Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book) Page 2

  Joe’s second school, two blocks east, was Francisco Junior High. Nobody made him do anything there. Joe and Frank Venezia used to sit in class like a couple of dummies—they never kept up on the reading. The other kids gave all the answers. They just seemed smarter. Actually, Joe wasn’t stupid. But he never wanted to open his mouth, say something wrong, and look stupid. That came from home. In the flat on Taylor Street, they talked Sicilian. Everybody laughed at Joe’s lousy Sicilian. (Even his little brother, Dommie, made fun of him.) And shame was what Joe couldn’t stand. He was a blusher. (That embarrassed him, too.) So, he just grew silent. His sisters talked about him behind his back: they thought he was “slow.” . . . Anyway, Joe didn’t have to talk at school. None of the teachers made him talk. They just moved him on, year after year. It was like no one even knew he was there.

  Joe knew well enough to get along in his world. He knew how to strip the copper wire from dilapidated buildings and the lead from around the pipes. He could sell that stuff for four cents a pound any day. Of course, the way Joe was, he wanted six cents. There was a junk dealer who came up Columbus—used to stop at the corner of the open field where the boys played hardball. They called it the Horses’ Lot because the Golden State Dairy turned its horses loose there, afternoons and weekends, when they weren’t out with the milk wagons. Where Columbus Avenue cut off the Horses’ Lot (in left center field), there was a wall of billboards. That’s where the junk man stopped to rest his horse. They called him Blue Wagon. “Four cent f’coppa . . .” Blue Wagon would say. Joe would mutter to his friends: “C’mon, Jew ’im down.” (Of course, he meant Jew him up—but that didn’t sound right.) Sometimes, they could keep Blue arguing long enough to steal something off the back of his cart. Next day, they’d sell it back to him. Niggy Marino figured out how to wrap all the guys’ wire together around a cobblestone—and sell the whole bundle as copper.

  Niggy was a leader. He could fight better than anyone—and did: he had a bout almost every day. He’d take care of all the other guys’ fights, too. Niggy led the raids when the grape trucks would rumble in. All the papas made wine in their basements, and the grapes arrived in big, rattling farm trucks—tons at a time. When the trucks geared down for the hill in North Beach, Niggy would climb on the back, or he’d get Frank Venezia to run the truck down (Frank could run like a deer), and they’d throw grapes off to everybody else. Niggy had another trick when the pie truck showed up at the grocery. The driver knew the Dago kids would try to steal his pies. So he’d park where he could see his truck’s back door while he was in the store. Niggy would saunter over to the truck, pull the back door open, take out a pie, and stand there, cool as an ice chip. Sure enough, here comes the pie man out of the grocery, screamin’ bloody murder, and Niggy would take off. When he got around the corner with the pie man in pursuit, all the rest of the boys would step up to the truck and walk away with fifteen pies. They’d eat till they were sick and sell the rest, twenty-five cents apiece.

  That sort of money could take them to the movies. Hell, the way they worked it, a dime took them all to the movies. One guy would buy a ticket at the Acme, or the Peni-a-cade—those were the two cheapest theaters—and then the guy who paid would fling open the back doors and everybody else got in free. (How’s the usher supposed to catch fifteen guys?) It was movies that brought the roar of the Twenties to North Beach. Romance at the captain’s table on some swank ocean liner, champagne socialites dancing in speakeasies—the boys knew all that stuff from picture shows. When pictures started talking, in 1927, even North Beach was abuzz. But when The Jazz Singer finally arrived, they charged a quarter to see it. So Joe didn’t go. Anyway, Joe didn’t favor movies with a lot of guys in tuxedos, singing and dancing. He liked that desperate squadron of airmen in The Dawn Patrol . . . or tommy guns in the streets of Chicago—Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar . . . or maybe best of all, Gary Cooper, The Virginian—or Johnny Mack Brown, the Alabama running back (hero of the Rose Bowl in 1926), who now bestrode the screen as Billy the Kid.

