It was a Pacific Coast League reunion when Dominic arrived at Boston’s spring training facility in Sarasota and met teammates Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr. They had been born within 18 months of one another. Tom Yawkey was so pleased with Ted’s 1939 season that he had doubled the rookie’s salary to $10,000. In his third season with the Red Sox, the then-20-year-old Doerr had batted .318 with 73 RBI. A core group of hungry young players was forming. The Yankees just couldn’t win five pennants in a row—no team ever had. Surely 1940 was Boston’s turn.
“As a member of the Yankees in 1940, I had no idea what it was like to end the baseball year without a trip to the World Series,” Joe recalled later. “I was about to be brought back to the reality that the Yankees were, in truth, mortal.” He still made a heavenly salary, though, signing a contract for $32,500 before heading to St. Petersburg.
There was a high level of uncertainty in the spring training camps of all 16 major league teams. The 1939 season had been in full swing when Germany invaded Poland. No one knew at the time what would come of that, but in February 1940, with France, Great Britain, Italy, and other countries involved in fighting in Europe and Japan expanding its empire in Asia, there was no doubt that the world was at war and it wouldn’t end soon. Would the Americans get involved? If they did—and most people thought they would—what would be the impact on the national pastime?
To make room for Dominic on the Red Sox roster, Joe Cronin had to cut a player. He had already sold the contract of 21-year-old Pee Wee Reese to the Brooklyn ball club for $75,000. Reese would go on to anchor the infield of the Dodgers for 18 years and be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Outfielder Joe Vosmik had a much less bright future in baseball, but he also attracted money from the Dodgers. The deal opened a spot for Dominic.
Joe’s opinion of his youngest brother was improving. “Dominic came up with the best of recommendations. There was no longer any doubt that Dom was getting by on the family name. He was a ball player in his own right . . . indeed, I had no doubt that Dom would make the grade.”
Boston’s veteran catcher Moe Berg took one look at Dominic at early practices and declared to reporters, “You know me, I’ve seen a lot of rookies in my time. I don’t go overboard with a splash. I don’t say this boy will be better than his brother Joe. I wouldn’t know about that. But this boy is a ball player; he has everything, all the ingredients—like cioppino.” Reporters respected Berg’s opinions. The Princeton graduate knew a dozen languages, including Japanese and Sanskrit.
With Vince in Tampa with the Cincinnati Reds, for the first time all three DiMaggio brothers were in major league spring training camps. Joe maintained that he was “happy over the fact that my brothers were in the major leagues with me,” and there is no reason to doubt him.
In his syndicated column, Joe Williams wrote, “The old-time baseball writers used to refer affectionately to Henry Chadwick as the Father of Baseball. It would seem fitting to bestow this distinction today upon Pere DiMaggio. There is something unusual about a major league team that doesn’t have one of his sons on it these days. We know of no other father who has contributed that many sons to the uplift and perpetuity of what is called the great national pastime.”
It was not a fun rookie spring training camp for Dominic, however. During the very first exhibition game, Boston versus the Reds, he sprained an ankle sliding into home—and in a way it was Vince’s fault. Williams came up with the bases loaded, Dominic on second and Johnny Peacock on third. The sophomore outfielder singled. Because he thought there was some chance it would be caught, Peacock hesitated. Dominic, with a better angle, saw that Vince wasn’t going to get to the ball and took off. Vince grabbed the ball right after it bounced and fired a strike to the plate. Peacock slid safely into home. Right behind him, Dominic slid awkwardly to avoid spiking his teammate in the back. The ankle injury was the result. As John Kiernan reported in the New York Times, “The throw knew no brother, and Dominic was lifted from the ground and helped to the hospital ward for treatment.”
Dominic recovered in time to be in the lineup at Griffith Park, against the Senators, on opening day of the season. “The first time I walked into Fenway Park was a day in April 1940,” he recalled about the subsequent home opener. “There was ice on the field. Coming from California, it was a bit of a shock to me. I was wondering how we were going to start on time.” Another day when Dominic reported to the ballpark, there was snow lingering on the field. When reporters asked what he thought about that, Dominic—who at 23 was seeing snow for the first time—replied, “I know when I was a kid even before I went to Galileo High School—named after a great Italian scientist, by the way—I used to get a big kick out of reading [a poem] by Whittier who, I understand, was a local boy, about ‘Snow, snow, beautiful snow.’ Then there was another by James Russell Lowell, another local boy who made good, which started ‘The snow had begun in the gloaming and busily all the night.’ That was a sad one that used to make me feel like weeping.” The “Little Professor” had begun to intrigue Boston fans before he even played.
