Joe DiMaggio's Mother and the 1936 World Series

A forgotten tale

Joe DiMaggio's Mother and the 1936 World Series

I came across the following interesting story in David Halberstam’s Summer of ‘49:

Page 21

Halberstam is pretty well known for embellishing his stories. I decided to take a look around and see if I couldn’t find newspaper accounts that might shed some light on this.

It turns out that Halberstam was right. Rose DiMaggio was featured in a number of newspaper articles that came through over the wire in fall 1936:

From The Bee (Danville, VA), September 30, 1936, page 6. The exact same paragraph appeared in dozens of small town papers around the country.

There were a few short articles about Mrs. DiMaggio, such as this:

From Great Falls Tribune (Montana), September 30, 1936, page 8

There was also this:

From The Springfield Daily News (Massachusetts), October 1, 1936, page 16

And there was also this tidbit, which makes me wonder how she was allegedly able to speak to other reporters:

From The Hartford Daily Courant, October 1, 1936, page 15

A Canadian newspaper offered the following:

From The Windsor Star, September 30, 1936, page 31

There were also humerous anecdotes like this:

From Alameda Times-Star, October 1, 1936, page 5

And, when the Yankees finally won, there was this small clip:

From Appeal-Democrat (Marysville, CA), October 7, 1936, page 1

However, I was unable to find any English language newspapers with a quote anything like what Halberstam reported.

And, as we’ve seen before, this isn’t the first little bit of embellishment we’ve discovered in Summer of ‘49.