Free Summer of '49: The Yankees and the Red Sox in Postwar America by David Halberstam

much of his life, was two rooms in the Edison Hotel. Restless at night, his work done, he often made the rounds with Leonard Lyons, the Post’s gossip columnist. Lyons had a proscribed route: Shor’s to “21” to Palm Court, and Cannon knew where he would be at all times. It was better than going to bed. Cannon and DiMaggio shared a special palship because they had a lot in common. Both of them were lonely, without family. They were both insomniacs, and they both liked to make the New York scene, Cannon with his regular date, the actress Joan Blondell, DiMaggio with some show girl. Cannon loved the moment they entered a nightclub, when everyone there gawked to get a look at this baseball god.
    He wrote often and well about DiMaggio, and in the process he helped create not just the legend of DiMaggio as the great athlete but, even more significant, DiMaggio as the Hemingway hero, as elegant off the field as on it. Cannon was in awe of his friend, and he lovingly passed that on to his readers. The view he provided of DiMaggio was an uncommon blend of genuine intimacy and pseudo intimacy.Only the better qualities were worthy of mention, of course—those allowed near the star knew what to write and what not to write. Lou Effrat once was invited to spend a week with DiMaggio in Florida during the winter. It was a pleasant interlude, but near the end of his stay Effrat asked DiMaggio a question about his contract for the next year. “What are you doing, turning writer on me?” DiMaggio asked him. That ended the subject of contracts.
    DiMaggio was not a man who boasted, but once, late in his career, he talked with a group of younger reporters and mentioned, almost shyly, that when he first came to the Yankees in 1936 the local newspapers were constantly criticizing McCarthy for finishing second. “Then we won three times in a row, and four times out of five,” he said. He paused for a moment before adding, “I had something to do with that.” It was a rare moment, thought Leonard Koppett, then a young sportswriter. DiMaggio had almost dared to be candid about his own abilities, wary as he always was of appearing to boast.
    DiMaggio was aware that he was often a virtual prisoner of his own shyness. Some of his friends thought this was due to his fear of embarrassing himself. But it was also an innate reserve.
    Once, early in his career, he was sitting with a few writers at Toots Shor’s when his friend Lefty Gomez, the most gregarious Yankee of that era, dropped by. Gomez did not join the table but stood and told a few stories, all of which delighted his listeners. DiMaggio watched him leave and then said, “What I’d give to be like that.”
    On another occasion at Shor’s, he told Lou Effrat to stick around. “I’ve got a date,” he said, “and I need company.” DiMaggio’s date turned out to be a young actress. After Shor’s they went to “21” and then on to a few other places. Around three A.M . Effrat finally got away. The next day he asked DiMaggio why he had insisted that he stay around.“Ah, Lou, you know me,” DiMaggio answered, “until midnight with girls I’m speechless.”
    The stories of DiMaggio’s reserve were legendary. When he first joined the Yankees, he drove from California to Florida with Tony Lazzeri and Frank Crosetti, two veterans, neither famous for being talkative. They passed the first two days of the trip without talking at all, and then Lazzeri asked DiMaggio if he wanted to drive. Only then did DiMaggio say he did not know how to drive. It was simply not a subject that had come up before.
    The three of them hung out together a fair amount that year, and Jack Mahon, a reporter for the old INS, ran into them while they were sitting in the lobby of the Chase Hotel in St. Louis. The three, according to Mahon, were watching the other guests come and go. “I bought a paper and sat down near them and after a while became aware of the fact that none of them had a word to say to the