Because of Dominic’s injury, Boston had slotted veteran Doc Cramer in center field. Williams was in left field, and a gimpy Dominic had to play right. If he wanted center field back, he’d have to take it from Cramer—not easy considering that Cramer had batted .311 in 1939.
With Dominic now in the majors, articles like “The Amazing DiMaggios” appeared in magazines and newspapers in the spring of 1940. Tom Laird, a San Francisco writer, opined in Collier’s magazine that Dominic was “the greatest twenty-two-year-old [sic] player in the game today.” Even Ty Cobb, Joe’s onetime contract negotiator, claimed, “Dom’s a throwback to the kind of ball players we used to have.”
While Dominic was being hailed this way, Vince was facing what could be his last chance to stay in the majors. Always being compared unfavorably to Joe, he had never really had the press behind him, and he wasn’t exactly lighting up the National League in Cincinnati.
He got a vote of confidence from Cincinnati executive Gabe Paul, who issued a press release championing the Reds’ acquisition of Vince and stating, “It is doubtful whether the most famous of the DiMaggio boys, Joe, can field as well as Vince. This fellow is one of the best defensive men ever to don a spiked shoe, and his throwing arm is strong and accurate.” He also referred to Vince’s offensive outburst in Kansas City the year before: “That record was the cause of the Reds shelling out a fancy price for his services.”
From the beginning of camp in Tampa, however, it was obvious to Vince that he was not in Cincinnati’s plans as a starting outfielder. And in fact, once the season got under way, he only managed to get into two games before the Reds traded him to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Johnny Rizzo. Vince wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad. In Pittsburgh he might be a starter. But the Pirates hadn’t won a pennant since 1927.
In New York, Joe missed the start of the season yet again. He had injured his right knee sliding into second in a tune-up at Ebbets Field against the Brooklyn Dodgers. He watched the opening day game from the bench for the fourth time in five years.
The Yankees missed him. Without him, they were an under-.500 ball club. Boston was in first place, in the unaccustomed position of looking down at a struggling New York squad. Even more than in his rookie year, the pressure was on Ted Williams to lead them to the pennant. As the Yankees had once done for Joe, the Red Sox altered the dimensions of their ballpark to help him do that. They built a new bullpen area and put box seats in right field that brought the home run zone for left-handed batters like Ted significantly closer. Sportswriters dubbed the new area “Williamsburg.”
But at first it didn’t seem to help. Ted was off his pace, hitting just over .300 in the first half of the season. Given the high expectations after his stellar rookie season, it was no surprise that he now heard his first booing fans, and the sportswriters attacked him. His teammate Dominic fretted for him. He’d watched how Joe handled the press in San Francisco. Joe didn’t antagonize reporters, didn’t take the bait, but Ted wasn’t built that way. He’d grown up essentially parentless and fighting for himself. He could turn loud and confrontational when he felt that his manhood or abilities were challenged. It didn’t help when manager Cronin discussed with a Boston reporter the possibility of benching him.
Ted lashed out. After one game in which he was booed, he told reporters, “Boston is a shitty town. Fans are lousy.” When someone questioned his high salary, he responded, “I’d rather be traded to New York.” He told another reporter that he was going to quit baseball and become a fireman. The next time the Red Sox were in New York, the Yankees’ Lefty Gomez stared into the Boston dugout wearing a fireman’s hat. As the coverage got nastier and more personal, Ted repeatedly told reporters to “go fuck yourselves.”
Meanwhile, Dominic had been spending more time on the bench than on the field. Cronin, not completely sold on his ability to be a major league player, was playing Lou Finney instead. Then Finney and Ted Williams collided chasing a fly ball. Ted was carted off, and Cronin put Dominic in his spot. Now he showed his stuff. As one sportswriter put it, “The bespectacled speedster has been showing a brand of outfielding that makes the average major league patrolman look slower than your horse in the home stretch.” When Ted returned to the lineup, Cronin shifted Dominic to center field.
The comparisons to his brother soon came. A typical comment: “He hasn’t Joe’s power at bat, which isn’t surprising in view of the fact that he is three inches shorter and 40 pounds lighter. But he has an eye like a house dick and enough punch to hit any fence in the park and plant an occasional onion in the left field nets.”
He developed a standard reply to the question “How do you compare yourself to Joe?”
