Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Damn Yankees
Page 331
presentation to the Yankee great. The event was one of DiMaggio's last public appearances before taking ill.
DiMaggio was a heavy smoker for much of his adult life. He was admitted to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, on October 12, 1998, for lung cancer surgery and remained there for 99 days. He returned to his home in Hollywood, Florida, on January 19, 1999, where he died on March 8 at age 84.
His funeral was held on March 11, 1999, at Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco, and he was interred 3 months later at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California. His son also died that year, on August 6, at age 57.
Yankee Stadium's fifth monument was dedicated to DiMaggio on April 25, 1999, and the West Side Highway was officially renamed The Joe DiMaggio Highway in his honor. The Yankees wore
DiMaggio's number 5 on the left sleeves of their uniforms for the 1999 season.
In 2000 the heirs of Joe DiMaggio's estate, two granddaughters and their four children, welcomed the renaming of San Francisco's North Beach playground, the place where Joe DiMaggio first took up baseball as a boy, as the Joe DiMaggio North Beach Playground.