Chapter One
Joe DiMaggio sat on the tar of the playground, with his back against the wall on the Powell Street side, his legs cocked in front of him like a couple of pickets. At fifteen, Joe was mostly legs - leg-bones, more like it - and a head taller than his friends. It was Niggy Fo who gave him his nickname,
Coscilunghi - that meant "Long-legs" in Sicilian.
All the boys on the North Beach playground had names - that meant you were in, you belonged there. There was Shabby Minafo and his brother, Bat (he only wanted to bat), and Hungry Geraldi (he could really eat); Friggles Tomei had those fancy feet at second base; Lodigiani they called Dempsey, because he once decked a guy in a fight; and Niggy, of course, got his name for his dark skin. They were always on the playground or on the street. Who had room at home? On this spring afternoon, in 1930, they were playing Piggy on a Bounce - one guy with a bat, everyone else in the field, and one guy would hit till someone caught the ball, or caught it on one bounce, and then the batter had to take the field.
Joe was at the playground most days, too ... but like today - not exactly with them. He'd come out of his house, down the hill from Taylor Street - but he'd sit apart, watching in silence, arms draped across his knees in a pose of solitary sufficiency. Or maybe it wasn't all pose. Joe was different from the other guys. They always wanted to play ball. They were desperate to play ball - even if they could barely play. Joe could play. But you had to get him to play.
Bat Minafo and Frank Venezia always picked the teams. They were little guys, but pretty good players. They'd flip a coin, and whoever won would pick Joe. Guys would actually say, "Oh, you got Joe, you're gonna win." It wasn't just the way Joe could hit. (Even those mushy city-issue softballs, Joe could hammer them the length of the playground, a block and a half, into the swimming pool.) ... But more than that, it was the way he was in a game. He had to win. That was the reason he'd play - he wanted to win something. Sometimes, Bat and Frank would make everybody throw in a nickel or a dime, and they'd play winner-take-all. Then Joe would play, for sure. But playing just to play ... well, mostly he'd sit.
In the long fingers of his right hand, he'd dangle a smoke in front of his shins - if no one was looking. There were rules about smoking, but not for Joe. The playground assistant was a guy named Rizzo. He only had one arm, but he played a mean game of tennis. He'd throw that ball up, whip his racket around with the same hand, and bang - the guy could murder the ball. No one but Joe could return his serve. So Rizzo let Joe smoke - sort of a tip of the cap. Still, Joe was furtive, so no one would mooch. If he had a pack, he'd keep it in his sock. If anybody saw it, that pack was a goner. Mostly he'd roll his own. A pouch of Bull Durham cost the same five cents, but he could roll a hundred smokes. A nickel was something to hold on to in Joe's world.
At that Powell Street playground wall, he was at the center of everything he knew. There, arrayed in front of him, chasing that city softball, laughing at each other, tearing up their shoes on the tar, were the boys who were personages in his life - apart from his family, it was almost everybody who mattered. That day, it was Niggy Fo, Shabby, Bat; there was Nig Marino watching from the side (Niggy was a fighter, not a ballplayer); big George Solari in the outfield; Hungry, Friggles, and Banchero in the infield; Ciccio LaRocca on the mound. And the batter was Frank Venezia, who was slapping line drives all over the lot (and laughing at Ciccio, who usually got him out with five pitches) ... that was one reason Frank would remember the day - he never thought he was that good with the bat.
They all lived within ten tight blocks. Joe knew their little brothers, who tagged along and tried to play. He knew their sisters, who played rotation basketball at the hoop past left center field. (Well, he knew the sisters by sight: Joe never said five words in a row to anybody's sister.) He knew all their houses, and who slept where. He knew their mothers, and where they shopped. He knew what their fathers fished.
On the left, past third base, was the boys' bathroom. Joe spent a lot of time in there, playing cards. Joe was good at cards. But that was like baseball: he wasn't just playing. Joe and Niggy Marino used to box the cards - fix the deck - or they'd play partners, and kick each other to signal for discards: five kicks meant to throw the five, two for the deuce, etc. By the time they finished, their legs were black-and-blue. But they went home with a few extra nickels - money from the patsies. Poor Frank Venezia! He played all the time and never caught on they were cheating him. But that was Frank. He just thought he was lousy at cards.
