Joe DiMaggio’s Job Was to Play for the Yankees, Not to Be Your Role Model
March 4, 2012 · Harold Friend · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio was a baseball player. He wasn’t the greatest baseball player of all time, but he did pretty well. Just a few players since DiMaggio retired in 1951 are considered his equal or better.
DiMaggio became an icon of icons. David Halberstam wrote DiMaggio was “the most celebrated athlete of his age, the best big game player of his era, and a baseball player who transcended the barriers of sports in terms of the breadth of his fame.”
Sports writing style and objectives were different in the 1930s and 1940s from what they are today. The general attitude during most of DiMaggio’s career was heroic coverage with few attempts at reporting personal information of any significance.
Eventually, DiMaggio became a victim of the new approach to sports writing.
One of the first attempts to discover the “real” Yankee Clipper was made by Gay Talese, who wanted to strip away the facade with which most celebrities protected themselves.
Talese wanted to create a picture that revealed DiMaggio’s private life. He succeeded, despite the fact that he was unable to interview DiMaggio at length.
In attempting to show “Joe DiMaggio, the person,” writers such as Talese and Richard Ben Cramer have presented information and then interpreted that information for the reader.
One reviewer of Cramer’s A Hero’s Life makes the significant point that, since DiMaggio wasn’t the type who revealed his thoughts, a lot of guesswork is implied. How did anyone but DiMaggio know what DiMaggio was doing when he was alone in his room at 3 o’clock in the morning?
When DiMaggio played baseball, did people care what he was going to do that night? Did they care what he did that morning? They did not. At least, not when DiMaggio was at the plate or was trying to catch a fly ball. All that was important was what DiMaggio did during the game.
Americans want role models. They want celebrities, especially athletes, to fill that role, which is terribly unfair.
DiMaggio became an unwilling role model. It was not something he asked for.
A paradox exists. Americans are curious and want to know things they have no right to know about their “role models.” They want idols but they want to find out things that will blemish their idols.
The role of a baseball player is to be a baseball player. What he does before or after a game or during the offseason is nobody’s concern but his own. Whether he is a “good” person (whatever that means) or an “evil” person (an even more ambiguous term) does not matter as long as he does not break any laws and does his job.
Those who disapprove of his actions can choose to express their displeasure or not attend his team’s games.
DiMaggio wanted something that is becoming increasingly more difficult to get. He simply wanted privacy.
Reference:
Halberstam, David, ed., The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1999.
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