Rating: 
Summary: Flawed Champion
Review: An engrossing book which highlights the frailties of our sporting champions. Joe could do no wrong in the eyes of his adoring fans, however this book displays an individual who trusts very few, living in a fantasy world. Fascinating depiction of what fame can do to a person. My lasting memory of this book is that we should honour their sporting achievements however steer very clear of their personal life.Enjoy!!!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Hate the Yankees: Hated This Book More.
Review: What did Joltin Joe do to Cramer to make him so bitter and petty? Now I must disclose that I am NO Yankee fan and no Dimaggio fan. My reason for picking this book up was that it was outside my usual scope and thought it would give me something to talk to my 12 year old, baseball-loving son about. This book fails on all counts. I could hardly talk to my son about Joe's philandering or about his money laundering, his mob connections, his wife abuse. Was this book about a baseball player or a gansgster? I plowed through Cramer's interminable speculations just to see if he would ever have anything positive to report about this American icon. He didn't. Clearly much of what Cramer passes off as reporting is bald speculation about what Marilyn Monroe was thinking or what Joe's Fisherman's Wharf father was thinking about his famous and not so famous ballplayer sons. How could Cramer possibly know where Joe stashed his hundreds of thousands of dollars in laundered mob money? Cramer's constant use of the now pejorative moniker for Joe as "The Dago' also gets real old, real fast. Only a true Joe Hater will appreciate this book. What's next Cramer: D.B. Cooper the later years?
Rating: 
Summary: Life as a grand slam
Review: Richard Ben Cramer has subtitled his colorful biography of Joe DiMaggio "The Hero's Life". Not A Hero's Life --The Hero, as in the idol, the icon. "Some air of immortality," he writes, "had wafted around DiMaggio from the start of his career." And his career started early: he was only 18 when he entered the minors, 22 when he signed with the Yankees. So from the time he was a kid people were deferential and devoted to him. As a non-com in the Army, stationed in Hawaii during World War II, he was catered to by generals. Many readers of "Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life" have complained that the author concentrates too heavily on DiMaggio's unpleasant characteristics, primarily his avarice. (DiMaggio, a poor fisherman's son raised during the Great Depression, had a lifelong preoccupation with money. Well, duh.) But the fact is, Mr Cramer doesn't spare anyone: he lets Lou Gehrig have it (yes, nice ole Gary Cooper Gehrig), and Ted Williams is referred to as Teddy Tantrum. Actually, despite the fact that he often got too big for his pin stripes, DiMaggio was a fairly decent man. I mean, considering the suzerainty he was allowed, he could have been a monster; but his deep loyalty to his family alone is commendable. DiMaggio was married and divorced twice. His first wife, the mother of his only child, seems to have been treated with consideration; his second wife, of course, became the great love of his life. (Joe DiMaggio Jr, like the sons of so many iconic men, drifted into the life of a loser.) The Game is discussed with panache. It seems to have been a different ball game 60 years ago. "This was a rough set of boys, mostly poor, uneducated, and possessed of powerful wills which they enforced by intimidation and physical dominance." Rhubarbs were common; and a cold, antagonistic attitude was encouraged, even among team mates. This actually became law with the Non-fraternization Rule, enforced by the first baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (his real name, not a sobriquet). Mr Cramer points out, by the way, that jeremiads decrying baseball's purity being threatened by corruption go back to the 1870's. For fans the biography's most absorbing section will be Book II, the roughly 240 pages describing Joe's apogee, including his 1941 hitting streak, the excitement of triumph as well as the pressure of responsibility. "There was no way to stop it: the business of being a hero was too big."The biography skips from the summer of 1962 to the Loma Prieto earthquake of October 1989. The last 37 years of DiMaggio's life are told in flash-back, so to speak, and the closing chapters have a somewhat hurried quality. It's also in this section that Joe appears least attractive, becoming increasingly irascible and greedy. (During the earthquake, Joe was seen toting a trash bag from his Marina District home. According to Mr Cramer it contained $600,000 in laundered mob money.) Does Richard Ben Cramer like Joe DiMaggio? I think there's a grudging admiration here, not to mention a sympathy for the tremendous stress of being a living legend under the scrutiny of massive communication. Mr Cramer has a way with a phrase ("fist-high headlines"), and he seems to have an appreciation for mid-20th Century pop culture. After DiMaggio meets Marilyn Monroe in 1952, Mr Cramer follows Marilyn's career as easily as he does Joe's. (Marilyn wanted to play Nefer in "The Egyptian", an alarming idea.) Written in a sassy, irreverent style appropriate for the milieu Joe moved in, the world of Lefty O'Doul and Toots Shor, "Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life" is smooth, smart, amusing -- hey, it's outta here!
