Former players see Joltin' Joe in Jeter
Published September 19. 2006 3:30AM
Former players see Joltin' Joe in Jeter
By T.J. Quinn
New York Daily News
New York Every day the Captain walks into the clubhouse with his grande skim cappuccino from Starbucks, answers questions at his locker, goes off to the training room, takes batting practice, takes the field on a sprint ahead of the rest of the guys, plays baseball without much more emotion than an occasional pumped fist.
There is something in Derek Jeter's routine, the clean lines and the gentle strides that looks familiar to a couple of old Red Sox.
He was born to pinstripes, never grandstands, never gives voyeurs a glance within.
He has the unquestioned respect of a clubhouse where players carry enough MVP and Cy Young awards to fill a wing of a museum and the same respect from those who play against him.
The old Red Sox players remember someone else like that.
"He's got a little Joe DiMaggio in him," says Bobby Doerr, the 88-year-old Hall of Fame second baseman who came into the game a year after DiMaggio.
"You look at a player for what he does, for what he represents. That's the awe we had with Joe D."
Jeter, Doerr says, is worthy of the mantle.
"Right now, I think he might be the best player in baseball. There's nothing he can't do, for God's sake," says the Red Sox' 86-year-old legend-in-residence Johnny Pesky, speaking New England heresy. "He's the epitome of a Yankee."
There has been a quiet search for the modern DiMaggio ever since Paul Simon wondered about Joltin' Joe's forwarding address in 1968, although Simon was singing about more than a lost ballplayer.
Red Smith, maybe the greatest of all sportswriters, laid it out in the final column of his career in January of 1982, about why he maintained his faith that he wouldn't spend the rest of his days with middling, uninspiring ballplayers: "I told myself not to worry. Some day there would be another Joe DiMaggio."
They were the last words Smith wrote. There hasn't been one since.
Jeter is playing toward what might be his first MVP award this season - both Doerr and Pesky say he deserves it - or possibly his first batting title. DiMaggio had three of the former and two of the latter, in a career that lost three years to World War II.
He was also considered the greatest centerfielder anyone had seen until the emergence of Willie Mays. By that standard, the Clipper eclipses the Captain.
But those who knew DiMaggio and have seen Jeter say the comparison is legitimate.
"They have the same kind of mannerisms," Yogi Berra says.
"Joe never walked to the outfield - he always ran on the field, he always ran off, just like Jeter. (Players) all looked up to Joe. Joe did everything perfect like Jeter does. I knew Jeter as he came along; he's a loner a little bit, he likes to be private. But all the girls go after him. With Joe, it was the same thing."
Frank Torre, Joe's older brother, knew DiMaggio for years and has watched Jeter since he was a rookie shortstop and Joe was a new manager in 1996.
If anything binds Jeter and DiMaggio, it is their sense of occasion.
"Some people perform at a higher level when the chips are down and that's why it's important not to look at stats," Frank Torre says."But look at (Jeter). One of them plays they still talk about in Oakland. The flip. That's leadership taking over."
In David Halberstam's book, Summer of '49, he writes of how Charlie Keller was awed by DiMaggio's intensity when he had to rise to a moment, such as facing Bob Feller: "You could actually see the veins and muscles in DiMaggio's neck stand out, Keller remembered."
From his home in Nantucket, Halberstam says, "I think (Jeter is) more a real leader than DiMaggio was in some senses. DiMaggio was clearly the best player of his era, but he was very aloof, so the leadership was that he was the great DiMaggio and that he always played hard and that the bigger the game, the better he played."
Jeter, ever reserved, gives the expectedly demure response when asked about the comparison.
"I've heard people say it. It's flattering anytime you hear something like that. It's kind of unfair to him, though," Jeter says, sitting in front of his locker. "I've only been here a little while."
If there are similarities, they are accidental, Jeter says. "It wasn't like I molded myself after him. You can't be something you're not or you aren't going to be believeable." There may never be another Joe DiMaggio in the way Paul Simon and Red Smith pined for one. Elegance has been replaced by hipness, swing by hip-hop. The counterculture DiMaggio despised is rooted in the game and baseball no longer dominates the cultural landscape the way it did in the 1940s, before television was common, before cable existed, before the NFL and NBA were viable leagues. In that sense, it would be hard for Jeter, or anyone, to be larger than the game.Dom DiMaggio, now 89 and living in southeastern Massachusetts, admires Jeter, but he isn't so quick to dub him his older brother's successor.
"For one thing, we know that Joe was extremely graceful. On the field, his every move was just as graceful as can be," Dom says. "I think Jeter is a little more, not voluntarily showy, but Jeter plays hard and it shows. Joe, everything he did, he played hard, but he did it so smoothly and gracefully it didn't appear he was doing it hard."
For decades he has been hearing baseball people talk about the next Joe DiMaggio.
He heard Paul Simon's song, heard Red Smith's vision that someday there would be another.
"Has there been one?" Dom DiMaggio says. "I haven't seen one come around."
