With few wise words Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement

“When baseball is no longer fun, it’s no longer a game, and so, I’ve played my last game.”

With these words Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement on December 11, 1951.

A three-time MVP winner and 13-time All-Star, DiMaggio is the only player to be selected for the All-Star Game in every season he played. During his thirteen years with the Yankees, the club won ten American League pennants and nine World Series championships. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 – July 16, 1941), a record that as of today still stands. DiMaggio was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.

DiMaggio made his major league debut on May 3, 1936, batting ahead of Lou Gehrig. The Yankees had not been to the World Series since 1932, but they won the next four Fall Classics. In 1939, DiMaggio was nicknamed the “Yankee Clipper” by Yankee’s stadium announcer Arch McDonald, when he likened DiMaggio’s speed and range in the outfield to the then-new Pan American airliner.

In January 1937, DiMaggio met actress Dorothy Arnold. They married at San Francisco’s St. Peter and Paul Church on November 19, 1939, as 20,000 well-wishers jammed the streets. Their son, Joseph Paul DiMaggio III, was born at Doctors Hospital on October 23, 1941. In the September 1949 issue of SPORT magazine, Hank Greenberg said that DiMaggio covered so much ground in center field that the only way to get a hit against the Yankees was “to hit ’em where Joe wasn’t.” On February 7, 1949, DiMaggio signed a record contract worth $100,000 and became the first baseball player to break $100,000 in earnings.

Marilyn Monroe? Yes of course! According to her autobiography, Marilyn Monroe originally did not want to meet DiMaggio, fearing that he was a stereotypical arrogant athlete! Their marriage was filled with “violence”. One typical forceful incident occurred immediately after the skirt-blowing scene in The Seven Year Itch, the very known Marilyn’s pose. The couple had a “yelling battle” in the theater lobby. A month later, she filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. That was exactly 274 days after the wedding.

DiMaggio was a heavy smoker for much of his adult life. After a lung cancer operation he returned to his Florida home on January 19, 1999, where he died on March 8.

Joe, “Joltin’ Joe” or “The Yankee Clipper” was an american baseball hero. You can find tones of memorabilia about him. And people love them!

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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