Joe DiMaggio: 1914-1999

Joe DiMaggio collected his 2,000th hit 60 years ago today

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away…

Were Joe DiMaggio only remembered for his baseball career, his legacy would be sound. Were DiMaggio only remembered for his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, his legacy would also, in all likelihood, be in reasonable shape. DiMaggio, however, has a three-legged legacy; after baseball and after his celebrity marriage, he became the commercial spokesperson for the first drip coffeemaker, Mr. Coffee.

DiMaggio was a star of the New York Yankees in the years between the Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig dynasty and, roughly, the Mickey Mantle/Yogi Berra dynasty. That he was an Italian American endeared him to Italian Americans in New York during his playing years; that he routinely batted over .300 endeared him to Yankee fans for all time. DiMaggio's record fifty-six game hitting streak in 1941 has never been toppled.

Like many men of his generation, DiMaggio's career was interrupted by military service; however, he did not see combat during the Second World War, and his career resumed in the 1946 season. Nicknamed “The Yankee Clipper” and “Joltin' Joe,” DiMaggio had career numbers that are the digits of dreams: 361 home runs, 1,537 runs batted in, 2,214 hits, and a .325 lifetime batting average. It is easy to imagine those numbers augmented by the possibilities of the seasons missed because of military service.

And of course, Simon and Garfunkel coo-coo ca-chooingly invoke DiMaggio's name in homage to better times in the 1968 single “Mrs. Robinson.”