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating account of life
Review: The Hero's Life is one of the better baseball biographies I've ever read. When I finished the book I had a much greater appreciation for Joe DiMaggio the baseball player and was not at all impressed with Joe D the man. But the book works best at explaining the myth of the Yankee Clipper, one that could not have surrounded the same player in a different city or era.
Like most athletes there's nothing special about the person off the ball field. Indeed there's plenty not to like. The Joe D that the public came to see was a one dimensional character. Congratulations to Cramer for fleshing him out.
DiMaggio was a fiercly loyal friend, unless, like Toots Shor, you one day said the wrong thing. He totally and completely loved two women. One gave birth to his only child and the other was Marylin Monroe. Yeah he loved Monore, he also beat her.
DiMaggio the ball player was one of the greatest of all time and Cramer provides a convincing argument, simply by letting the facts speak for themselves, through stories of his remarkable exploits including his unparalled flair for the dramatic.
Dimaggio the person was moody, tempermental and most of all, uninteresting, except from the distance of biography. And a top notch biography this is, detailing the subject's life from childhood, through his playing days, his much much celebrated romance with Monroe, and the cold business dealings of his latter years.
This baseball bio ranks only behind Creamer's on Ruth, Stump's on Cobb and Alexander's on McGraw. It would have been better served had Cramer not tipped his hand in the foreward in revealing his contmept for Joe D.
Rating:
Summary: Scary look into the people we idolize
Review: While I never saw Joe DiMaggio play a baseball game, I learned all about him throughout my youth. Well at least I heard the popular version. While reading this book I was amazed out how the press idolized and covered up for this man. While he was a great athlete, the look at the man was scary. So many people idolized him, worshipped him, wanted to be him. Now looking behind the dapper suits and elegant smile we see a man that no one wants to be. If he were alive today, I think the press would tear him apart. Mr. Cramer gives a critical look at what motivated Joe DiMaggio. While a lot of readers that I have spoken to feel the book is overly critical, I disagree. I think it is an honest look. We learn what Joe DiMaggio loved and what he did to get what he loved. I recommend this book to anyone who loves the history of baseball. It doesn't diminish my love for the lore of the game at all, it just adds more depth to it. As a father, I watch even more closely who my kids will come to call their heros, and it will remind me to teach them that even heros are human, and make mistakes. This book is a fantastic look at how America's need for a hero allowed a nation to look the other way from the real man. My only negative comment is that the book skipped the entire 1970's. It jumps from the death or Marilyn Monroe to the 1989 earthquakes in California's Bay Area. Great Read.
Rating:
Summary: A must read.
Review: I've heard from several people that this novel can be tedious or too gossipy, but in my opinion, this book is unparalleled as far as biographies of the Yankee Clipper go. As far as the book being tedious, I have read it at least seven times so far and have yet to find a word I would like to have edited out. As far as the book being gossipy, I think that for those who wish not to believe that their icon can be as deeply faulted and human as Joe was, it may be too much (though I'd like to suggest that those people take a quick reality check,) but for those who want an intimate view of the beloved, beleagured baseball legend and are not afraid of the nitty-gritty, Richard Ben Cramer's "The Hero's Life" is absolutely a must.
Rating:
Summary: Considering the circumstances...
