[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 41 (Tuesday, March 16, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2783-S2785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S2783]]
                 RECOGNIZING AND HONORING JOE DiMAGGIO

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 63, introduced 
earlier today by Senators Moynihan, Lott, and others.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:.

       A resolution (S. Res. 63) recognizing and honoring Joe 
     DiMaggio.

  The Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. ``Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side!'' Well, 
he is on the other side now, but stays with us in our memories.
  Mine are, well, special to me. It would be in 1938 or 1939 in 
Manhattan. The Depression lingered. Life was, well, life. But there was 
even so somebody who made a great difference and that was Lou Gehrig of 
the New York Yankees. I admired him as no other man. Read of him each 
day, or so it seemed, in the Daily News. And yet I had never seen him 
play. One summer day my mother somehow found the needful sixty cents. 
Fifty cents for a ticket at the Stadium, a nickel for the subway up and 
back. Off I went in high expectation. But Gehrig, disease I must assume 
was now in progress, got no hit. A young player I had scarce noticed 
hit a home run. Joe DiMaggio. It began to drizzle, but they kept the 
game going just long enough so there would be no raincheck. I went home 
lifeless and lay on my bed desolate.
  Clearly I was in pain, if that is the word. The next day my mother 
somehow came up with yet another sixty cents. Up I went. And the exact 
same sequence occurred.
  I went home. But not lifeless. To the contrary, animated.
  For I hated Joe DiMaggio. For life.
  I knew this to be a sin, but it did not matter. Gehrig retired, then 
died. My animus only grew more animated.
  Thirty years and some went by. I was now the United States Permanent 
Representative to the United Nations. One evening I was having dinner 
at an Italian restaurant in midtown. As our company was about finished, 
who walked in but DiMaggio himself, accompanied by a friend. They took 
a table against the wall opposite. I watched. He looked over, smiled 
and gave a sort of wave. Emboldened, as we were leaving, I went over to 
shake hands. He rose wonderfully to the occasion.
  I went out on 54th Street as I recall. And of a sudden was struck as 
if by some Old Testament lightening. ``My God,'' I thought, ``he has 
forgiven me!'' He must have known about me all those years, but he 
returned hate with love. My soul had been in danger and he had rescued 
me.
  Still years later, just a little while ago the Yankees won another 
pennant. Mayor Guiliani arranged a parade from the Battery to City 
Hall. Joe was in the lead car; I was to follow. As we waited to get 
started, I went up to him, introduced myself and told of having watched 
him at the Stadium these many years ago. ``But I have to tell you,'' I 
added, ``Lou Gehrig was my hero.''
  ``He was my hero, too,'' said Joe.
  Well, Joe, too, was a hero to many people. Few have embodied the 
American dream or created a more enduring legend than ``Joltin'' Joe 
DiMaggio. And fewer have carried themselves, both on and off the field, 
with the pride and courtliness of, as Hemingway said, ``the great 
DiMaggio.''
  Born the fourth son of an immigrant fisherman--two other brothers 
also played in the majors--he joined the Yankees in 1936 after dropping 
out of high school and grew into the game's most complete center 
fielder. He wore No. 5 and became the heir to Babe Ruth (No. 3) and Lou 
Gehrig (No. 4) in the team's pantheon. DiMaggio was the team's 
superstar, on a team of superstars, for 13 seasons. By the time his 
career ended in 1951, he had played in 11 All-Star games and 10 World 
Series, nine of which the Yankees won.
  The ``Yankee Clipper'' was acclaimed at baseball's centennial in 1969 
as ``the greatest living ballplayer.'' Even his main rival Ted 
Williams, admitted this: ``. . . he [DiMaggio] was the greatest 
baseball player of our time. He could do it all.'' DiMaggio played 
1,736 games with the Yankees. He had a career batting average of .325 
and hit 361 home runs while striking out only 369 times. He could 
indeed do it all.
  But there is one statistic for which DiMaggio will be most 
remembered: his 56-game hitting streak, possibly the most enduring 
accomplishment in all of sports. The streak began on May 15, 1941, with 
a single in four at-bats against the Chicago White Sox, and ended 56 
games later on July 17 during a hot night in Cleveland. In 56 games, 
DiMaggio had gone to bat 223 times and delivered 91 hits, including 15 
home runs, for a .408 average. He drew 21 walks, twice was hit by 
pitched balls, scored 56 runs, and knocked in 55. He hit in every game 
for two months, striking out just seven times.
  But DiMaggio's game was so complete and elegant that statistics 
cannot do it justice. The New York Times said in an editorial when he 
retired, ``The combination of proficiency and exquisite grace which Joe 
DiMaggio brought to the art of playing center field was something no 
baseball averages can measure and that must be seen to be believed and 
appreciated.''
  Today, I join the Majority Leader and Senators Charles Schumer (D-
NY), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Jim H. Bunning 
(R-KY) in introducing a resolution that honors Joe DiMaggio for his 
storied baseball career and for all that he has done off the field. As 
we reflect on his life and mourn his death, I ask that we consider 
ourselves extremely lucky for knowing such a man, particularly in this 
age of pampered sports heroes, when ego and self-importance often 
overshadow what is occurring on the field. Even I, who resented 
DiMaggio for displacing my hero Gehrig, have come to realize that there 
will never be another like Joseph Paul DiMaggio.
  I ask unanimous consent that the March 9, 1999, New York Times 
editorial and George F. Will's op-ed in the Washington Post on Joe 
DiMaggio be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 9, 1999]

