hollywood's golden age. married to
• Arthur Miller 1915–2005
  Playwright whose Death of a Salesman and The Crucible are cornerstones of American drama. her next husband
• Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961
  Nobel Prize-winning novelist whose spare prose style defined 20th-century American fiction. wrote him into The Old Man and the Sea
• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. his government classified DiMaggio's parents as enemy aliens