Although
his father and brothers were fisherman, Joe DiMaggio could only fake
it.
(posed
publicity photo courtesy Julian Frazer)
Why
Joe Left Town
by
Jamie Jobb
Before
he turned three years old, Joe DiMaggio and his family had left
Martinez for good. Joe often returned to the town of his birth after
he retired from baseball, but San Francisco gets to call itself Joe’s
hometown. That’s where Joe and his brothers Vincent and Dominic
learned the ropes of professional baseball.
If
they’d remained in Martinez, fishing knots would have been the only
ropes the DiMaggio boys would have known. Papa didn’t like his
sons wasting time playing ball. But few people realize the real
reason the DiMaggios had to leave Martinez in the first place.
Their
move was the result of an odd accident involving a passing train and
Joe’s sister, Frances DiMaggio, who was seven at the time.
The
DiMaggios – father Giuseppe and mother Rosalie along with their
nine children – lived in a small house at the base of Island Hill
at the foot of Grangers Wharf on Foster Street near where Barrellesa
crosses the railroad tracks. The house no longer remains, but it’s
marked by an historic placard.
Like
other Sicilian-American children in the neighborhood at that time,
the DiMaggios were accustomed to playing on and around the railroad
tracks that ran less than a block from their house. One day young
Frances was playing there when she was hit in the eye by a sudden
piece of hot charcoal from a passing steam locomotive.
The
damage to her eye was so severe that inexperienced local doctor Edwin
Merrithew, M.D., could do little more than treat her with bandages in
Martinez. Merrithew was known as “Il Dottore del Dichu” –
or “the Doctor of The Ditch” – which referred to Alhambra
Creek, where no other doctor in town would venture.
So
Rosalie had to take her child to San Francisco for proper ocular
health care. Bridges to the city would not be build for another two
decades, so Frances and her mother had to ferry to the City. That
was not an easy commute in 1917.
After
a while, those transbay trips became so burdensome that Rosalie
convinced her husband to move the family to North Beach where he and
his sons could still maintain their fishing boats in Fishermans Wharf
from their apartment on Taylor Street.
Little
did these parents realize how much The National Pastime would affect
their younger sons once they started playing hardball in their fields
of dreams on San Francisco streets.
*
* *
“Ya
Gotta Believe!”
Another
famous big leaguer, New York Met reliever Tug McGraw, also grew up in
Martinez. But Tug’s legacy doesn’t hold the water that the
Yankee Clipper held. For one thing, McGraw was born in 1944 and
belonged to a generation of ballplayers far removed from the heyday
of DiMaggio, Ruth and Shoeless Joe.
McGraw’s
dad was know as “Big Mac”, so his mother knew their son needed a
nickname. She decided to call him “Tug” because of his
particularly aggressive way of breast feeding. The McGraws left
Martinez before Tug entered high school, so he never got to play for
the Alhambra High Bulldogs.
McGraw
is most remembered for minting the phrase “Ya Gotta Believe” –
which became the rallying cry for the once hapless Mets as he became
the National League’s top closer in the early 1970s.
Tug’s
catchphrase might be something Martinez Clippers would want to try as
their rallying cry! At least they could claim that the expression
has a somewhat local pedigree!
*
* *
Martinez
author Jamie Jobb has written a play, “Joe Fish Ties the Knot” or
“Last Gillnet on Grangers Wharf”, which assumes a guy named Joe
never left his hometown, particularly after he met the girl of his
dreams named Norma Jeane. In this what-if story, Jobb further assumes
Norma Jeane never knew Hollywood and Joe never played baseball. She
worked in the cannery and Joe toughed out his living on a Monterey
Clipper hauling in salmon stuck in gillnets.
The
play will be read as part of the Dramatists Guild “Footlight
Series” on September 1 in San Francisco. For more information,
contact: 925 723-1782.
*
* *
Sources:
Joe
DiMaggio – The Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Cramer. 2000. Simon &
Schuster, New York. p. 18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_McGraw#"Ya_Gotta_Believe!"
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