“I can do two things better than he can,” he’d say. “Play pinochle and speak Italian.” When pressed for more detail, he’d say how proud he was of Joe, then stress, “Yes, he’s my brother—and I’m his brother.”
Boston readers loved it. It showed a new spunk from a Sox club that no longer felt inferior to the almighty Yankees. With a DiMaggio on each team, their rivalry grew hotter that season.
The brothers faced off for the first time in a five-game series at Fenway Park. For some of the reporters, it was like the other players didn’t exist—this was a Joe versus Dominic series. The press and fans watched intently after the top of the first inning as Dominic ran in from center field and Joe headed there. What would their confrontation be like?
“Hello, Joe,” Dominic said. Joe responded, “Hello, Dom.” And they continued trotting their separate ways.
As Dominic remembered it: “The writers thought it was a case of two brothers being so reserved, so shy, that they hardly said anything to each other, but it wasn’t that at all. We had a game to play, an important game. We couldn’t very well stand out there and exchange news from home.”
Dominic still managed to send a message, though—that he was another DiMaggio who belonged in the majors. In the five games, he rapped out eleven hits to Joe’s nine.
The two teams were back at it again a week later, this time in New York. It was Dominic’s introduction to cavernous Yankee Stadium, and his inexperience showed. After the first game, Dominic went to Joe and Dorothy’s Manhattan apartment for dinner. (She had persuaded her husband that it wasn’t good for their marriage to have her staying in San Francisco, waiting for him to come home in October.) Joe told his brother that he was playing too shallow. “That’s a big field,” Joe advised, “and the ball carries well in that part of the ballpark.”
In the next day’s game, Dominic positioned himself ten steps deeper. Sure enough, during one at-bat Joe sent the ball screaming to center. His brother outran it, and the ball fell into his glove. When a disgusted Joe returned to the dugout, teammates heard him muttering, “I should never have mentioned it to him.”
“It was the biggest thrill of my rookie year,” Dominic recalled, “and I was sure Mom would approve of the way I was listening to my big brother.”
He didn’t mention what had to be another big thrill, even if he was smart enough to realize the event was just another way to sell tickets. Though he was only a rookie, July 14 was Dominic DiMaggio Day at Fenway Park. “Nineteen hundred boys of Italian descent, members of the junior division of the order of the Sons of Italy, presented Dom with a military set and the Red Sox with a floral horseshoe. The bugle band of the Lynn, Mass. Sons of Italy helped to serenade the youthful DiMaggio.” And in the second game of the doubleheader against the crosstown Braves, Dominic hit the first home run of his major league career.
Apparently, he was already viewed as an elite outfielder, at least in one teammate’s eyes. Sam Mele was an outfielder on the New York University baseball team in 1940 who had been scouted by the Red Sox. One afternoon his coach drove him from New York to Fenway Park to participate in batting practice. He recalled the experience 72 years later:
“One guy behind the cage, he said, ‘Take five swings.’ I take four, and the last pitch, I didn’t swing at. Behind the cage the guy said, ‘Why didn’t you swing the bat?’ I said, ‘Well, it was low.’ He said, ‘It wasn’t outside, though. Come over here when you’re done.’ I did, and the guy was Ted Williams. We walked out to left field and we were talking baseball. When I asked him about fielding, Ted said, ‘Oh no, no, no. Don’t ask me. See that little guy in center field? You go ask him.’ And he yelled over, ‘Dom, Dommie! I’m sending this kid over, and teach him all you know about the outfield.’ That was when I first met Dominic. Right away he started teaching me about getting in position, and how to be ready to charge with one foot in front of the other because you’ll throw off your strong leg.”
After a season in the Northern League, four years in the Marine Corps during the war, and a season in the Eastern League (where he would earn MVP honors), Mele would join Dominic in Boston’s outfield.
In a late-season game at Yankee Stadium, Dominic was in center field twice when Joe came up to bat with the bases loaded. Both times Joe launched what looked to be triples, and both times Dominic raced them down. As Joe passed his brother on the field after the second one, he hissed, “You little heel.”
That evening Dominic visited Joe and Dorothy for dinner again. When Joe opened the door, he said, “You have some nerve coming here for dinner after what you did to me.” Suppressing a grin, Dominic said, “Joe, I couldn’t go another inch for those balls.”
