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R E C E N T L Y
$400 million and a mule?
By Jeff Stein
$400 million and a mule? Black farmers say settlement won't end racism at the Department of Agriculture
(03/08/99)
Genocide, and drug-trafficking too
By Frank Smyth
The Guatemalan military's war against the Mayans has finally been documented, but the story of its role in the cocaine trade has yet to be fully told
(03/05/99)
Let the sexual healing begin
By James Poniewozik
With impeachment over -- and Juanita Broaddrick making her seem like an innocent memory -- Monica gives us the soap opera we wanted all along
(03/04/99)
The war at home
By Andrew Lam
While Vietnamese in California battle over Ho Chi Minh's photo, and legacy, a younger generation on both sides of the Pacific manages to live in two worlds
(03/04/99)
Burn, baby, burn
Congress returns to the nation's business by reintroducing the divisive, perennial flag burning amendment -- but this time it just might pass the Senate. By Jake Tapper
(03/03/99)
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Where have we gone?
--------------------In an era of noisy sports superstars, the nation
-----------will miss the private dignity of Joe DiMaggio.|

BY STEVE KETTMANN
Forget the numbers. Forget the silky acceleration to track down a ball in the gap. Forget the endless line drives. Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio's grudging capitulation to age early Monday at 84 ended a great baseball life, but paradoxically enough, his death registers more as the loss of a man than just the loss of a sports star. There will never be another one like Joe, and we all know it.
The DiMaggio who grew up in San Francisco, making a baseball name for himself along with his brothers Dom and Vince, was the son of Italian immigrants, and every step of the way through his great career in pinstripes, he had a sense of what he was accomplishing. He finished with a .325 career average, hit 361 home runs and struck out just 369 times. He was a fixture on Yankee clubs that won nine World Series championships in his 13-year career, and he will always be counted among the greatest dozen players the game has seen. But with DiMaggio, how he did what he did -- not just what he did -- will always be part of his legacy.
The time has passed when a beloved sports figure could choose privacy, and make it work, but that was what DiMaggio did. He was unique even during his playing days, but his death forces us to reflect on what we have lost. The prying eye of media scrutiny has robbed us of the chance to have sports heroes like DiMaggio, a man who stood for dignity and grace and mystery as much as he stood for greatness on the ballfield. No matter what the baseball purists say, that certainly had something to do with his glamorous marriage to Marilyn Monroe -- but that's only part of the story.
"The amazing thing is how private he was," the New Yorker's nonpareil baseball writer, Roger Angell, told me by phone. "He really pulled it off. Even in that time, when athletes were so much more private, he was more private than the others. It wasn't so much because he was shy, though he was sort of shy. He said, 'Watch me play the game.' That was his view.
"Nobody was impatient with him for this, and he made it work. As far as I know, he said nothing of interest over the decades. The one exception was when Marilyn came back after visiting Korea and told him, 'You wouldn't believe it, thousands of people were cheering just for me, you've never seen anything like it in your life.' And he said, 'Yes I have.'"
Fans loved baseball differently when there was no nightly "SportsCenter" to set the agenda, no television broadcasts of games, and even the radio was only sporadically involved. The day in 1941 that DiMaggio pushed his hitting streak to 56 games -- which may be baseball's most enduring record -- the only radio coverage of baseball in New York was Red Barber offering reconstructed descriptions of the Brooklyn Dodgers game on WOR.
But even back then, it took a genuine, unfeigned modesty to cut the kind of figure DiMaggio did. It's a long road from DiMaggio joking, "Spell it any old way," when he was presented with a gold watch engraved "De Maggio" early in his career, to the ubiquitous third-person references of the contemporary superstar. The difference matters. It's not just a question of whether those who excel at sports are worthy of adulation or not. The question is what counts: the games and what happens in them, or the star power being flashed -- the look-at-me gyrations in the end zone after a touchdown, or the slam-dunk fetish that has long since taken over the NBA.
The news that DiMaggio is really gone, after so many false alarms in recent months, demands quiet reflection, like all losses that matter. Most of us did not have the pleasure of watching the man play. I didn't start going to baseball games until the late 1960s, and the first glimpe I had of baseball royalty came when I saw the aging Willie Mays. Even so, just saying the name "DiMaggio" aloud still gives me a thrill. It transports me, and I don't think that's because of the "woo woo woo" Simon and Garfunkel gave us after the famous lyrics of "Mrs. Robinson" ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?/A nation turns its lonely eyes to you") -- although that's probably what many people remember most about him.
