It was a match made under klieg lights: He was a baseball legend, stoic, handsome and graceful as a dancer; she was the archetypal bombshell, a walking, talking male fantasy wrapped around a tissue-paper soul. By the time Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe visited the Tides Hotel and Bath Club in North Redington Beach, their marriage had long since ended, but their close friendship had not. We may never know what bound them together. Monroe was dead within a year, and DiMaggio, the most private of men, succumbed to lung cancer last March without ever having spoken publicly about her. • AMERICAN ICONS • TIMES ARCHIVES

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