That September, Joe and Dominic found themselves at the same hotel in St. Louis. The Red Sox, on an off day, had arrived, and the Yankees, having finished up a series against the Browns, hadn’t yet left. Joe was sitting in the lobby smoking when his brother walked in. “Hello, Dom,” he said. “Hello, Joe.” After a pause, Dominic added, “I am tired, Joe. I’m going to bed.” Joe said, “Good night, Dom.”
The battle for first that month was between Detroit and Cleveland. The Red Sox had faded, and though the Yankees had had a late-season surge, it was too late. Detroit won the pennant. The Yankees, with an 88-66 record, finished only two games out, but after the success of the last four years, it had to feel like a dozen games. Boston came in behind them with an 82-72 season.
It was a very odd trip home to San Francisco for Joe. He hadn’t wanted to linger in New York, to hang out at his favorite haunts—like the saloon Toots Shor had opened on West 51st Street—and face questions about what was wrong with the Yankees. He and Dorothy packed up their car and headed west. “It was a strange feeling to be driving back to San Francisco in my car and listening to World Series games on the radio,” he would recall.
The 1940 season proved to be the turning point for Vince. For once, he was in the right place at the right time. The manager, Frankie Frisch, had decided to scrap his starting outfield of Rizzo and the aging brothers Paul and Lloyd Waner. When Vince arrived, he was installed in center field, with Maurice Van Robays and Bob Elliott on either side of him. The fans in Pittsburgh soon embraced him as the best center fielder in the National League.
Finally too his bat was showing the same pop in the majors that it had in the minors. With regular playing time and reemerging confidence, Vince’s average approached .300.
“Pittsburgh was where my father could finally show that he was a talented player too,” says his daughter Joanne. “He was far from home on the West Coast and not near Joe and Dominic on the East Coast—maybe that is why. They didn’t even see each other during the season, being in different leagues.”
They weren’t seeing each other much in the off-season either. Vince had bought a house in Hermosa Beach, in Southern California, while Joe and Dominic remained in San Francisco. The DiMaggio brothers did get together between seasons, but as Dominic told a reporter in 1940, “When Joe, Vince and I get together in the winter time, it just so happens that we talk, when we do talk, about everything but baseball.”
Vince played hard, while the Pirates generally played poorly. In one game in May the Giants scored 17 runs thanks in large part to seven Pirates errors. Frisch used three pitchers just to get out of the first inning. Small wonder that only a little more than 5,000 spectators were at Forbes Field that day. In another game against the Giants that June, the Pirates racked up another five “misplays,” as they were charitably termed. Both of Pittsburgh’s runs in that 4–2 loss came on a Vince homer. They finished the season in fourth place, a very distant 22.5 games behind the Reds.
Vince may have been disappointed to not be playing for a contender, but otherwise he had his best season in the big leagues. He hit .289 with 19 homers (fifth in the league) and 54 RBI. His goal was to have an even better season in 1941. As he headed home to California, he hoped that he would stay with the Pirates. He had given up the thought of playing with either of his brothers. After being on four different clubs in four years, he just wanted to stay in one place.
It had been a more satisfying season for Dominic than for either of his brothers. After a game at the end of August, when he was tied for the team batting lead with Jimmie Foxx at .313 (he finished at .301), owner Tom Yawkey gathered reporters together and declared, “You can say for me that I’m quite satisfied with the Little Professor’s work in the classroom. I only wish there were a couple more out on the Coast like him. I think I’d be tempted to offer them enough money to make them forget about fishing.”
Though the pennant eluded the Red Sox again, they showed more potential than they had in decades. Ted Williams, Dominic, Bobby Doerr, and third baseman Jim Tabor were the young nucleus of a team that would definitely challenge the now-vulnerable Bronx Bombers. And vet Foxx had somehow alternated between catcher and first base, slugged 36 home runs, and driven in 119 runs. He and Dominic shared an apartment in Boston. Dominic remembered that “no future Hall of Famer was ever nicer to a rookie than Jimmie was to me. We ate together, and when Jimmie wanted to make the night a little longer, which was his tendency, we’d say good night and he’d go on his way.”
As 1940 drew to a close with all three brothers back on the West Coast, the news was gloomier than ever about events in Europe. President Franklin Roosevelt had signed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, initiating the first peacetime draft in the nation’s history. Vince was high on the list for his district, but it was possible that having a wife and daughter would lessen his chances of being called up. The 23-year-old Dominic seemed the most likely of the brothers to be called on if war came, but even Joe was vulnerable, having no children (though Dorothy was plotting to change that). It had to have crossed their minds that they needed to have especially good seasons in 1941, because it could be their last one for a while.