The baseball legend who transcended his sport to become a genuine American icon, died early Monday after a long battle with lung cancer and other complications. DiMaggio, who brought a singular elegance to the rough-and-tumble era of the game, was beloved as the Yankee Clipper by a generation of baseball fans. He had a .325 lifetime batting average and won three Most Valuable Player awards, but it was his 56-game consecutive hitting streak in 1941 that placed him at the forefront of baseball's immortals. His marriage to Marilyn Monroe kept him in the public eye after his playing days were over, but it was his personal style -- classy, unpretentious, remote -- that fixed him firmly in the American consciousness and inspired Ernest Hemingway and Paul Simon to write about him. In this unheroic age, DiMaggio might fairly be considered one of the last real American heroes.
Passage: Joe DiMaggio, 84
The baseball legend who transcended his sport to become a genuine American icon, died early Monday after a long battle with lung cancer and other complications. DiMaggio, who brought a singular elegance to the rough-and-tumble era of the game, was beloved as the Yankee Clipper by a generation of baseball fans. He had a .325 lifetime batting average and won three Most Valuable Player awards, but it was his 56-game consecutive hitting streak in 1941 that placed him at the forefront of baseball's immortals. His marriage to Marilyn Monroe kept him in the public eye after his playing days were over, but it was his personal style -- classy, unpretentious, remote -- that fixed him firmly in the American consciousness and inspired Ernest Hemingway and Paul Simon to write about him. In this unheroic age, DiMaggio might fairly be considered one of the last real American heroes.