                         The DiMaggio Mystique

       It has been almost half a century since Joe DiMaggio turned 
     his center-field kingdom in Yankee Stadium over to a 
     strapping youngster named Mickey Mantle, but even now, in 
     death, Joe DiMaggio still owns that green acreage. He roamed 
     the great open spaces there with a grace and grandeur that 
     redefined the art of fielding. Even more than the prolific 
     hitting that earned him enduring fame, his silky, seemingly 
     effortless motion across the outfield grass was the signature 
     of his game.
       DiMaggio was one of those rare sports stars, like Babe 
     Ruth, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, who not only set new 
     standards of athletic excellence but also became a 
     distinctive part of American culture. As stylish off the 
     field as on, DiMaggio was an icon of elegance and success, a 
     name as recognizable on Broadway and in Hollywood as at the 
     ball park. Millions of baby boomers who never saw DiMaggio 
     play instantly understood the reference in the Paul Simon 
     song of the 1960's--``Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A 
     nation turns its lonely eyes to you.''
       Other men have hit the ball farther and run the bases 
     faster, but few have excelled at so many elements of the 
     sport. DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 remains 
     untouched, one of the great benchmarks of consistency and 
     productivity in all of sports. In 13 seasons with the 
     Yankees, DiMaggio produced a career batting average of .325, 
     hit 361 home runs and knocked in more than 100 runs in a 
     season nine times. He played in 10 World Series, 9 of which 
     the Yankees won. He possessed one of the sweetest swings 
     baseball has ever seen, a hitting stroke of such precision 
     that he struck out only 369 times in his major league career.
       But the numbers alone do not explain the DiMaggio mystique. 
     Part of it was his brief, turbulent marriage to Marilyn 
     Monroe and his taste for nightclubs and tony hotels. Part of 
     it was his $100,000-a-year salary, a small fortune in his 
     days as a Yankee. For younger fans, there was also an almost 
     mystical link to the past--DiMaggio joined the Yankees in 
     1936, just two years after Babe Ruth left and before Lou 
     Gehrig retired. His appearance on ceremonial occasions at 
     Yankee Stadium in recent years was thrilling for fans of all 
     ages.
       His fame also flowed from the aura of quiet dignity that 
     DiMaggio carefully preserved throughout his career and 
     retirement. With the notable exception of his service as a 
     pitchman for the Bowery Savings Bank and Mr. Coffee brewing 
     appliances, he dodged the celebrity limelight. The mystery 
     only added to his allure.
       DiMaggio, who was 84, died with opening day a month away. 
     Though he will no longer return to Yankee Stadium to deliver 
     the ceremonial first pitch, his singular record of

[[Page S2784]]

     athletic achievement and classy conduct will be long revered.
                                  ____


                (From the Washington Post, Mar. 9, 1999]

                       DiMaggio's Elegant Career

                          (By George F. Will)