  Outside the picture shows, it was like the boom of the Twenties never happened—not in North Beach. In Joe’s world, the papas still woke in the middle of the night and walked down the hill to the wharf and their boats. They’d be back in the afternoon, each with a catch to sell, with nets to fold, with maybe a secret paper sack (illegal striped bass, to carry home for supper). In Joe’s world, meat was still for Sundays—and Mondays, when the mamma made the leftover scraps into stew or soup.

  Maybe Joe’s house was poorer than most: nine kids, and a dad whose boat wasn’t big enough for crabbing. But everybody had leftovers on Monday—and the same pasta underneath. All the boys on that ballfield could trace their personal histories back to the rocky Sicilian coast—to Sciacca, Porticello, Ísola delle Fémmine—all the parents came from the same poor towns. Even in the present, on this vast new continent, the lives they made (and taught to their sons) had the clammy jumbled intimacy of the village. Take LaRocca’s Corner, up on Columbus: the building was owned by an uncle of the pitcher, Ciccio LaRocca. But the apartment upstairs was the home of the batter, Frank Venezia (Vince LaRocca was his uncle, too). And now that Frank’s dad had died (eating bad clams), Vince LaRocca was trying to marry Frank’s mamma. This was a world folded in on itself.

  And the future . . . well, that seemed just as contained—and alarmingly close. With Frank’s dad dead, Frank would have to go to work, for good. Niggy Marino’s dad was sick: Niggy would have to take over the boat. Joe’s older brothers Tom and Mike—they already had to go fishing. No one ever saw them playing ball anymore.

  Joe didn’t want any part of a boat. He couldn’t stand the sea, the smell of the fish. But even so, he would have bet five to one his future lay somewhere between that wall on Powell Street and the foot of Columbus—Fisherman’s Wharf. At that point, he couldn’t see how he would ever escape his father’s life, much less the world of North Beach. He barely left the neighborhood now. Why would he? Except when his mamma sent him off to buy meat—that was cheaper over the hill, a half-mile away, in Chinatown. And afternoons he made the trip downtown to sell newspapers. That’s how he brought money home—and escaped having to help his dad unload and fold the nets on Fisherman’s Wharf.

  That’s why he was waiting at the playground, that afternoon. He and Frank Venezia would always share a nickel tram fare down to Market Street, to pick up their papers. They should have been on their way already. Joe never liked to wait. And if you showed up late, you could get screwed. They’d give half your papers to some other guy.

  “Frank! Come on!” he yelled. “Are you comin’ or not?”

  But Frank was still batting—Piggy on a Bounce. And he told Joe to cool his heels. Just a few minutes more . . . he was on a streak!

  JOE SOLD The Call at Sutter and Sansome, near the Market Street trolleys. It was three cents for the paper and the kid who sold it got to keep a penny. On a good day, you’d come home with a buck and a half—two bucks or more if the World Series was on or Lindbergh was flying. When Dempsey knocked out Firpo, you could sell ’em for a quarter—people wanted the paper that bad. All the North Beach boys sold papers, if they didn’t have some other job. Tony Santora worked at Hyde and Union, Shabby Minafo had the Standard Oil Building, Dario Lodigiani sold at Montgomery and Sutter, Frank Venezia was three blocks away at Battery and California. Joe had a good corner, banks on both sides and offices stacked on the floors above. By four P.M. there was a steady stream of businessmen heading home. They wanted papers. He didn’t have to say a word. Joe’s little brother, Dom, started hawking papers before he was ten (he took the corner right across from Joe)—and even Dommie brought home more than a dollar a day.

  The best spot was the safety zone where the Market Street trolleys stopped. That was Niggy’s. Who was gonna fight him for it? In the safety zone, a guy would flip you a nickel, you’d hand him his paper and then dig around your pockets, like you had to hunt around for two pennies change. Half the time the guy’s
streetcar would come, and he’d say, “Forget it,” and jump on his tram. Niggy was in tight with the wholesaler, Howie Holmes. One day, Howie told Niggy that some guy was giving his paperboys a hard time. So Niggy went and punched the guy out. After that, Howie would leave Niggy’s papers in the safety zone. Nig could pick ’em up any time he wanted. Niggy made a lot of friends with his fists.

