I almost tagged a legend

Robert Philip

• Last Updated: November 22. 2009 5:41PM UAE / November 22. 2009 1:41PM GMT

Joe DiMaggio slides home in the ninth inning to tie a World Series match against Cincinnati in 1939. AP

Last week I was invited to attend a question and answer session with a number of budding sports journalists at a school in my native Glasgow.

“Who’s the most interesting person you’ve interviewed?” came the first question, a very, very difficult one to answer.

There is Tommie Smith, he of the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics; certainly Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus, the Big Three of golf; Ilie Nastase, Bjorn Borg and Martina Navratilova from tennis; football’s three Sirs of Bobby Charlton, Tom Finney and Alex Ferguson; Tony McCoy, Aiden O’Brien and Lester Piggott from horse racing; cricket legends Dennis Lillee, Sir Ian Botham, Sir Garfield Sobers..

“Who would you most liked to have interviewed?” piped up another teenage voice. Easy: Sir Donald Bradman, Jesse Owens, Bill Tilden and, most especially, Joe DiMaggio.

Up until a few months before his death from lung cancer in 1998 I had been in regular contact with DiMaggio’s agent about a possible interview to be conducted with the proviso that the sole topic of conversation would be his baseball career: in other words, there was to be no mention of his 274-day marriage to Marilyn Monroe.

Perhaps Joltin’ Joe was concerned that I would raise the subject of their wedding night in a hillside retreat outside San Francisco where they checked into the honeymoon suite only for DiMaggio to return to the hotel lobby minutes later requesting to be moved to a room with a television.

Ninety-five years after his birth on November 25, 1914, Americans of every generation remain fascinated with the legend of Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio Jr, the eighth of nine children born to poor Italian immigrants who became a national icon by claiming nine World Series victories in his 13 seasons with the New York Yankees. As his great rival Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox said of him: “Joe was the greatest all-around player I ever saw. His career cannot be summed up in numbers and awards. It might sound corny, but he had a profound and lasting impact on the country.”

Paul Simon celebrated him in the song Mrs Robinson with the lines: Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you... what’s that you say, Mrs Robinson? Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away...” Madonna, Billy Joel and Jennifer Lopez have also paid musical tribute while Ernest Hemingway immortalised him thus in The Old Man And The Sea: “I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing, the old man said. They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand ...”

Little wonder then that although he had recently retired from the game he graced as few others before or since, the marriage of DiMaggio, a baseball legend, and Marilyn Monroe, a screen goddess, captured headlines worldwide. Sadly there could only be one star in the marital home and Marilyn could never fully comprehend the affection in which her husband was held.

Returning from South Korea where she had been entertaining US troops, Marilyn cooed: “Oh, Joe, you’ve never heard cheers and applause like it.” “Oh, yes, I have, Marilyn,” he replied sadly.

With DiMaggio reportedly outraged by his wife’s skirt-blowing scene in The Seven Year Itch, the romance was over as swiftly as it had begun. But Joe never forgot his Marilyn and when she was found dead from a drug overdose in 1962, a few days after he had asked her to remarry, he claimed the body and arranged the funeral, banning her Hollywood cronies from the ceremony.

Until his death, DiMaggio sent a dozen red roses to her grave three times a week while steadfastly refusing to talk publicly of his days as Mr Marilyn Monroe. He died at the age of 83, having never remarried.

Oh, Joe, what an interviewee you would have made.

Sports stars and Hollywood: not a winning love match

Marriages involving sports personalities and Hollywood celebrities have an unfortunate habit of ending up in front of a judge.
Take Mike Tyson and Robin Givens, married on February 7, 1988 and divorced (fittingly perhaps) on Valentine’s Day 1989
after the actress had appeared on the Barbara Walters Show, describing her husband as a “manic depressive” and her life as “a living hell”. Which makes you think they did quite well to survive as long as they did in each other’s company.
Andre Agassi and Brooke Shields did even better; their union ended 10 days short of two years. What went wrong? After all, the couple had dated for four years before their wedding and had appeared blissfully content.

According to Tinsel Town gossip, Agassi struggled to cope with Shields’s burgeoning career which coincided with his own slide down to 141st in the world rankings.

I am glad to report, however, that the twice Wimbledon champ and the grand-daughter of the 1931 Wimbledon runner-up Frank Shields, have remained good friends ever since the split and their 1999 divorce.

John McEnroe and the actress Tatum O’Neal set something of a tennis/silver screen record by remaining married for eight years and producing three children; perhaps having spent time on the arm of Michael Jackson, the former child Oscar winner O’Neal saw nothing untoward in the sometimes erratic behaviour of tennis’s Superbrat.

Not even Pam Shriver’s marriage to James Bond, in the shape of the actor George Lazenby – which everyone thought would run and run – could dodge the divorce courts; having met over tea at Wimbledon, they surprised all their friends in 2008 when they cut the knot amid much mutual acrimony.


rphilip@thenational.ae