Past the outfield, past the basketball and tennis courts and the open swimming pool, Columbus Avenue cut the playground off at an angle. Nothing was exactly square in North Beach - a neighborhood of odd intersections and acute hillside corners - because Columbus sliced through the street grid diagonally, from the office buildings downtown, north and west to Fisherman's Wharf. Columbus was the hub for Italian San Francisco, and the boys' window on the ways of the world. On Columbus, at the corner of the playground, they'd catch the F-car downtown - Stockton Street, all the way to Market. After school, kids rode two for a nickel.
A block and a half up Columbus lay the expanse of Washington Square, the gran piazza, like a carpet of green spread in front of the great Sts. Peter and Paul's Church. The Italian Cathedral of the West was at that time only five years old - Joe had seen the whole thing built. But its massive twin spires, the solemn gleam of the grand marble altar, even the bright modern classrooms for the School of Americanization, were designed to bear witness eternally to proud Italianit` and the achievement of his parents' generation. On the grass in front of the church, the men of the community gathered every afternoon for coffee (maybe a little wine) and argument - though Joe's dad seldom made an appearance. Giuseppe DiMaggio wasn't much for talk.
Near the church on Columbus stood the other institutions of the grown-up world: there was the Valente-Marini Funeral Home (you could pass from your christening at Sts. Peter and Paul's to a coffin - hopefully not too fast, but all within a couple of blocks). Up the street, there was the community hall, Casa Fugazi, named for Commendatsre John F. Fugazi, a banker and one of the early Italian-American prominenti. At Columbus and Stockton stood the Bank of America, whose founder, A. P. Giannini, was most prominent of all prominenti. On Columbus, too, there was the library - but no one Joe knew went to the library. The boys were more interested in other cultural sites on Columbus, like LaRocca's Corner, where the wiseguys played cards all day over cups of LaRocca's homemade wine. (Prohibition was an approximate science in North Beach, and Vince LaRocca, Ciccio's uncle, was "well connected.") And nearby were the nightclubs, the Lido Cafe and Bimbo's 365 Club, with their showgirls - tall gorgeous girls, who'd come from all over ... though not from North Beach. No Italian family had showgirls.
From Columbus came food for the neighborhood tables - from Molinari's big new deli, and Caligari's bakery on Green, just off the Avenue. On Columbus at Green was the Buon Gusto Market, and off Columbus, on Powell, there was Celli's, where they made the best pasta and let you buy on credit. In Joe's crowd, there were months when everybody ate on credit - say, before crab season began. Clothes, same way: without credit, you'd wear your big brothers' stuff forever. Every family ran a tab at Tragone's, on Columbus, for clothes and shoes. You could get the shoes cheaper at Gallenkamp's, on Kearny Street - but that was all the way downtown. (And it was some kind of Kraut chain, strictly cash-and-carry.)
Three blocks west of the playground was Joe's first school, Hancock Elementary, just up the alley from his house. The school was built into a down-slope, so the recess yard in front of the school was a flat pad of concrete below street level. And a pathway, like a little bridge, led from the street to the school's main door. In that recess yard, the boys used to play a kind of baseball - but with no bat: you'd just whack the ball with your hand and run like hell to first base, which was a basement doorway. Joe was the only boy who could smack the ball over the bridge. He had long arms and big hands he could swing like a hammer. That was his main distinction at Hancock. That and penmanship. One of the teachers, Mrs. Lieboldt, made her kids do every exercise in the workbook - perfect round O's, straight lines crossing T's ... then she gave out fancy certificates: "For acquired excellence in practical BUSINESS WRITING by study and practice from The Zaner Method of Arm Movement Writing. (The Zaner-Bloser Co., Columbus, Ohio)." It was the only school honor Joe ever won. (But everybody got one, even Niggy Marino - and Niggy got thrown out of all his schools. Even the Ethan Allen School for tough kids, they threw him out.)
Joe's second school, two blocks east, was Francisco Junior High. Nobody made him do anything there. Joe and Frank Venezia used to sit in class like a couple of dummies - they never kept up on the reading. The other kids gave all the answers. They just seemed smarter. Actually, Joe wasn't stupid. But he never wanted to open his mouth, say something wrong, and look stupid. That came from home. In the flat on Taylor Street, they talked Sicilian. Everybody laughed at Joe's lousy Sicilian. (Even his little brother, Dommie, made fun of him.) And shame was what Joe couldn't stand. He was a blusher. (That embarrassed him, too.) So, he just grew silent. His sisters talked about him behind his back: they thought he was "slow." ... Anyway, Joe didn't have to talk at school. None of the teachers made him talk. They just moved him on, year after year. It was like no one even knew he was there.