  One afternoon, Niggy’s little brother jumped on a streetcar to sell his last papers, but the conductor smacked him, and shooed him off the car. Joe got the number of the tram and told Niggy. The next time that car came through, Niggy jumped on, walked up to the conductor and hit him in the jaw with a straight right hand. The conductor went down—change was rolling all over the car—and Joe and Niggy took off, laughing. Joe still had papers to sell, but, for once, he didn’t mind. “You hit him a pretty good shot,” he said. Niggy nodded happily: “He won’t hit no little kids anymore.”

  If Joe ever got in a beef, Niggy was there to take care of business. Not that it happened much: Joe never courted trouble with his mouth. And he wasn’t the kind to push his way into someone else’s fight. That was one thing the guys liked about Joe: he didn’t try to be like anybody else. He didn’t have to fight. That was fine for Nig. He didn’t have to try to talk to girls. That was Ciccio’s specialty. Joe was sufficient to Joe.

  That’s what Frank Venezia admired, why he liked to hang around with Joe. They were both quiet. But Joe was without need to talk. Joe was quiet at the bottom of himself. He had control. That’s the way he was with a bat. Never eager, never jumping at the ball. He’d just stand there, while it came to him. Then he’d hit the tar out of it. That’s the way he was about everything. If they had a good day selling papers—they had enough to give to their mammas, and then some—Frank would stop with the other guys at the U.S. Restaurant, on Columbus: fried ham on French bread, a big sandwich for a dime. But it wasn’t really about the food. They were young, out at night, with money in their pockets—how could they just go home? . . . But Joe would say, “You guys go on.” And he’d be gone, with his dime still in his pocket. Joe always brought his paper money home. His parents were strict about that. But he always had some quarters, if he needed them, for cards. One time, Frank and Joe signed up for the Christmas Club at Bank of America. You’d put in fifty cents a week, and in December, you got a fortune—twenty-five dollars. Frank gave up by summertime, took his money out, blew it that day on a new glove. But Joe kept going and got all the money. And that was his. Frank always figured that Joe’s family didn’t know about that twenty-five. The way Frank saw it, Joe was always a winner. And in his own eyes, Frank was always a loser.

  Except today, with that bat in his hands, at Piggy on a Bounce. Frank hit for, musta been, forty-five minutes straight! It was like magic, like he could hit any pitch, any way, anywhere he chose. He could see the ball just sittin’ there for him—then he’d cream it. It was like he imagined Joe always felt . . . . Jesus—Joe!

  Frank had forgotten about Joe sitting there. Frank turned around now. But Joe was gone.

  THAT WAS THE year they’d gotten so close. Frank and Joe had always been friends, but since that past September, they’d spent just about every day together. What happened was, they got to Galileo High School, and that’s where their string ran out.

  They were hopeless from the day they walked in the door. They’d sit in class, and it was like the rest of the kids had grown up in some other country. “Who knows this?” the teacher would say, and everybody else would stand up, waving their hands with the answer. Joe would look at Frank, Frank would look back at Joe: What the hell’s going on here?

  They’d never taken a book home. But they’d always got through with passing grades—they made no trouble. The only thing they cared about was sports. But at Galileo, they didn’t even get into gym class: they got put into ROTC, the fuckin’ army class! As if Joe was gonna march around with a stick on his shoulder, like a stronzo. Forget it!

  And then, Italian class! The teacher was Mr. Zuberti, a stuck-up Florentine or Genoese—from up North somewhere, where they thought Sicilians were scum. He’d pick ’em out. Conjugate this verb! (What the hell’s a verb?) . . . One morning, Zuberti threw Joe out of class. Joe didn’t say a word. Just stood at his desk and walked out, while everybody stared at him. His face was burning red. Joe heard the giggles behind him, as Zuberti sang a little song, in Italian, to Frank: “Oh, YOU’LL be the next to go . . .”

  And that was the end. Later that day, in Mrs. Cullen’s English class, Joe was sitting next to Tony Santora, and he muttered: “I won’t be here this afternoon.”

