When Babe Ruth left the New York Yankees in 1935, some feared that the loss would cripple the club for years. However, the post-Ruth era Yankees continued to dominate until the start of World War II. Their forward-thinking administrative staff signed and developed top-flight talent like Joe DiMaggio and retained superstars like Lou Gehrig, who remained the greatest first baseman in the game until he succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This history of the Yankees from 1936 to late into World War II details the team's swift recovery from losing Ruth and reintroduces unheralded players, examines the personal styles of the key men, and chronicles the team's remarkable achievements, including six American League pennants in eight years and five World Series victories.

At both the plate and in the field, Joe DiMaggio was one of baseball's most graceful athletes. During his thirteen seasons with the New York Yankees, he played in ten World Series and won nine world championships. For his career, he was a two-time batting champion, three-time Most Valuable Player, hit 361 home runs, and maintained a .325 batting average. His fifty-six-consecutive-game batting streak in 1941 has yet to be broken. DiMaggio's baseball career began in 1932 when he filled in at shortstop at midseason for a minor league team. In 1934 he became the property of the New York Yankees, which marked the beginning of his road toward greatness in the nation's most famous city on one of the most hallowed fields in the sport. Off the field, his life was marked by a famous marriage to and divorce from Marilyn Monroe, a late-1960s popular song, and a somewhat unhappy retirement. On baseball's one hundredth anniversary in 1969, he was voted the greatest living player of the game, and the Yankees erected a plaque to him among the memorials to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. On March 8, 1999, at the age of eighty-four, DiMaggio died after a five-month battle with cancer. In I Remember Joe DiMaggio, dozens of the great ballplayer's contemporaries, teammates, coaches, fans, friends, and relatives recall their favorite memories and anecdotes of this man who became an icon of America. It is a warm, entertaining, and inspiring book about a man whose fame has been the stuff of legend for more than half a century.

This is the life story of Joe DiMaggio, including his first game with the New York Yankees in the 1930s, his marriage to Marilyn Monroe & his rise to hero status. Richard Ben Cramer tells of the ways in which fame can both build & destroy.

The Story of the Greatest Yankees Team—and Baseball Team—of All Time New York, 1936. Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and rookie Joe DiMaggio—with these six future Hall of Fame players, the Yankees embarked on a four-year run that would go down in the history books as the greatest Yankees team, if not, the greatest baseball team of all time. Over the next four years, the Yankees won four straight pennants, finishing an average of nearly fifteen games ahead of the second-place team. They won their four World Series by an overall margin of 16-3, sweeping the last two, putting the punctuation mark on baseball’s first true dynasty. Even the Ruthian Yankees of the twenties never won more than two consecutive world championships. From 1936 to 1939, the world was changing rapidly. America was in the grip of the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected president in the greatest landslide in American history. And Hitler’s Germany was on the move in the fall of 1939, just as the Yankee dynasty reached its climax. Against the backdrop of a world in turmoil, baseball, and America’s love for baseball, thrived. Starring the best team of all time, featuring little-known anecdotes of players and set against a history of the world, Yankees 1936–39, Baseball's Greatest Dynasty tells the tale of a legendary team that changed history.

Joe DiMaggio’s rise from the boy “least likely to succeed” to the top of the professional baseball world is truly a remarkable story. As a teenager his favorite sport was tennis, but when two of his brothers became professional baseball players, Joe realized that here was a way to fame and fortune he wanted for himself and his family. After three years with the San Francisco Seals, he was sold to the New York Yankees, where he gained everlasting fame as one of the greatest players in the history of the game.

"Joe Dimaggio -- The Promise" is a sports book that highlights the New York Yankees of the 1950's an extrordinary time in baseball history. During this era, Casey Stengel began his legendary tenure as Yankee manager (1949), Joe DiMaggio ended and Mickey Mantle began their major league careers (1951). More than a sports book, it is an inspirational book that chronicles the Yankees exploits winning five Pennants and five World Championships in a row from 1949 to 1953. The reader is riveted to the book hoping to learn the secrets of success as illustrated by successful ball players in general but Joe DiMaggio in particular. Young Joe Carrieri, the author and former Yankee batboy, follows DiMaggio for three years and illustrates his class, style and grace. He was a man of few words who let his bat do his talking. He felt comfortable and at ease at the plate and in centerfield. He truly was born to play a boys game on sweet smelling green grass in a big city. He was born to play ball and play he did. The Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio reveals to the author his secrets of success and also keeps a promise to his young batboy. Fifty years later, DiMaggio and Carrieri meet again and this time, it is Carrieri who keeps his promise to Joe DiMaggio. While we mourn his death, we sense that DiMaggio has not really left us. We sense that DiMaggio was more than a hero, he is a legend and legends never die. Whenever there are boys of summer playing baseball, DiMaggio will live in our minds and hearts forever. In a quiet moment, you may hear Public Address announcer, Bob Shepard, in his inimical voice exhort at a packed Yankee Stadium, "And now Ladies and Gentlemen, the greatest living ball player, JoeDiMaggio".

Rare is the athlete who captures the imagination of a generation. In Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, sports culture had two such figures. Undoubtedly, DiMaggio and Mantle are two of the most revered names in baseball literature. However, there is one particular moment that has been overlooked by baseball historians and writers: the 1951 pennant-winning New York Yankees team--DiMaggio's last year and Mantle's rookie season. For that one year, the paths of these two baseball icons converged, the naissance of Mantle's career poignantly juxtaposed with the slow descent of DiMaggio's final season. "Strangers in the Bronx" is more than a chronicle of a pennant-winning team, it is also a study of heroes: the decline of an all-too mortal American icon and the emergence of the newest sensation in sport.

"Revealing and little-known stories of the great Yankees Hall of Famer from the man who knew him best in the last ten years of his life"--

"Reminisce as Joe DeMaggio: The Yankee Clipper - through accounts by former teammates, an inspiring photo essay, a gallery of artwork, and more - offers a most comprehensive look at baseball's enduring superstar."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved