A Hero in Deep Center

By Roger Rosenblatt

One sign of a hero is if you feel enhanced simply when talking about him--recounting his feats, recalling a time when your own little life was touched by his. Last week people who know baseball were lit up talking about "the great DiMaggio," as Hemingway's old man called him; his death bequeathed that final gift. I chatted with Roger Angell, the baseball writer, and remarked upon that well-known yet unbelievable statistic: 361 lifetime home runs, 369 lifetime strikeouts. Angell made the point finer when he noted that in 1941, in 541 at bats, DiMaggio struck out only 13 times. Then the two of us sighed like kids.

Others I spoke with described the purity of his swing and his instinctive ability to arrive where a ball was about to land. My own experience was confined to a single game, the first I ever saw, when DiMaggio, suffering from a bone spur, was on his last legs. The mother of a boy in our neighborhood took a bunch of us to the Stadium. DiMaggio hit a drive into the upper deck in right. "You'll never forget that," said my friend's mother.

Story after story, friend to friend, in the bars, on the commuter trains--tales of a Homeric champion spun in the air like plates on sticks, so that they would not fall and smash, so that children might keep them alive ("You'll never forget that"). DiMaggio was both hero and celebrity, the distinction being that one does and the other is. The hero was the player; the celebrity dated show girls and eventually married Marilyn Monroe, effecting the merger of America's two favorite pastimes. The press protected him, and he protected himself by silence. Hank Greenberg observed that if DiMaggio said hello to you, that was a long conversation. And he wasn't especially lovable, either. He was better than that; he was admirable.

Which is why last week's national eulogy was so unusual; people were talking ceaselessly about someone they knew not at all, except by the stats and a few crumbs of anecdotes. DiMaggio's persona was wholly the product of abstractions: pride, fidelity, natural aristocracy and, above all, ability. He did not need to talk because he was superior to anything he might have said. "Refined" is what my parents called him, a word currently out of use, and which always implied that one should keep a respectful distance.

What's interesting about the public's relationship with DiMaggio is that people did not seek to know him. Even in his last years, in this age of snoops, nobody sought to pry into the great DiMaggio. It may be that there was little to pry into, but I think, rather, there was a tacit consensus that his life was too important, too elevated, to mess with. It was what a life should be: private, accomplished, well-mannered and devoid of envy, gossip and whining. As an emblem of nobility, indeed of secular religion, he could be most useful to others if let alone.

Heroes are known for that sort of Delphic distance; they usually play the outfield. Ancient ones (Odysseus) performed deeds of strength and cunning; medieval ones (Robin Hood) were honorable and loyal; modern heroes (Martin Luther King Jr.) triumphed in conflict. DiMaggio was all three, with two elements added: he knew that his heroism bore a public responsibility; thus his famous answer to the question of why he continued to play hurt: "Because there might be someone who hasn't seen me play."

And he had a sense of civilization, hierarchy and order that went beyond decorum to the center of middle-class values. He sent flowers; he wore blue suits with white shirts. Late in a game, deep into DiMaggio's hitting streak, a pitcher, aiming to walk him, threw three straight balls. DiMaggio asked the permission of his manager to swing at the next pitch.

On TV, Paul Simon surmised that DiMaggio disliked Mrs. Robinson because he probably thought "we were just a bunch of hippies making fun of him." Simon meant only homage, but DiMaggio may have been right. The fact is that he was above being a mere nostalgic icon. His appeal went deeper into human nature and was not attached to a particular time or ethnic group or nation. That he understood--and cultivated--his distant place in the world may have burdened him with loneliness, but he had the compensating satisfaction of leading a dignified life.

At TIME's 75th anniversary party, among the vast convention of celebrities that included the Clintons, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tom Cruise and on and on, I spotted DiMaggio seated by himself, bony and a little bent, yet perfect in his tux. I stared a minute, then summoned the nerve to approach. I told him about that first game I saw, and his home run, and we talked baseball, which for me was worth a life. After his death last week, much of America also talked baseball, momentarily lifting itself out of pettiness and cheapness into the realm of a man we did not know and will never forget.