Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 321

DiMaggio was the eighth of nine children born to Sicilian immigrants Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio, from Isola delle Femmine. His Italian birth name was Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio. Rosalia named her son "Giuseppe" after his father in the hopes he would be her last child. Giuseppe was a fisherman, as were generations of DiMaggios before him. Pop Giuseppe worked his way across the country, eventually settling near Rosalia's father in Pittsburg, on the east side of the San Francisco Bay Area. When Joe was a toddler, Giuseppe moved his family to the North Beach section of San Francisco. Giuseppe hoped that his five sons would become fishermen.

DiMaggio recalled that he would do anything to get out of cleaning his father's boat, as the smell of dead fish nauseated him. Giuseppe called him "lazy" and "good-for-nothing." At age ten, he took up baseball, playing third base at the North Beach

playground near his home. After attending Hancock Elementary and Francisco Middle School, DiMaggio dropped out of Galileo High School and worked odd jobs.

By 1931, DiMaggio was playing semi-pro ball. Nearing the end of the 1932 season, his brother Vince, playing for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, talked his manager

into letting DiMaggio fill in at shortstop. He made his professional debut on October 1, 1932, playing the last three