I remember Joe DiMaggio's last at-bat in the World Series in 1951; we knew it was going to be his last at-bat. He hit a ball — a double to right-centerfield and pulled up into second base in that elegant way he did. And, I think there were tears in my eyes, I was there that day. And I thought 'That's the last time I'll see him', but he was complete to the end.
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Roger Angell in Ken Burns' 1994 documentary Baseball, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyEBtPgnSL4&feature=relatedJoe DiMaggio
You know I didn't think that he would ever get to the ball, but he did. But then he had the presence of mind to wheel and throw the ball to second base to keep Larry Doby from scoring. Actually if he had tagged up, he could have scored from second base; that's how far the ball was hit. Now on the way in, after we got the third out, I ran in with him. You know, so I said to him, I said 'I didn't think you were going to get to that one'. He said 'You kiddin'? I had that one all the way.'
Willie Mays
Sometimes you're invited to a big ball and for months you think about how glamorous and exciting it's going to be. Then you fly to Europe and you go to the ball and when you think back on it a couple of months later what you remember is maybe the car ride to the ball, you can't remember the ball at all. Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life. I should have been dreaming for months about the car ride to the ball and getting dressed for the car ride, and buying my ticket to Europe so I could take the car ride. Then, who knows, maybe I could have remembered the ball.
Andy Warhol
I think the key to that particular play was the throw. I knew I had the ball all the time. In my mind, because I was so cocky at that particular time when I was young, whatever went in the air I felt that I could catch. That's how sure I would be about myself. When the ball went up I had no idea that I wasn't going to catch the ball. As I'm running -- I'm running backwards and I'm saying to myself, "How am I going to get this ball back into the infield?"
Willie Mays
I thought of my own wife's tears and her limp submission the night before — the bleak satisfaction I took from her smallness as I used her shamelessly. She's cried out, and remembering the taste of salted tears, I thought, for that instant, that I knew how the devil felt. Sex and tears, like sun and rain, were never meant to share a moment: but for a fallen soul, an act of wrong could, at times, feel very right, and that scared the hell out of me.
John Hart
He knew what the press and the fans and the kids expected of him, and he was always trying to live up to that image. That's why he couldn't be silly in public like I could, or ever be caught without his shirt buttoned or his shoes shined. He knew he was Joe DiMaggio and he knew what that meant to the country.
Joe DiMaggio
DiMaggio, Joe
Dimitrov, Georgi
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