About Joe DiMaggio
I image almost every baseball fan is familiar with the name Joe
DiMaggio. He is considered one of the
greatest baseball players of all time playing for at the time one of the
greatest baseball teams, the New York Yankees.
There is nothing much I can add to all of
his stats. I have also painted DiMaggio a number of
times but thought it would be fun to try and do a simple, small drawing of
him. This ink drawing of Joe DiMaggio by sports artist John Robertson is
11 inches by 14 inches on
watercolor paper.
Actually the paper is a little bit bigger by one in high to 15
inches. The watercolor paper I drew Joe
on is in a spiral watercolor paper binder so when it is torn out it can be
trimmed down to the standard frame size of a 11” x 14” size.
Interesting Info about Joe DiMaggio
It seems the only way one generation (who have not followed
baseball) of people know Joe DiMaggio is that he was a spokesman for the brand
Mr. Coffee. The older baseball crowd
knows him by his nickname “Joltin’ Joe” or “The Yankee Clipper.” He was called
by his many fans “Joltin’ Joe“because he was such a strong, hard hitter. And others called him “The Yankee Clipper”
because he sailed so gracefully through the outfield when making a catch in the
wide center field of Yankee stadium.
And one of the big reasons people knew him was that he was one time
married to Marilyn Monroe. He was
immortalized in the Paul Simon song, ‘Mrs. Robinson” with the line, “Where have
you gone, Joe DiMaggio / Our nation
turns its lonely eyes to you” - meaning
where has our heroes gone, where has the innocence of our youth gone and where
are the days of the past as times have changes dramatically (this song was
written in the sixties) and they are not coming back. That’s a bit sobering.
Joe DiMaggio retired from baseball just as I was getting
interested in the game. 1951. I was young and listened to the Yankees games
on the radio – the LA Dodgers were still in Brooklyn
and did not come to L A for another six years.
So I was a Yankees fan and saw DiMaggio as a hero. Heroes diminish and I lost some of my
interest in baseball until the Dodgers showed up in LA.
Final Thoughts about Joe DiMaggio
He was always being quoted and there are plenty around to
draw from but I think the most interesting one must have been from when DiMaggio
spoke about his days of his own innocence when he first started playing
baseball. He said, "I can remember
a reporter asking me for a quote, and I didn't know what a quote was. I thought
it was some kind of soft drink."