       There is peculiar pathos to the lives of most great 
     athletes because their careers compress life's trajectory of 
     aspiration, accomplishment and decline. Then what? For most, 
     the rest of life, which is most of life, is anticlimax, like 
     that of
       Runners whom renown outran,
       And the name died before the man,
       But there was seamlessness to Joe DiMaggio's life in and 
     after the game. The patina of age did not dull the luster of 
     his name. Baseball, sport of the long season and much 
     history, has an unusually rich statistical geology--a 
     sediment of numbers. Some numbers are so talismanic that 
     simply citing them suffices to identify the achievement and 
     achiever.
       Examples are 116 (victories in a season, 1906 Cubs); 511 
     (career victories, Cy Young); 1.12 (season earned run 
     average, Bob Gibson, 1968); 130 (stolen bases in a season, 
     Rickey Henderson, 1982); 755 (home runs, career, Hank Aaron); 
     60, then 61 and now 70 (home runs by Babe Ruth in 1927, Roger 
     Maris in 1961 and Mark McGwire in 1998); .406 (most recent 
     .400 season, Ted Williams, 1941). And baseball's most 
     instantly recognized number, 56--Joe DiMaggio's consecutive 
     game hitting streak in 1941.
       The Streak, as it is still known, was stunning, even if a 
     sympathetic official scorer at Yankee Stadium may have turned 
     an error or two into hits. It took two sensational plays by 
     Indians third baseman Ken Keltner to stop The Streak, and the 
     next day DiMaggio started a 16-game streak. His 56 has not 
     been seriously challenged in 57 seasons. His 1993 minor 
     league streak of 61 has not been matched since then.
       Because of baseball's grinding everydayness, professionals 
     place a premium on consistency. DiMaggio brought his best, 
     which was baseball's best, to the ballpark every day. What he 
     epitomized to a mesmerized nation in 1941--steely will, 
     understated style, heroism for the long haul--the nation 
     would need after Dec. 7.
       However, the unrivaled elegance of his career is defined by 
     two numbers even more impressive than his 56. They are 8 and 
     0.
       Eight is the astonishingly small difference between his 13-
     year career totals for home runs (361) and strikeouts (369). 
     (In the 1986 and 1987 season, Jose Canseco hit 64 home runs 
     and struck out 332 times.) Zero is the number of times 
     DiMaggio was thrown out going from first to third.
       On the field, the man made few mistakes. Off the field, he 
     made a big one in his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. But even it 
     enlarged his mythic status. As when they were in Japan, and 
     she visited U.S. troops in Korea. Upon her return to Tokyo, 
     she said to him, ingenuously: You've never heard cheering 
     like that--there must have been fifty or sixty thousand. He 
     said, dryly: Oh, yes I have.
       They had gone to Japan at the recommendation of a friend 
     (Lefty O'Doul, manager of the San Francisco Seals), who said 
     that in a foreign country they could wander around without 
     drawing crowds. The friend did not know that Japan was then 
     obsessed with things American, especially baseball stars and 
     movie stars. When the most famous of each category landed, it 
     took their car six hours to creep to their hotel through more 
     than a million people.
       As a Californian, he represented baseball's future--he and 
     San Diego's Ted Williams, a 21-year-old rookie in 1939, when 
     DiMaggio was 24. DiMaggio, son of a San Francisco fisherman, 
     was proud, reserved and as private as possible for the 
     bearer--the second generation--of America's premium athletic 
     tradition, the Yankee greatness established by Babe Ruth and 
     Lou Gehrig. DiMaggio felt violated by the sight of Marilyn 
     filming the famous scene in ``The Seven Year Itch'' when a 
     gust of wind from a Manhattan subway grate blows her skirt up 
     above her waist.
       Pride, supposedly one of the seven deadly sins, is often a 
     virtue and the source of others. DiMaggio was pride 
     incarnate, and he and Hank Greenberg did much to stir ethnic 
     pride among Italian Americans and Jews. When as a player 
     DiMaggio had nothing left to prove, he was asked why he still 
     played so hard, every day. Because, he said, every day there 
     is apt to be some child in the stand who has never before 
     seen me play.
       An entire ethic, the code of craftsmanship, can be tickled 
     from that admirable thought. Not that DiMaggio practiced the 
     full range of his craft. When one of his managers was asked 
     if DiMaggio could bunt, he said he did not know and ``I'll 
     never find out, either.''
       DiMaggio, one of Jefferson's ``natural aristocrats,'' 
     proved that a healthy democracy knows and honors nobility 
     when it sees it.

