"Joltin' Joe has left and gone away..."
Indeed he has, and we are all the sadder for it.
Joe DiMaggio's legendary skill and grace on the baseball diamond were matched by his integrity off it. Though DiMaggio ran with a lightnin' fast crowd -- marryin' Marilyn (who'da been wise to stick with him) and pallin' around with Frank, Dean, and Sammy -- his own life never spun out of control (except, of course, when it was the bottom of the ninth and all the bases were loaded).
A quiet man who valued his privacy and that of his family, DiMaggio succeeded in keeping his only son out of the limelight. However, beneath his reserve lay true-blue passion, as was evident from his lasting devotion to the (original) "divine Ms. M." (Each year, he commemorated the anniversary of Monroe's passing by laying flowers on her grave.)
I'll leave it to my mom, who grew up in the same 'Frisco neighborhood as Joltin' Joe and knows his game better than I do, to make the final call in my tribute to a Life that, for all its eighty-four years, seems to have been cut way too short.
"Mr. DiMaggio was a class act, and baseball will have a hell of a time replacing him, now that he's made it safe to Heaven."
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