page_title: Joe DiMaggio
section_title: Major league career
hierarchical_section_title: Joe DiMaggio / Major league career
caption_attribution_description: Original caption&#58; "Plenty of basehits in these bats — Washington D.C., July 7. A million dollar base-ball flesh is represented in these sluggers of the two All- Star Teams which met in the 1937 game at Griffith Stadium today. Left to right: Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg, 7/7/37"
context_page_description: Joseph Paul DiMaggio, nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" and "The Yankee Clipper", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. Born to Italian immigrants in California, he is widely considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak, a record that still stands.
  DiMaggio was a three-time Most Valuable Player Award winner and an All-Star in each of his 13 seasons. During his tenure with the Yankees, the club won ten American League pennants and nine World Series championships. His nine career World Series rings is second only to fellow Yankee Yogi Berra, who won ten.
  At the time of his retirement after the 1951 season, he ranked fifth in career home runs and sixth in career slugging percentage. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955 and was voted the sport's greatest living player in a poll taken during baseball's centennial year of 1969. His brothers Vince and Dom also were major league center fielders. DiMaggio is widely known for his marriage and lifelong devotion to Marilyn Monroe.
context_section_description: DiMaggio made his major league debut on May 3, 1936, batting ahead of Lou Gehrig in the lineup. The Yankees had not been to the World Series since 1932, but they won the next four Fall Classics. Over the course of his 13-year Major League career, DiMaggio led the Yankees to nine World Series championships, where he trails only Yogi Berra (10) in that category.
  DiMaggio set a franchise record for rookies in 1936 by hitting 29 home runs. DiMaggio accomplished the feat in 138 games. His record stood for over 80 years until it was shattered by Aaron Judge, who tallied 52 homers in 2017.
  In 1939 DiMaggio was nicknamed the "Yankee Clipper" by Yankee's stadium announcer Arch McDonald, when he likened DiMaggio's speed and range in the outfield to the then-new Pan American airliner.
  DiMaggio was pictured with his son on the cover of the inaugural issue of SPORT magazine in September 1946.
  In 1947 Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and Yankees GM Larry MacPhail verbally agreed to trade DiMaggio for Ted Williams, but MacPhail refused to include Yogi Berra.
  In the September 1949 issue of SPORT, Hank Greenberg said that DiMaggio covered so much ground in center field that the only way to get a hit against the Yankees was "to hit 'em where Joe wasn't." DiMaggio also stole home five times in his career.
  On February 7, 1949, DiMaggio signed a contract worth $100,000 ($1,070,000 in current dollar terms) ($70,000 plus bonuses), and became the first baseball player to break $100,000 in earnings. By 1950, he was ranked the second-best center fielder by the Sporting News, after Larry Doby. After a poor 1951 season, various injuries, and a scouting report by the Brooklyn Dodgers that was turned over to the New York Giants and leaked to the press, DiMaggio announced his retirement at age 37 on December 11, 1951. When remarking on his retirement to the Sporting News on December 19, 1951, he said:
  I feel like I have reached the stage where I can no longer produce for my club, my manager, and my teammates. I had a poor year, but even if I had hit .350, this would have been my last year. I was full of aches and pains and it had become a chore for me to play. When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game, and so, I've played my last game.
  Through May 2009, DiMaggio was tied with Mark McGwire for third place all-time in home runs over the first two calendar years in the major leagues (77), behind Phillies Hall of Famer Chuck Klein (83), and Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun (79). Through 2011, he was one of seven major leaguers to have had at least four 30-homer, 100-RBI seasons in their first five years, along with Chuck Klein, Ted Williams, Ralph Kiner, Mark Teixeira, Albert Pujols, and Ryan Braun. DiMaggio holds the record for most seasons with more home runs than strikeouts (minimum 20 home runs), a feat he accomplished seven times, and five times consecutively from 1937 to 1941. DiMaggio could have possibly exceeded 500 home runs and 2,000 RBIs had he not served in the military during World War II, causing him to miss the 1943, 1944, and 1945 seasons.
  DiMaggio might have had better power-hitting statistics had his home park not been Yankee Stadium. As "The House That Ruth Built", its nearby right field favored the Babe's left-handed power. For right-handed hitters, its deep left and center fields made home runs almost impossible. Mickey Mantle recalled that he and Whitey Ford witnessed many DiMaggio blasts that would have been home runs anywhere other than Yankee Stadium (Ruth himself fell victim to that problem, as he also hit many long flyouts to center). Bill James calculated that DiMaggio lost more home runs due to his home park than any other player in history. Left-center field went as far back as 457 ft [139 m], where left-center rarely reaches 380 ft [116 m] in today's ballparks. Al Gionfriddo's famous catch in the 1947 World Series, which was close to the 415-foot mark [126 m] in left-center, would have been a home run in the Yankees' current ballpark. DiMaggio hit 148 home runs in 3,360 at-bats at home versus 213 home runs in 3,461 a
caption: Seven of the American League's 1937 All-Star players: Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg. All seven were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
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