Review: ...to which the author freely admits surrounding the book (namely the absence of the blessing of its main subject) one must admire the finished product. you get the feeling that most authors would not have undertaken such a monumental task on a level playing field; much less down 0-2. nevertheless the author manages to shed some much needed light on perhaps America's greatest enigma. as a young Yankee fan, DiMaggio was my second favorite player of all time (behind my hero Don Mattingly...and at the risk of getting off the subject am I going to have to wait until he succeeds Joe Torre as manager for a decent bio on him?) before I read Mr Cramer's work. And while I always will admire the supreme talent with which DiMaggio played the game on the field, I am equally unimpressed with his lack of talent in dealing with his life off of it. A fascinating look at the pressures that come with being among the most famous people in the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good tribute to an American Hero
Review: This book is a difficult read and does not really do
Joe D. justice. Interesting but I expected better - or perhaps
more.
Probably a must for a true baseball fan but still disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
Review: This biography gave every outward indication that it was to be a hatchet job. Mr. Cramer, it was obvious, was no admirer of the Yankee Clipper. I purposely would not pay hard cover prices, expecting the worst- a poorly, narrowly written and easily forgettable bio. My mistake. While Mr. Cramer did indeed set out to attack DI Maggio, he ambitiously supports his story in full detail. It's all here- the selfishness, the pettiness, the mistreatment of family and friends, the major freeloading, the perpetual and singular concern with "his image" and the lonely mystery of his final years. Joe's marriage to Marilyn Monroe is covered thoroughly, perhaps to excess. One has to wonder who misused whom in that relationship. In retrospect, I would like to have read more about wife #1, Dorothy Arnold. Cramer informs us only that she "died in Mexico". The reader will also be in the dark about details on Joe DiMaggio Jr. Why did he and Marilyn get along so well? What did he do in the Marines during the early Vietnam era? Cramer also fails to explain the gaping gap in Joe Senior's "middle years", after Marilyn's "suicide". These complaints aside, Cramer has done a first rate job of investigative biography: We learn of Joe's mob contacts and the "related connection" with the Bowery Savings Bank; his intimate moments with Marilyn; his planned remarriage (!) to Monroe, his $600,000 cash stash rescued after the San Francisco Earthquake and his frustration with his soft gig playing Army baseball in WW 2. Compare his experiences with those of the Red Sox' Ted Williams, who was highly decorated in WW2 and Korea! Joe hated Ted. Other sordid details of Joe's bizarre life abound. I assume the charges are true since 1) Cramer has obviously done his homework and 2) it is patently obvious that Joe accumulated enough enemies and/or former friends who were happy to sling some mud in his direction. Is there any baseball news between the covers? There certainly is but the sport almost appears as a side light to this unflattering personal portrait of a baseball hero. This work is highly recommended, with one star deducted for its' pervasively negative tone.
Rating:
Summary: "Chappie" Doesn't Live Here, Or Anywhere Else
Review: Cramer does an admirable job of giving us the real-life answer to Billy Chapel of recent movie fame ("For Love of the Game"). In real life, the single-minded focus that produces a DiMaggio, Sampras or Jordan often does not translate well off the field.This is the reason these on-field/court icons often shy from the cameras...they probably know all too well that we won't enjoy their "human side" any more than they enjoy bearing it for us. After all, they've prepared themselves exquisitely to perform on field (or on camera, or on stage, in the realm of non-sports celebrities) but not so to chat it up with us. They often spend most of their waking hours enduring training, and often, pain that we can't understand, wouldn't bear, would be bored to hear about, and mostly they "just don't want to go into it".
None of this explains the sub-human treatment DiMaggio dealt out to those who loved him, either from afar or close-up. The flash-of-gold-in-the-pan from Mr. Cramer's account is that if you want to enjoy the best sports performers, movie stars, have the best doctors, pilots, atomic engineers and other critical-skills professionals our society can offer, then do two things above all else: don't try to get them on the cheap, and don't expect them to be suitable party guests.
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