Joe knew well enough to get along in his world. He knew how to strip the copper wire from dilapidated buildings and the lead from around the pipes. He could sell that stuff for four cents a pound any day. Of course, the way Joe was, he wanted six cents. There was a junk dealer who came up Columbus - used to stop at the corner of the open field where the boys played hardball. They called it the Horses' Lot because the Golden State Dairy turned its horses loose there, afternoons and weekends, when they weren't out with the milk wagons. Where Columbus Avenue cut off the Horses' Lot (in left center field), there was a wall of billboards. That's where the junk man stopped to rest his horse. They called him Blue Wagon. "Four cent f'coppa ..." Blue Wagon would say. Joe would mutter to his friends: "C'mon, Jew 'im down." (Of course, he meant Jew him up - but that didn't sound right.) Sometimes, they could keep Blue arguing long enough to steal something off the back of his cart. Next day, they'd sell it back to him. Niggy Marino figured out how to wrap all the guys' wire together around a cobblestone - and sell the whole bundle as copper.
Niggy was a leader. He could fight better than anyone - and did: he had a bout almost every day. He'd take care of all the other guys' fights, too. Niggy led the raids when the grape trucks would rumble in. All the papas made wine in their basements, and the grapes arrived in big, rattling farm trucks - tons at a time. When the trucks geared down for the hill in North Beach, Niggy would climb on the back, or he'd get Frank Venezia to run the truck down (Frank could run like a deer), and they'd throw grapes off to everybody else. Niggy had another trick when the pie truck showed up at the grocery. The driver knew the Dago kids would try to steal his pies. So he'd park where he could see his truck's back door while he was in the store. Niggy would saunter over to the truck, pull the back door open, take out a pie, and stand there, cool as an ice chip. Sure enough, here comes the pie man out of the grocery, screamin' bloody murder, and Niggy would take off. When he got around the corner with the pie man in pursuit, all the rest of the boys would step up to the truck and walk away with fifteen pies. They'd eat till they were sick and sell the rest, twenty-five cents apiece.
That sort of money could take them to the movies. Hell, the way they worked it, a dime took them all to the movies. One guy would buy a ticket at the Acme, or the Peni-a-cade - those were the two cheapest theaters - and then the guy who paid would fling open the back doors and everybody else got in free. (How's the usher supposed to catch fifteen guys?) It was movies that brought the roar of the Twenties to North Beach. Romance at the captain's table on some swank ocean liner, champagne socialites dancing in speakeasies - the boys knew all that stuff from picture shows. When pictures started talking, in 1927, even North Beach was abuzz. But when The Jazz Singer finally arrived, they charged a quarter to see it. So Joe didn't go. Anyway, Joe didn't favor movies with a lot of guys in tuxedos, singing and dancing. He liked that desperate squadron of airmen in The Dawn Patrol ... or tommy guns in the streets of Chicago - Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar ... or maybe best of all, Gary Cooper, The Virginian - or Johnny Mack Brown, the Alabama running back (hero of the Rose Bowl in 1926), who now bestrode the screen as Billy the Kid.
Outside the picture shows, it was like the boom of the Twenties never happened - not in North Beach. In Joe's world, the papas still woke in the middle of the night and walked down the hill to the wharf and their boats. They'd be back in the afternoon, each with a catch to sell, with nets to fold, with maybe a secret paper sack (illegal striped bass, to carry home for supper). In Joe's world, meat was still for Sundays - and Mondays, when the mamma made the leftover scraps into stew or soup.
Maybe Joe's house was poorer than most: nine kids, and a dad whose boat wasn't big enough for crabbing. But everybody had leftovers on Monday - and the same pasta underneath. All the boys on that ballfield could trace their personal histories back to the rocky Sicilian coast - to Sciacca, Porticello, Msola delle Fimmine - all the parents came from the same poor towns. Even in the present, on this vast new continent, the lives they made (and taught to their sons) had the clammy jumbled intimacy of the village. Take LaRocca's Corner, up on Columbus: the building was owned by an uncle of the pitcher, Ciccio LaRocca. But the apartment upstairs was the home of the batter, Frank Venezia (Vince LaRocca was his uncle, too).
Continues...
Excerpted from Joe Dimaggioby Richard Ben Cramer Copyright © 2000 by Richard Ben Cramer. Excerpted by permission.
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