ITALIAN AMERICANS AT BAT FROM SAND LOTS TO THE MAJOR LEAGUES AN ORIGINAL EXHIBITION BY THE MUSEO ITALO AMERICANO MADE POSSIBLE BY A GRANT FROM THE CO-CURATED BY Lawrence DiStasi and Mary Serventi Steiner ASSISTANT CURATOR Mark Schiavenza SPECIAL THANKS TO Mario Alioto Julie Giles National Baseball Keith Allison Gráinne Hebeler Hall of Fame Rugger Ardizoia Chris Kinder Tim O’Brien Alessandro Baccari Jeff Knox Anthony Parente Lawrence Baldassaro John Knox The Raimondi Family The Benedetti Family Ben Krause Mark Rucker Bettman/Corbis Tony La Russa Kelsey Rudd The Blow Up Lab Tony & Marilyn Lazzeri The SF Giants Martins Bluzma Angela Little SF Public Library Peter Bond Diane Lodigiani The Schuman Family Gary Carr Ed Lodigiani Bill Sheridan Eric D. Danielson Mark Macrae The Steiner Family D. Paul DiMaggio Joy Massa Jeff Stevens Emily DiMaggio John McCarthy Brett Tatsuno Susan Filippo Doug McWilliams The Texas Rangers Aaron Frutman Davor Miksic John Ward Abe Garfield Chris & Harry Morrow Marc Webster ABOVE: Yogi Berra after his 2000th game, 1962. National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. RIGHT JUNE 22 – NOVEMBER 25, 2012 PAGE: Joe DiMaggio, June 29, 1941, Washington D.C. © Bettmann/CORBIS Fort Mason Center, Building C, San Francisco, CA 94123 415.673.2200 | www.sfmuseo.org Tuesdays thru Sundays 12 – 4 pm That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman’s son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just JANUARY 17 – MAY 19, 2013 a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. 442 Flint Street, Reno, NV 89501 775.333.0313 | www.arteitaliausa.com DiMaggio’s grace embodied the democracy of our dreams.” Thursdays thru Sundays 12 – 5 pm — David Halberstam, Summer of ‘49 © 2012 by Museo Italo Americano If baseball is a narrative, an epic of exile and return, a vast, communal poem about separation, loss, and the hope for reunion — if baseball is a Romance Epic . it is the Romance Epic of homecoming America sings to itself.” — A. Bartlett Giamatti Contents Introduction: ITALIAN LEGENDS & LORE: AMERICANS AT BAT 3 THE 50s, 60s & 70s 22 Hall of Famer: BREAKING IN: Yogi Berra 24 THE EARLY DAYS 4 The Emperor of Right Hall of Famer: Tony Lazzeri 6 Field: Carl Furillo 24 Baseball Was America 7 Hall of Famer: Hall of Famer: Eppa Rixey 7 Roy Campanella 25 Up From The Sand Lots 8 Sal “The Barber” Maglie 26 Dante Benedetti 8 The Shot Heard ‘round the World: Ralph Branca 26 BREAKING OUT: The Prodigy: THE 30s & 40s 10 Tony Conigliaro 27 Hall of Famer: Hall of Famer: ABOVE: Roy Campanella sliding home, 1954. National Ernie Lombardi 12 Ron Santo 28 Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. LEFT PAGE: The Streak 12 (L to R) Rugger Ardizoia, George Puccinelli and The No-Hitters: Maglie, Ernie Orsatti of the Hollywood Stars, 1939. All three sons Baseball at War 13 Montefusco, Righetti of Italian immigrants played sandlot ball, had successful careers Playing Smart: & Bosio 28 in the Pacific Coast League, and played in the majors. Courtesy of Rugger Ardizoia. FRONT COVER: (L to R) Frank Crosetti, Dom DiMaggio 13 THE MODERN ERA 31 Tony Lazzeri, Joe DiMaggio, 1936. New York Times Hall of Famer: Co./Getty Images. BACK COVER: (L to R, Top to Bottom) Roy Joe DiMaggio 14 Billy Ball 32 Campanella, c. 1950. National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Managers at the Heights 32 Cooperstown, New York. Steve Sax, c. 1985. National Baseball The Cookie Game 14 Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Ping Bodie, c. PCL: The Majors Hall of Famer: 1920. National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New of the West 17 Tommy Lasorda 33 York. Mark Belanger, 1971. National Baseball Hall of Fame Buzzie’s Boss: Library, Cooperstown, New York. Nick Swisher, 2011. Photo Babe & the Babe 17 by Keith Allison. Billy Martin (left), c. 1980. National Baseball Emil “Buzzie” Bavasi 34 Nine Old Men: Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Phil Rizzuto, The 1948 Oaks 19 A. Bartlett Giamatti 34 1941. Courtesy of Rugger Ardizoia. Dolph Camilli, 1937. National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Moneyball: Mike Piazza, c. 1995. Photo by Michael Ponzini. National ITALIAN AMERICANS Paul DePodesta 35 Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Craig IN THE HALL 20 Joe Torre 35 Biggio, 1990. Photo by Rich Pilling, National Baseball Hall of Baseball Immortality: Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Mike Napoli, 2012. Mike “The Monster” Photo by Keith Allison. Joe Torre, 1997. National Baseball Hall The Hall of Fame 21 Piazza 36 of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Rico Petrocelli, Hall of Famer: Dustin Pedroia 38 c. 1963. National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New Phil Rizzuto 21 York. Dom