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, as a Senator from Joe DiMaggio's home 
state, I am pleased to be an original co-sponsor of the resolution 
honoring ``the Yankee Clipper.'' Joe DiMaggio holds a unique place in 
the hearts of every baseball fan and every Californian.
  Joe DiMaggio was born in 1914 in Martinez, California, near San 
Francisco Bay. Like many Californians then and now, Joe was the child 
of immigrants. His parents came from Sicily to California, where his 
father found work as a fisherman.
  At age 18, Joe began his professional baseball career with the San 
Francisco Seals, where he set a Pacific Coast League record that still 
stands by hitting in 61 straight games. Three years later, he joined 
the New York Yankees and immediately became one of baseball's brightest 
stars. In 1941, his 56-game hitting streak set a major league record 
that most baseball fans consider the game's greatest achievement.
  DiMaggio played 13 seasons for the Yankees, winning three Most 
Valuable Player awards and playing on nine World Series championship 
teams. He was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955 and voted 
Major League Baseball's greatest living player in 1969.
  Joe DiMaggio was a great ballplayer, but he was far more than that. 
Joe was a role model for young people and a model citizen. At the 
height of his career, he left baseball to volunteer for the Army Air 
Corps and served three years in World War II. In his later years he 
worked tirelessly to support the Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in 
Hollywood, Florida.
  I will never forget a televised image of Joe DiMaggio from a decade 
ago. In October 1989, as the Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants were 
about to start a World Series game, a mammoth earthquake struck the Bay 
Area. Fire swept through San Francisco's Marina district, where 
DiMaggio lived at the time. That night, as residents struggled to deal 
with the earthquake and its aftermath, they saw a man who--despite his 
advanced age--showed the strength and dignity to walk calmly through 
the rubble and reassure his neighbors. At this moment, as always, 
DiMaggio was an inspiration to us all.
  From his early days with the San Francisco Seals to his service as 
baseball's greatest ambassador, Joe DiMaggio was the epitome of 
elegance, grace, and good sportsmanship.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Moynihan, 
Lott, and Boxer in cosponsoring this resolution to honor Mr. Joe 
DiMaggio. On March 8, 1999, Joe DiMaggio, one of the greatest baseball 
players of all-time, died in Tampa, Florida. The Yankee Clipper led his 
life with class and dignity. A true hero and the quintessential 
American, Mr. DiMaggio gave people something to believe in.
  Playing 13 seasons in the major leagues, all for the New York 
Yankees, Number 5 not only took left field in Yankee Stadium, but also 
took over New York and baseball showing us his talent day in and day 
out. When one looks at the numbers accumulated by Mr. DiMaggio, it is 
hard to think of anyone who did it better and in such a genuine 
fashion. As a baseball player, few have approached DiMaggio. With a 
.325 batting average, nine World Series rings, a 56 consecutive game 
hitting streak in 1941 (a major league record that has never been 
seriously challenged for more than 5 decades), 361 home runs with only 
369 strike-outs, Joe DiMaggio transcended the game of baseball and will 
remain a symbol for the ages of talent, commitment, and grace. As Simon 
and Garfunkel sang in their hit song Mrs. Robinson, ``where have you 
gone Joe DiMaggio. . ..'', the answer is, into our hearts, which will 
stay with us forever.
  But Joe DiMaggio was more than a great baseball player, he 
transcended the game and will remain a symbol for the ages--a symbol of 
talent, commitment, and grace. With so few true heroes today, we are 
lucky that millions of New Yorkers and baseball fans everywhere could 
live their lives touched by a hero like Joe DiMaggio.
  Mr. COCHRAN. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution and preamble 
be agreed to, en bloc, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, 
and that any statements relating to the resolution be placed at the 
appropriate place in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res. 63) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  The resolution, with its preamble, reads as follows:

                               S.Res. 63

       Joseph Paul ``Joe'' DiMaggio was born in Martinez, 
     California, on November 25, 1914;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio was the son of Sicilian immigrants, 
     Joseph Paul and Rosalia DiMaggio, and was the 2d of 3 
     brothers to play Major League Baseball;

[[Page S2785]]

       Whereas Joe DiMaggio played 13 seasons in the major 
     leagues, all for the New York Yankees;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio, who wore number 5 in Yankee 
     pinstripes, became a baseball icon in the 1941 season by 
     hitting safely in 56 consecutive games, a major league record 
     that has stood for more than 5 decades and has never been 
     seriously challenged;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio compiled a .325 batting average during 
     his storied career and played on 9 World Series championship 
     teams;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio hit 361 home runs during his career, 
     while striking out only 369 times;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio was selected to the Baseball Hall of 
     Fame in 1955, 4 years after his retirement;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio in 1969 was voted Major League 
     Baseball's greatest living player;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio served the Nation in World War II as a 
     member of the Army Air Corps;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio was tireless in helping others and was 
     devoted to the ``Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital'' in 
     Hollywood, Florida;
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio will be remembered as a role model for 
     generations of young people; and
       Whereas Joe DiMaggio transcended baseball and will remain a 
     symbol for the ages of talent, commitment, and achievement: 
     Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate recognizes and honors Joe 
     DiMaggio--
       (1) for his storied baseball career;
       (2) for his many contributions to the Nation throughout his 
     lifetime; and
       (3) for transcending baseball and becoming a symbol for the 
     ages of talent, commitment, and achievement.

                          ____________________