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Joe's brother and other stars from the past will help the Devil Rays salute the AL's 100th season with a ceremony today.
By BRUCE LOWITT
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 12, 2000
ST. PETERSBURG -- Pitchers at the plate are replaced by designated hitters. Grass and an azure sky give way to artificial turf under a dome. The spitter goes, and the splitter arrives. The Babe becomes Teddy Ballgame becomes Yaz ...
Tiger Stadium, Shibe Park. Gone. The Philadelphia Athletics, the St. Louis Browns. Gone.
And still there is Fenway Park. The American League, for all but the first dozen of its 100 years, has passed through Boston's bandbox of a ballpark. Fenway is a shrine. It is misty memories and magical moments.
It is old.
So Fenway, too, will go, sooner or later -- the debate rages on -- and in its place will be an office building or a mall or a housing project. And parents will point and tell their children there used to be a ballpark over there, and they will weep at its passing, and the children won't understand.
"I hold it in great esteem. But there comes a time when changes must be made and progress has to be addressed, and in this instance, it has to be," says Dominic DiMaggio, who patrolled centerfield for 11 years in a career shortened by World War II, who played the Green Monster as Heifitz played a Stradivarius -- with precision and grace.
"I hate to see Fenway go. I love the ballpark. But my baseball days are gone, have been gone for almost 50 years. ... Once Fenway is torn down and I drive by it, I'll get a little misty in the eyes. It's a beautiful park."
The DiMaggio name -- Dominic in Boston, Joe in New York, Vince in both cities as well as Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia -- is as evocative as any in the history of the American League, which will have its 100th season saluted today by its newest member, the 21/2-year-old Devil Rays, in one of those domed, artificial-turfed stadiums, Tropicana Field.
Scheduled to participate in the pregame ceremonies are Earl Weaver, for 17 years the fiery manager of the Orioles; Frank Howard, a towering slugger now in the Devil Rays' front office; Goose Gossage and Bobby Thigpen, former dominating relief pitchers; and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, now the major league's vice president of on-field operations. Ted Williams, arguably the best hitter in the history of the game, is ill and unable to attend.
Dom will be there, too. He was the youngest and smallest of the DiMaggio brothers, an eight-time All-Star with, some might say, Hall of Fame credentials. He was the first bespectacled player to come out of the minors. For that, they called him the "Little Professor."
He might be in the Hall of Fame had he been someone other than a DiMaggio. His numbers (.298, 87 home runs, 618 RBI) pale in comparison with Joltin' Joe's.
"That's probably true, not that I wish it. But this is my lot in life," he said.
"Sure, I would have loved to have people recognize me for myself early on once I got to the majors. I didn't really understand and appreciate it when it was going on. But even today I'm Joe DiMaggio's brother," Dom said, laughing. "I'm 83 years old. I should have my own recognition."
He, Williams and the rest of the Red Sox perennially chased Joe and the Yankees, rarely catching them, beating them to the pennant only once, then losing the 1946 World Series to the Cardinals.
Dom DiMaggio still has a grip that could still make a Louisville Slugger wince. He was a very good hitter and a better centerfielder, whose territory spread from the distant bleachers on one side to that 37-foot wall on the other.
"I had a wonderful relationship with those fences, especially the Green Monster," he said. "The Green Monster and I got along beautifully. I treated it as gently as I could. ... I glanced off it a number of times."
He broke into baseball with the San Francisco Seals about the time Williams joined the San Diego Padres (yes, it was a minor-league team then), and one afternoon DiMaggio and his teammates watched Teddy Ballgame take batting practice.
"Lefty O'Doul was, in my opinion, probably the greatest batting instructor ever to put on a baseball uniform," DiMaggio said. "He sent more guys up to the major leagues, and he sent guys up to the major leagues who had come back from the majors because they couldn't hit.
"O'Doul went out of our dugout and watched Teddy, waited for him to get through hitting, then went over and said something to him. We were furious; our manager was talking to the enemy. When Lefty came back, we all asked him, "What did you say to Ted Williams?' And he said, "Not much. I told him never to let anybody change his hitting.' He was the most natural hitter."
DiMaggio played his entire career next to Williams in the outfield. "Everybody always talks about his hitting, but he wasn't really that bad an outfielder, although I liked to catch balls that were in his territory if I could. We had an understanding. As soon as they heard me yell -- Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky or Teddy -- they'd get out of the way, even if I had to run fast to get to the ball.
"When I said I had it," Dominic DiMaggio said, "that was it."