For now, Jeter might come the closest.
Former players see Joltin' Joe in Jeter
By T.J. Quinn
New York Daily News
New York Every day the Captain walks into the clubhouse with his grande skim cappuccino from Starbucks, answers questions at his locker, goes off to the training room, takes batting practice, takes the field on a sprint ahead of the rest of the guys, plays baseball without much more emotion than an occasional pumped fist.
There is something in Derek Jeter's routine, the clean lines and the gentle strides that looks familiar to a couple of old Red Sox.
He was born to pinstripes, never grandstands, never gives voyeurs a glance within.
He has the unquestioned respect of a clubhouse where players carry enough MVP and Cy Young awards to fill a wing of a museum and the same respect from those who play against him.
The old Red Sox players remember someone else like that.
"He's got a little Joe DiMaggio in him," says Bobby Doerr, the 88-year-old Hall of Fame second baseman who came into the game a year after DiMaggio.
"You look at a player for what he does, for what he represents. That's the awe we had with Joe D."
Jeter, Doerr says, is worthy of the mantle.
"Right now, I think he might be the best player in baseball. There's nothing he can't do, for God's sake," says the Red Sox' 86-year-old legend-in-residence Johnny Pesky, speaking New England heresy. "He's the epitome of a Yankee."
There has been a quiet search for the modern DiMaggio ever since Paul Simon wondered about Joltin' Joe's forwarding address in 1968, although Simon was singing about more than a lost ballplayer.
Red Smith, maybe the greatest of all sportswriters, laid it out in the final column of his career in January of 1982, about why he maintained his faith that he wouldn't spend the rest of his days with middling, uninspiring ballplayers: "I told myself not to worry. Some day there would be another Joe DiMaggio."
They were the last words Smith wrote. There hasn't been one since.
Jeter is playing toward what might be his first MVP award this season - both Doerr and Pesky say he deserves it - or possibly his first batting title. DiMaggio had three of the former and two of the latter, in a career that lost three years to World War II.
He was also considered the greatest centerfielder anyone had seen until the emergence of Willie Mays. By that standard, the Clipper eclipses the Captain.
But those who knew DiMaggio and have seen Jeter say the comparison is legitimate.
"They have the same kind of mannerisms," Yogi Berra says.
"Joe never walked to the outfield - he always ran on the field, he always ran off, just like Jeter. (Players) all looked up to Joe. Joe did everything perfect like Jeter does. I knew Jeter as he came along; he's a loner a little bit, he likes to be private. But all the girls go after him. With Joe, it was the same thing."
Frank Torre, Joe's older brother, knew DiMaggio for years and has watched Jeter since he was a rookie shortstop and Joe was a new manager in 1996.
If anything binds Jeter and DiMaggio, it is their sense of occasion.
"Some people perform at a higher level when the chips are down and that's why it's important not to look at stats," Frank Torre says."But look at (Jeter). One of them plays they still talk about in Oakland. The flip. That's leadership taking over."
In David Halberstam's book, Summer of '49, he writes of how Charlie Keller was awed by DiMaggio's intensity when he had to rise to a moment, such as facing Bob Feller: "You could actually see the veins and muscles in DiMaggio's neck stand out, Keller remembered."
From his home in Nantucket, Halberstam says, "I think (Jeter is) more a real leader than DiMaggio was in some senses. DiMaggio was clearly the best player of his era, but he was very aloof, so the leadership was that he was the great DiMaggio and that he always played hard and that the bigger the game, the better he played."
Jeter, ever reserved, gives the expectedly demure response when asked about the comparison.
"I've heard people say it. It's flattering anytime you hear something like that. It's kind of unfair to him, though," Jeter says, sitting in front of his locker. "I've only been here a little while."
If there are similarities, they are accidental, Jeter says. "It wasn't like I molded myself after him. You can't be something you're not or you aren't going to be believeable." There may never be another Joe DiMaggio in the way Paul Simon and Red Smith pined for one. Elegance has been replaced by hipness, swing by hip-hop. The counterculture DiMaggio despised is rooted in the game and baseball no longer dominates the cultural landscape the way it did in the 1940s, before television was common, before cable existed, before the NFL and NBA were viable leagues. In that sense, it would be hard for Jeter, or anyone, to be larger than the game.Dom DiMaggio, now 89 and living in southeastern Massachusetts, admires Jeter, but he isn't so quick to dub him his older brother's successor.
"For one thing, we know that Joe was extremely graceful. On the field, his every move was just as graceful as can be," Dom says. "I think Jeter is a little more, not voluntarily showy, but Jeter plays hard and it shows. Joe, everything he did, he played hard, but he did it so smoothly and gracefully it didn't appear he was doing it hard."
For decades he has been hearing baseball people talk about the next Joe DiMaggio.
He heard Paul Simon's song, heard Red Smith's vision that someday there would be another.
"Has there been one?" Dom DiMaggio says. "I haven't seen one come around."
For now, Jeter might come the closest.
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