Oblivious in Washington Heights and Loving It

Who’s Joe DiMaggio

My one outstanding recollection and probably funniest story about P.S. 173 was my encounter with Jolten Joe.

Now, you have to bear in mind, when it came to baseball, in my house everybody rooted, and I mean crazily, wildly rooted, for the New York Giants.  This was before they packed up and moved to San Francisco and my family went into profound mourning.  Mom, and when others were home, listened to almost every game and went to many at the Polo Grounds at 155^th Street.  Baseball talk at the dinner table was about the Giants.  As an example of the craziness, in 1951, when the Giants won the pennant with that great, stupendous Bobby Thomson homerun, my mother strung up a huge sign from our 5^th floor apartment windows.  In fact, I can still hear Russ Hodges, the Giants announcer, screaming over and over and over, “The Giants win the pennant!  The Giants win the pennant!”  Got the idea, I was brought up on the Giants.

OK, back to Joe.  In around 1949, I was called out of class.  I was told that because I was one of the best, if not the best, athletes in the school, I was going to go down to the main lobby to meet a baseball player.  Apparently, from what I learned later, ballplayers were making the rounds of New York City schools.  I was taken down to the first floor, and there I was introduced to this ballplayer.  Tall, lean and smiling he stood there and put out his huge hand.  The teacher said something, probably his name.  I stood there and meekly shook his hand, but totally unemotional and bewildered.  As I look back, I imagine he must have thought me stupid, slow or overwhelmed by his presence at this utter lack of reaction.  It was, however, none of these things.  I simply did not know who he was.  I never heard of him.  How could this be?  The man was famous.  But, he was a Yankee and, therefore, he might as well have been a Martian.  Nobody talked about Yankees at home.  If it were Wes Westrum, Larry Jansen or Clint Hartung, I would have known them instantly.  If it were Whitey Lockman, Bobby Thomson or Sid Gordon, I would have been jumping up and down.  The experience was so unfulfilling that when I went home I didn’t even bother to tell anybody.  After all, they probably wouldn’t know this stranger either.  Years later, I saw this guy and heard this name, Joe DiMaggio.  Holy cow, this was the guy I met.  Well, so what, he still wasn’t a Giant.  The big deal would have been meeting the Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays.  That would have been a real thrill.  I often wondered before Joe died, whether he would have remembered the incident if we met.  The little expressionless boy, who either deflated or inflated his ego depending on how he interpreted my Yankeeless background.