DiMaggio, 1938. From the collection of Doug The 2011 World Series: McWilliams. Ernie Lombardi, 1931. National Baseball Hall Tony La Russa & of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York. Tony La Russa, Mike Napoli 38 2011. Photo courtesy of Tony La Russa. Italian Americans at Bat HE STORY OF BASEBALL, according to Bart Giamatti, is “the story of going home after having left home; the story of how difficult it is to find the origins one so deeply needs to find.” For Giamatti, such a game, with such a Tstory, cannot help having a “particular resonance for a nation of immigrants, all of whom left one home to seek another.” What we find, in the case of Italian Americans, is precisely this. If not the immigrants themselves, then their children took to a game, as they took to a place, totally at odds with the villages and traditions from which they came. Very often, the young Italian Americans who became obsessed with the sport had to defy their parents for every chance to play this “useless” game. Until, that is, they demonstrated with their paychecks that playing baseball professionally could produce rewards few had ever imagined. At that point, playing baseball became not only the second generation’s way to carve out a new identity — i.e. as ABOVE: Rookie Joe DiMaggio, center, hugs his brothers, Americans in every sense — but also to fulfill their immigrant Vince, left, and Dom, before the start of the 1936 World Series in New York. All three were major league center fielders: Vince was parents’ aspirations as well: to earn enough money to “make” a 2-time All-Star who played for the Boston Bees, Cincinnati Reds, America. In the hundred years since Ed Abbaticchio first donned Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Phillies, and New York Giants. a major league uniform in Philadelphia, PA, Italian Americans Dom was a 7-time All-Star who spent his entire career with the have become some of the most celebrated players, and later Boston Red Sox. The Rucker Archive/Transcendental Graphics. LEFT PAGE: Frank “Ping” Bodie, pictured here in 1914, managers in this most American of games. Starting out as was a center fielder who played for the Chicago White Sox outsiders in a game dominated by the English, the Irish and (1911–1914), Philadelphia Athletics (1917) and New York Yankees the Germans, they overcame the initial prejudice they found (1919–1921). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs by dint of their skill, their fierce determination, and their love of Division, Washington, D.C. a game they had made theirs. Oddly enough — given that there was no major league franchise in the West until the 1950s — it was in the San Francisco Bay Area that a startling proportion of the first great players got their start. Whether this was because of the city’s early history with the game — Alexander Cartwright came West in 1849 after codifying the game in New York — or its favorable weather, or its several Pacific Coast League teams, or its many sandlot leagues is debatable. But there is no debate about the great Italian American players to come out of the San Francisco area: not just the legendary Joe DiMaggio and his two brothers, but also Ping Bodie, Tony Lazzeri, Frank Crosetti, Ernie Lombardi, and a host of others. We think that’s a story that deserves telling. 3 Breaking In: The Early Days HOUGH MANY PEOPLE THINK of Italian American players as household names, the first Italians to play major league baseball are virtual unknowns. If one didn’t know that Ping Bodie’s real name was Francesco Pezzolo, his Italian roots Twould pass unnoticed. Bodie, in fact, illustrates one of the difficulties faced by Italian Americans early on. He has admitted that he called himself “Bodie”— the name of a mining town in California where his father once worked— to avoid the ridicule baseball writers aimed at Italian names. Several sportswriters are on record as commenting with distaste about such names — names that seemed not quite American enough for America’s game. Despite this handicap, Italian American boys played the game whenever they could. Many played in informal leagues formed by church groups, factories, and settlement houses seeking to improve the lives of immigrants with recreation. Often they did this in opposition to their parents’ wishes, many of whom saw baseball as a “child’s game.” Ed Abbaticchio, probably the first Italian American to play professionally, had to reject his father’s bribe of a hotel if he would agree never to play baseball again. In 1905, Abbaticchio did ABOVE: Born Rinaldo Angelo Paolinelli in San Francisco in 1895, “Babe Pinelli” played most of his career with the Cincinnati retire from baseball to run the hotel, but he had already become one Reds from 1922 to 1927.