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Unlike Babe Ruth, who used to stand with feet close together and fanny toward the pitcher, DiMaggio takes an abnormally wide stance (with feet 36 in. apart) squarely in the center of the batter's box. He waits until the very last moment before swinging. His system: "I look for his fast ball. Then if he comes in with a curve, I still have time to swing."
Joe, a right-handed hitter, prefers batting against left-handed pitchers. Reason: like many righthanders, he thinks he sees the ball sooner and follows it better from a southpaw delivery. But whether the pitcher is right-or left-handed seems to make no practical difference. He hits Right-hander Bob Feller and Left-hander Hal Newhouser as if he owned them. Last fortnight he became the eighth man in baseball history to hit 300 home runs.*
Like all ballplayers, DiMag has his hitting slumps. What causes them? Says Joe: "Oh, pressing too hard, hot weather —almost anything. I don't like to talk about slumps." Around the league he is known as a "loner" who shuns locker-room monkeyshines. After a ball game, Joe will sit quietly on the bench in front of his locker, slowly consuming a bottle of beer. "I go back over the ball game," he says. When asked if it helps, he replies, "Not much."
"A Little Extra on Big Days." DiMaggio does not hit the ball as hard as the mighty Ruth did, nor as often as Ted Williams does. But as a clutch hitter he is terrific. With men on bases and the chips down, his bat spells bingo.
This useful faculty resulted in one of the season's most dramatic moments. At Boston's Fenway Park three weeks ago the score was tied, 6-6, in the tenth. The bases were loaded, and two were out as Joe stepped to the plate. In the press-box a sportwriter sympathized with the Red Sox pitcher: "I'd rather be anybody in the world than Earl Caldwell right now. I'd rather be Henry Wallace."
Caldwell pitched, Joe swung, and a tremendous drive hit the net by the left field roof—foul by inches.
Thinking about it after the game, Joe said, "My God! You don't hit two balls that hard in one day."
But he did, and this time it was fair.
Boston's centerfielder, who happens to be Joe's younger brother Dominic, whirled and started running. Then he stopped. The ball, one of the longest home runs ever hit in Fenway Park, went to the right of the flagpole high above the 379-ft. distance marker. It scored four runs and kept the Yankees in the pennant race. Says Joe: "Maybe you give it a little extra on big days. But you don't feel it. You must do it unconsciously. It's inside you and it does something to you.
But you don't know it's there." Joe
DiMaggio candidly accepts the fact that he is good.
So do the fans. There is a "Joe DiMaggio Fan Club of Pittsburgh," which rides special buses to Cleveland (Joe's nearest stopping point to Pittsburgh) to cheer him on. When the Yankees play in Philadelphia, another fan club lets go with "DiMaggio" locomotives—like undergraduates at a football game. Does he like it? "Sure," says Joe. "A guy's got to like it. But it makes you feel embarrassed if you have a bad day."