N E X T+P A G E+| Sadness mixed with dignity

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T A B L E+T A L K Should cannabis be legalized for the critically ill? Enter the fray in the Social Issues area of Table Talk ___________________ Read more about the amazing life and times of joltin' Joe DiMaggio at barnesandnoble.com ___________________ R E C E N T L Y $400 million and a mule? By Jeff Stein $400 million and a mule? Black farmers say settlement won't end racism at the Department of Agriculture (03/08/99) Genocide, and drug-trafficking too By Frank Smyth The Guatemalan military's war against the Mayans has finally been documented, but the story of its role in the cocaine trade has yet to be fully told (03/05/99) Let the sexual healing begin By James Poniewozik With impeachment over -- and Juanita Broaddrick making her seem like an innocent memory -- Monica gives us the soap opera we wanted all along (03/04/99) The war at home By Andrew Lam While Vietnamese in California battle over Ho Chi Minh's photo, and legacy, a younger generation on both sides of the Pacific manages to live in two worlds (03/04/99) Burn, baby, burn Congress returns to the nation's business by reintroducing the divisive, perennial flag burning amendment -- but this time it just might pass the Senate. By Jake Tapper (03/03/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Where have we gone? --------------------In an era of noisy sports superstars, the nation -----------will miss the private dignity of Joe DiMaggio.\| BY STEVE KETTMANN Forget the numbers. Forget the silky acceleration to track down a ball in the gap. Forget the endless line drives. Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio's grudging capitulation to age early Monday at 84 ended a great baseball life, but paradoxically enough, his death registers more as the loss of a man than just the loss of a sports star. There will never be another one like Joe, and we all know it. The DiMaggio who grew up in San Francisco, making a baseball name for himself along with his brothers Dom and Vince, was the son of Italian immigrants, and every step of the way through his great career in pinstripes, he had a sense of what he was accomplishing. He finished with a .325 career average, hit 361 home runs and struck out just 369 times. He was a fixture on Yankee clubs that won nine World Series championships in his 13-year career, and he will always be counted among the greatest dozen players the game has seen. But with DiMaggio, how he did what he did -- not just what he did -- will always be part of his legacy. The time has passed when a beloved sports figure could choose privacy, and make it work, but that was what DiMaggio did. He was unique even during his playing days, but his death forces us to reflect on what we have lost. The prying eye of media scrutiny has robbed us of the chance to have sports heroes like DiMaggio, a man who stood for dignity and grace and mystery as much as he stood for greatness on the ballfield. No matter what the baseball purists say, that certainly had something to do with his glamorous marriage to Marilyn Monroe -- but that's only part of the story. "The amazing thing is how private he was," the New Yorker's nonpareil baseball writer, Roger Angell, told me by phone. "He really pulled it off. Even in that time, when athletes were so much more private, he was more private than the others. It wasn't so much because he was shy, though he was sort of shy. He said, 'Watch me play the game.' That was his view. "Nobody was impatient with him for this, and he made it work. As far as I know, he said nothing of interest over the decades. The one exception was when Marilyn came back after visiting Korea and told him, 'You wouldn't believe it, thousands of people were cheering just for me, you've never seen anything like it in your life.' And he said, 'Yes I have.'" Fans loved baseball differently when there was no nightly "SportsCenter" to set the agenda, no television broadcasts of games, and even the radio was only sporadically involved. The day in 1941 that DiMaggio pushed his hitting streak to 56 games -- which may be baseball's most enduring record -- the only radio coverage of baseball in New York was Red Barber offering reconstructed descriptions of the Brooklyn Dodgers game on WOR. But even back then, it took a genuine, unfeigned modesty to cut the kind of figure DiMaggio did. It's a long road from DiMaggio joking, "Spell it any old way," when he was presented with a gold watch engraved "De Maggio" early in his career, to the ubiquitous third-person references of the contemporary superstar. The difference matters. It's not just a question of whether those who excel at sports are worthy of adulation or not. The question is what counts: the games and what happens in them, or the star power being flashed -- the look-at-me gyrations in the end zone after a touchdown, or the slam-dunk fetish that has long since taken over the NBA. The news that DiMaggio is really gone, after so many false alarms in recent months, demands quiet reflection, like all losses that matter. Most of us did not have the pleasure of watching the man play. I didn't start going to baseball games until the late 1960s, and the first glimpe I had of baseball royalty came when I saw the aging Willie Mays. Even so, just saying the name "DiMaggio" aloud still gives me a thrill. It transports me, and I don't think that's because of the "woo woo woo" Simon and Garfunkel gave us after the famous lyrics of "Mrs. Robinson" ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?/A nation turns its lonely eyes to you") -- although that's probably what many people remember most about him. N E X T+P A G E+\| Sadness mixed with dignity - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.