  “Why not, Joe?”

  “My father comes in with the boat about one. If I don’t help clean up, I don’t eat tonight.”

  Of course, that was bullshit. Joe missed most days at Fisherman’s Wharf. But this much was true: he didn’t come back to school—that day, the next day, or any day thereafter. Frank started playing hooky, too.

  They had the same routine. They’d get up in the morning, get ready for school. They’d have some bread, milk with a little coffee, walk out the door and turn down the sidewalk toward Galileo High . . . then they’d wander off to the park.

  They’d hang around Marina Park all morning, watching the older guys with their “tops”—a monte game, where the aces and deuces show up, and you bet against the come. The older guys were always trying to take some young sucker for a buck or two. Joe and Frank would take lunch along, or figure out some way to eat. They could never go near the Wharf: someone would see. The playground was out: they’d be spotted for sure. Sometimes, they’d spend a nickel for the ferry and ride all the way across the Bay—mostly in silence. They were just killing time, like a lot of guys. In that winter, the turn of the 1930s, a couple of young men with time on their hands was nothing to draw a stare. One day, outside the Simmons Bedding plant at Bay and Powell, Frank counted fifty men on the corner. Nobody had anywhere to go.

  About three o’clock, Joe would have to check in at home. That was the rule in his family, and Joe obeyed rules. He’d bang the door like he was coming home from school, say hello, make sure no one knew anything. Frank had no one to check in with at home. He’d go to the playground, to see if he could get into a game for a while, before they had to go sell papers.

  It went on for months—Joe and Frank hanging out all day—until Joe got caught: the school sent a letter home. Joe got a beating from his older brothers. And he was summoned to see the principal, Major Nourse. (No one knew why he was called Major, but the title fit him: he was discipline, first, last, and always.) Tom, the eldest DiMaggio brother, took Joe back to school. But when they got there, Major Nourse wasn’t in.

  They sat on chairs in the hallway. And they sat.

  They sat an hour, an hour and a half. The chairs were hard. They sat.

  Finally, Joe said, “Tom. They don’t want me.”

  “Okay,” Tom said. They got up and walked out. And that was the last day Joe went to high school.

  He promised Tom he’d go to “continuation class”—the school for dropouts. But Joe never went there either.

  For a while, he hung around with Frank—who was still on the loose—the school never cared if he came back. But soon, Frank had to go to work. He hooked on—as much as he could—at Simmons Bedding, in the steel mill plant. He tied bed rails into bundles and loaded them onto trucks. That was five bucks a day.

  Joe tried his hand as a workin’ stiff, too. He worked a week or so for Pacific Box, stacking wooden crates, or bringing slats to the men at the nailing machines. The work was stupid, and the money wasn’t great—ten, twelve bucks a week. Joe moved on to the orange juice plant. But that was worse: up to your ass all day in sticky juice, with acid eating into the cuts on your hands. And for what? He didn’t even make a full week there.

  There wasn’t anything that he wanted to do, except to have a few bucks in his pocket—and avoid his father’s boat. He went back to selling papers.

  Frank thought
maybe Joe could hook on at Simmons Bed. They had jobs there, if you knew someone. And they had a ball team. Maybe they could both play. He would have talked to Joe about it.

  But they weren’t talking.

  After Frank made Joe wait for Piggy on a Bounce, Joe had to take the streetcar downtown—on his own nickel. After that, Joe wouldn’t talk to Frank for a year.

  ROSALIE AND GIUSEPPE DIMAGGIO.

  FISHERMAN’S WHARF, AT THE FOOT OF COLUMBUS AVENUE.

  JOE WITH HIS MAMMA, SISTERS, NIECE, AND NEPHEW.

  CHAPTER 2

  WHEN JOE BOMBED OUT OF SCHOOL, HIS FATHER WAS disgusted and affirmed. What’s the point of being Sicilian if you’re not convinced the world will do you dirt in the end? Giuseppe DiMaggio was a man of the old verities: hard work will maybe earn you a living, if you keep your nose clean and don’t say a word. Without hard work, you’re a bum, magabonu.