around the uft
Joltin' Joe's a hit
Nov 1, 2007 4:38 PM
Professor Joseph Dorinson speaks to the group.
Long Island University professor and author Joseph Dorinson presented a lecture on Joe DiMaggio and other Italian-American heroes in baseball at UFT headquarters in Manhattan on Oct. 11, the eve of Columbus Day.
The event was sponsored by the UFT Italian-American Committee/Educators Chapter/Italian American Labor Council.
Before talking about baseball greats like Ernie Lombardi, Tony Lazzeri, Phil Rizzuto, Frank Crosetti and umpire Babe Pinelli, Dorinson traced the Italian migration to America and the bias Italians encountered based on their ethnicity and their Catholic religion.
Dorinson told the gathering that he secretly wanted to be Italian when he was young. “The Italian guys in my neighborhood were the best athletes, the best lovers and they had the best food,” Dorinson said. And they were never overly concerned about their grades, he said, “because they knew that La Dolce Vita was more than doing well in school.”
There were violent attacks against Italians when they arrived in the United States, Dorinson said, including lynchings in the South in the latter part of the 19th century. Although Italian-American fathers disapproved of their sons playing baseball, calling it a bum’s game, Dorinson said, “sports served as a passport to social acceptance,” adding that even Dante wrote about foot races in Verona.
Participants viewed a movie on Joe DiMaggio’s life.
Before Jackie Robinson endured racial hatred while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers starting in 1947, Italian Americans had to deal with a virulent stream of abuse from established stars. When Pinelli argued a called third strike with Babe Ruth, considered by many to be the savior of baseball after a 1919 gambling scandal, Ruth called him a “blind dago.”
As for DiMaggio, nicknamed the Yankee Clipper, Dorinson said he became embittered in 1938 after he held out for a higher salary and the press and fans took the side of management, lambasting him in the newspapers and booing him at the ballpark. Dorinson said that DiMaggio thought he was being paid too low a salary, which was $25,000 a year.
Dorinson, who said DiMaggio was his hero, quoted former Dodger manger Tommy LaSorda, who said if God created the perfect baseball player, he would be DiMaggio.
The committee also voted unanimously that Joe Torre, a Giants fan from Brooklyn, be retained as manager of the Yankees.
Dorinson (fifth from right) with committee members (from left) Frank Carucci, Emilia Luciana, Vincent Gaglione, Irene Buongiorno, George Altomare (president of the Educators Chapter of the Italian-American Labor Council), Patricia Filomena (UFT Italian-American Committee chair), Louis LaCarbonara and Bob Carillo.
