This is the life story of Joe DiMaggio, including his first game with the New York Yankees in the 1930s, his marriage to Marilyn Monroe & his rise to hero status. Richard Ben Cramer tells of the ways in which fame can both build & destroy.

"Reminisce as Joe DeMaggio: The Yankee Clipper - through accounts by former teammates, an inspiring photo essay, a gallery of artwork, and more - offers a most comprehensive look at baseball's enduring superstar."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

At both the plate and in the field, Joe DiMaggio was one of baseball's most graceful athletes. During his thirteen seasons with the New York Yankees, he played in ten World Series and won nine world championships. For his career, he was a two-time batting champion, three-time Most Valuable Player, hit 361 home runs, and maintained a .325 batting average. His fifty-six-consecutive-game batting streak in 1941 has yet to be broken. DiMaggio's baseball career began in 1932 when he filled in at shortstop at midseason for a minor league team. In 1934 he became the property of the New York Yankees, which marked the beginning of his road toward greatness in the nation's most famous city on one of the most hallowed fields in the sport. Off the field, his life was marked by a famous marriage to and divorce from Marilyn Monroe, a late-1960s popular song, and a somewhat unhappy retirement. On baseball's one hundredth anniversary in 1969, he was voted the greatest living player of the game, and the Yankees erected a plaque to him among the memorials to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. On March 8, 1999, at the age of eighty-four, DiMaggio died after a five-month battle with cancer. In I Remember Joe DiMaggio, dozens of the great ballplayer's contemporaries, teammates, coaches, fans, friends, and relatives recall their favorite memories and anecdotes of this man who became an icon of America. It is a warm, entertaining, and inspiring book about a man whose fame has been the stuff of legend for more than half a century.

Joe DiMaggio’s rise from the boy “least likely to succeed” to the top of the professional baseball world is truly a remarkable story. As a teenager his favorite sport was tennis, but when two of his brothers became professional baseball players, Joe realized that here was a way to fame and fortune he wanted for himself and his family. After three years with the San Francisco Seals, he was sold to the New York Yankees, where he gained everlasting fame as one of the greatest players in the history of the game.

"Revealing and little-known stories of the great Yankees Hall of Famer from the man who knew him best in the last ten years of his life"--

This is the book for the serious DiMaggio and sports-as-culture buff. [Moore] . . . has sifted throught most of what has been written and rumored about the Yankee Clipper in newspapers, magazines, books and even songs. The narrative portion--there's also a bibliography and DiMaggio's baseball stats--is divided into two sections: DiMaggio's life on and off the field, and his evolving stature as a mythic figure. All rendered in sensitive, but refreshingly unsentimental prose. USA Today Anyone serious about building an excellent baseball library or interested in the role of sports in American society should get a copy of this book. . . . An excellent and well-researched book. The Sporting News