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Ruppert's Rookie. In the early '30s, nonetheless, it didn't take long for Joe, the pea-green rookie, to outshine Vince and the other Seals. In his first full season (1933) he smashed the Pacific Coast League record by hitting safely in 61 consecutive games. He struck up a friendship with the team's first baseman, a fancy dresser and wisecracker, aped his dress and manners. From the Seals' trainer, an oldtime featherweight boxer, he soaked up fancy words. For a while, his stock reply to anyone asking him where he had been was: "Oh, I've been nonchalantly meandering down the pike."
In 1935, he helped win the Seals the coast league pennant with a .398 batting average and was voted the league's most valuable player. To get Joe on the Yankee string, the late Colonel Jake Ruppert paid out $25,000 (plus five other players). When Joe reported to the Yankee training camp at St. Petersburg two seasons later, he had been given the biggest buildup ever given a rookie.
Reporters inspected him as if he were a prize bull at a cattle show. He answered their questions. No, he'd never been east of the Rockies before ... He didn't think Florida was as pretty as he'd heard it was . . . He didn't know whether he could hit big league pitching, but he was glad to try.
He hit 29 home runs that season, played in the All-Star game, and the World Series.
Matter of Dates. After that season, everything DiMaggio did seemed to make headlines. His wedding to Dorothy Arnold Olson in 1939 (later ended in divorce) was easily the biggest public wedding ever seen in San Francisco. Fans climbed trees and stood on rooftops to catch a glimpse of the couple leaving the church. Joe made more news as baseball's balkiest holdout. Then, too, he seemed to suffer more than his share of injuries; fans were forever reading accounts of sore arms and pulled ligaments.
Joe made what he now considers the grave error of bickering with the Yankees over salary matters. After a long holdout siege, he missed the first twelve days of the 1938 season. He was booed all over the circuit, and the booing in Yankee Stadium was loudest & longest.
"It got so I couldn't sleep at night," says DiMaggio. "I'd wake up with boos ringing in my ears. I'd get up, light a cigarette and walk the floor sometimes till dawn." Nevertheless, he bore down and had a big year: 32 homers, 140 runs batted in, a batting average of .324.
In 1943, with the U.S. at war, DiMaggio made up his mind to join up. He was 28 and married, and his draft board had classified him in 3-A. He went in voluntarily, became Private J. DiMaggio, U.S. Army Air Forces. In the Air Forces, he put in three years' service in the physical training program for flight cadets. He rose to staff sergeant. Joe had one hitch in Hawaii during 1944; otherwise he was not overseas. He had a chance to play in a couple of exhibition games, entertaining troops, but that was all the baseball he had in those three years.
When he returned to the Yankees in 1946, there was no more of the old booing. After his long layoff, he had one poor season, then struck his stride last year and edged out Ted Williams for the American League's "Most Valuable Player" award (his third). Gruffed Williams: "It took the big guy to beat me, didn't it?"