"That trumps everything."

News item: Manager Aaron Boone announced that Giancarlo Stanton will play two rehab games for the Double-A, Somerset Patriots this weekend, both as a designated hitter.

"First things first, [we] want to get him in the DH spot, just get him back in, and then we'll—kind of like we did last year where we built on the run—the outfield reps, we'll hopefully make that a part at some point, but not immediately.

At the end of June, 1949, the Yanks were going up to Fenway for three-game set, their lead down to five.  The balance of power seemed about to shift. 

 

Up in his fancy hotel, Joe DiMaggio was going quietly mad.  Lying awake until five in the morning, wondering if he was done.  

Smoking endless cigarettes and sipping endless cups of coffee until his ulcers screamed.  Ignoring the steaks that Toots kept sending up to him.  Feeling guilty each time he cashed a new paycheck.  Watching baseball on the snow-drenched TV, he even convinced himself that he had lost his eye, and couldn’t tell balls from strikes anymore.  

Dr. John Bennett, the orthopedist who operated on his bone spur had told him it was “a mysterious kind of thing.”  One night, he might go to sleep and awake the next morning with no pain at all.  But day after day, the heel felt like hell to walk on, felt warm to the touch.

Then one morning, it didn’t.  Just like the doctor said: he put his foot down on the floor, and it felt fine.  The heel was cool to the touch.  

Joe snuck out with Gus Niarhos, the Yanks’ third-string catcher, and took batting practice until his hands were blistered and bloody.  He found that he could dig in again.  Niarhos hit him a few flies, and DiMag was able to haul them down with no pain.

The next day he played in the Mayor’s Trophy exhibition against the Giants.  He popped up four times, but nothing hurt.  After the game, the team left for their series in Boston.  Joe, still weak, stayed behind.

At lunch the next day, Toots Shor, told him: “You look better strikin’ out than any of those crumb-bums hittin’ the ball.”

DiMaggio hesitated.  He was not going anywhere, much less to Boston, to look foolish.  But here was a chance to show up the new manager he loathed, show up his great rival on the Sox, Ted Williams—show up his little brother, Dom, Boston’s centerfielder.

He caught the 3:15 flight to Logan Airport, arrived in the lockerroom and announced imperiously to a reporter, “Yeah, I’m going to play.”

Casey swallowed his annoyance and penciled him in fourth.  His teammates were delighted—but some of them, noticing that the Sox were starting a fast, wild rookie named Mickey McDermott whom he hadn’t seen before, cautioned him not to play.  They didn’t want DiMaggio to look bad, either.  Their fears only stoked the ferocity inside.

Across the field, the Red Sox watched him walk with a limp, noticed the special padded shoe he wore with the spike removed from the heel, and were not impressed.  One of them opined that DiMaggio wouldn’t be beating out any infield hits.

“You don’t know him,” lectured Joe McCarthy.  “You watch him the first time there’s a chance for an infield hit.  You watch how he runs.”

Up in the stands, there was a stony silence.  The Yankees’ bench, by contrast, was in fighting trim, outraged when Sox third baseman Johnny Pesky knocked Rizzuto silly trying to break up a double play.  In the eighth, DiMaggio retaliated, ploughing into Sox shortstop Vern Stephens, tumbling him head over heels.  In the ninth, the Sox still had a chance to win, but Ted Williams hit a colossal, 400-foot fly to centerfield…where Joe DiMaggio hauled it in to end the contest.

DiMag had led his team in every aspect of the game—and he was just getting warmed up.  The following day, the Sox got off to a 7-1 lead behind Ellis Kinder, one of their best pitchers.  DiMaggio brought the Yanks back with a three-run smash to deep left-center, then won it in the eighth with a two-run homer.  Casey came out of the dugout, salaaming in tribute as he crossed the plate, and this time not even the great man seemed to mind his clowning.  In the lockerroom, the Yanks were celebrating as if they’d won the World Series, Joe laughing and joking with everyone.

Early in the final, Sunday afternoon of the series, a small plane appeared over Fenway, pulling a banner that read, THE GREAT DIMAGGIO.  No one had to ask which one.  The Sox started Mel Parnell, one of the very few lefties who ever learned to pitch consistently well in Fenway Park.  It didn’t matter.  DiMaggio hit a three-run homer in the seventh to clinch a 6-3 Yankees win.  He finished with four home runs and nine ribbies on the weekend.

The Yanks would win the pennant that year by one game, famously taking the last two contests of the season from Boston at the Stadium, to come from a game back. DiMaggio was badly weakened by a bout of pneumonia in those two games, but went 3-8, with a double and a triple.  The Yanks went on to rout Brooklyn in the World Series.

"Very annoying," Stanton told Greg Joyce of the New York Post.  "It's annoying not playing in general.  But you gotta be smart, also.  That trumps everything."