Tuesday, March 06,

DiMaggio, Robinson, Greenberg gave their Ethnicities Pride

The ANNOTICO Report

 

 

DiMaggio, Robinson, Greenberg Knocked Down Barrier

 

Times Herald-Record

By Genie Abrams
March 05, 2007

Middletown ? Playing first base on his local team is cool for 8-year-old Sam, a third-grader at New Windsor's Children's Country Day School. But seeing the actual wooden bats swung by baseball legends Jackie Robinson, Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio is way cool.

More than 45 grown-ups felt the same as wide-eyed Sam recently, when professor William M. Simons spoke at Orange County Community College. Simon's topic was the impact Robinson, Greenberg and Joltin' Joe had on their own ethnic groups and on American society. But he brought along some awesome props: their bats, borrowed from the Hall of Fame.

Simons, who teaches American social history, ethnic studies, and sports history at SUNY Oneonta, discussed how the three players helped bring social and economic equality to their own communities.

In the early 20th century, equality was not yet a reality for Italian-Americans or Jews, and certainly not for blacks. Ethnic minorities needed superheroes to serve as symbols for their struggles. During World War II and the early post-war years, each group found them in these three Baseball Hall of Famers....

Greenberg, DiMaggio and Robinson all showed extraordinary courage. The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Greenberg enlisted in the Army,... the significance of this act to the American Jewish community was immense.

DiMaggio, whose parents were Sicilian immigrants, did for Italian-Americans what Greenberg did for the Jews.

Simons noted that, in the mid-1930s, Italian-Americans were stereotyped in the media as excitable, comic figures (all the Marx Brothers adopted Italian names), gangsters like Lucky Luciano, or entertainers like Frank Sinatra.

Given the prejudices of the times, it was DiMaggio's grace and demeanor that were most important. The epitome of class, DiMaggio always remained calm and gentlemanly.

And then there's "The Streak." Author Stephen Jay Gould calls Joe D's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 the sports record "least likely ever to be broken." Italian-Americans followed every game of it.

Simons said that in the Italian sections of his native Boston and other cities around the country, loudspeakers were set up outdoors so the whole neighborhood could listen to the games and cheer DiMaggio on.

Like Greenberg, DiMaggio joined the Army. After his stint in the service, he returned to the Yanks, retiring in 1951. He batted .325 lifetime and took the Yanks to 10 World Series, where they won nine of them.

And then there was Robinson.

Born to tenant farmers in Georgia, Robinson integrated the previously all-white baseball profession in 1947. But it wasn't easy. He was the object of hatred and jealousy. He had death threats thrown at him, as well as fastballs.

It was difficult for the proud, fierce Robinson ? he developed high blood pressure and diabetes early, played only 10 years, and died of a heart attack at age 53. But he played in a way that won fans and was the source of pride not just for blacks, but for all Brooklynites....

 

 

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