By JAMIE JOBB
Special to the Martinez Gazette
Before he turned three years old, Joe DiMaggio and his family had left Martinez for good. Joe often returned to the town of his birth after he retired from baseball, but San Francisco gets to call itself Joeâs hometown. Thatâs where Joe and his brothers Vincent and Dominic learned the ropes of professional baseball.
If theyâd remained in Martinez, fishing knots would have been the only ropes the DiMaggio boys would have known. Papa didnât like his sons wasting time playing ball. But few people realize the real reason the DiMaggios had to leave Martinez in the first place.
Their move was the result of an odd accident involving a passing train and Joeâs sister, Frances DiMaggio, who was seven at the time.
The DiMaggios â father Giuseppe and mother Rosalie along with their nine children â lived in a small house at the base of Island Hill at the foot of Grangers Wharf on Foster Street near where Barrellesa crosses the railroad tracks. The house no longer remains, but itâs marked by an historic placard.
Like other Sicilian-American children in the neighborhood at that time, the DiMaggios were accustomed to playing on and around the railroad tracks that ran less than a block from their house. One day young Frances was playing there when she was hit in the eye by a sudden piece of hot charcoal from a passing steam locomotive.
The damage to her eye was so severe that inexperienced local doctor Edwin Merrithew, M.D., could do little more than treat her with bandages in Martinez. Merrithew was known as âIl Dottore del Dichuâ â or âthe Doctor of The Ditchâ â which referred to Alhambra Creek, where no other doctor in town would venture.
So Rosalie had to take her child to San Francisco for proper ocular health care. Bridges to the city would not be build for another two decades, so Frances and her mother had to ferry to the City. That was not an easy commute in 1917.
After a while, those transbay trips became so burdensome that Rosalie convinced her husband to move the family to North Beach where he and his sons could still maintain their fishing boats in Fishermans Wharf from their apartment on Taylor Street.
Little did these parents realize how much The National Pastime would affect their younger sons once they started playing hardball in their fields of dreams on San Francisco streets.
âYa Gotta Believe!â
Another famous big leaguer, New York Met reliever Tug McGraw, also grew up in Martinez. But Tugâs legacy doesnât hold the water that the Yankee Clipper held. For one thing, McGraw was born in 1944 and belonged to a generation of ballplayers far removed from the heyday of DiMaggio, Ruth and Shoeless Joe.
McGrawâs dad was know as âBig Macâ, so his mother knew their son needed a nickname. She decided to call him âTugâ because of his particularly aggressive way of breast feeding. The McGraws left Martinez before Tug entered high school, so he never got to play for the Alhambra High Bulldogs.
McGraw is most remembered for minting the phrase âYa Gotta Believeâ â which became the rallying cry for the once hapless Mets as he became the National Leagueâs top closer in the early 1970s. Tugâs son is country music superstar and actor Tim McGraw.
Tugâs catchphrase might be something Martinez Clippers would want to try as their rallying cry! At least they could claim that the expression has a somewhat local pedigree!
Martinez author Jamie Jobb has written a play, âJoe Fish Ties the Knotâ or âLast Gillnet on Grangers Wharfâ, which assumes a guy named Joe never left his hometown, particularly after he met the girl of his dreams named Norma Jean. In this what-if story, Jobb assumes Norma Jean never knew Hollywood and Joe never played baseball. She worked in the cannery and Joe toughed out his living on a Monterey Clipper hauling in salmon stuck in gillnets.
The play will be read as part of the Dramatists Guild âFootlight Seriesâ on September 1 in San Francisco. For more information, contact: 925 723-1782.
Sources:
Joe DiMaggio â The Heroâs Life by Richard Ben Cramer. 2000. Simon & Schuster, New York. p. 18
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/may/21/the-forgotten-story-of-joe-dimaggio-and-the-san-francisco-seals-talent-factory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_McGraw#”Ya_Gotta_Believe!”
Martinez Museum exhibit of local sports â in June
Jelani Cobb â The New Yorker sports
Sicilians girls whose parents came from the same Sicilian Island as Joeâs parents often bragged that they played base ball in Martinez with Joe DiMaggio. They said, âwe were better than Joeâ. That was because they played as Kids. Joeâs family came back to Martinez often to see their friends from Isala de Feminna. Years later these same girls, now women, were very protective of Joeâs privacy. As he came back to Martinez all during his adult life knowing he would be left in piece. Joe would fish and hunt at the head of the bay with other decendents of Sicilian fishermen.
Great article. I am a relative of Joe DiMaggio. My grandparents came over on the boat from Italy. They came from the town of Isola delle Femmine. This is the correct spelling of the town. My mother wrote a book called Pioneer Italian Fsherman of Martinez âNostri Pescatoriâ by Katherine âTinaâ Collins. This is a wonderful book about all the Italian families that moved here from Italy and started the fishing community. There is also a section about Joe DiMaggioâs family. The book matches the plaque down at the Martinez Marina that has all the Italian family names on it those are the same people in the book and you can also find the plaque number for that family in the book. You can purchase the book at either the Martinez Museum or the Martinez historical Society or myself. My email is photo@castles.com and my phone number is 925-228-4338. Franci Lucero Martinez, CA.
Vince DiMaggio did return to the area. He played and managed the Pittsburg Diamonds in the California Leagues. My father in law was a cousin and played on that team and also the Redding Browns. Tom Lucido. My wife, Rosemary, and I just visited that area and went to the Martinez Museum and the Pittsburg Museum, dropping off a copy of the team with most players having signed it. Her connections are Lucido in Martinez and Aiello in Pittsburg.
I am interested in this subject because when I was young in 1956, my family lived on Canyon Way and our next-door neighbors were named DiMaggio. It was said that one of the brothers lived there. Is there a record of the family members and where they lived in the 1950s?
My grandmother lived in the house in Martinez which in now the museum. She claimed to have dated Joe until the âNew Girlâ came to town. Aka Norma Jean. Who knows,