April 16: Where Have You Gone Joe DiMaggio? Poets always have wanted to be ball players. Will there ever be a time when ball players want to be poets? We have at least come upon a time when the poets of the young people are being raised on high, like ball players. We have Paul Simon in Yankee Stadium-where Joe DiMaggio once came to play, hey, hey, hey-throwing out the first ball. Simon, of Simon & Garfunkle, threw out the first ball to the strains of "Mrs. Robinson" yesteday. It concerned him that people like his partner, Art Garfunkle, and his old coach, Sam Shusser, shouldn't think he had a "chicken arm." Simon, the poet, was a ball player. He was a good leadoff hitter for Forest Hills High and the Sultans when he was a kid growing up in the 1950s, and the part of the man that was once a ball player never stopping being a ball player.
Simon is the short one who writes the words and music. Garfunkel is the tall, skinny one who does the arrangements. Two years ago Simon wrote "Mrs. Robinson," the song that has these haunting lines, these immortal-in-their-time lines:
Where have you gone Joe diMaggio? There is another Joe DiMaggio song. It is a good song with a good beat. It is Les Brown's "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio" celebrating DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941. Simon, who says he learned a lot about baseball by saving baseball cards, had never heard about the Les Brown song until yesterday.("Joe, Joe DiMaggio, We want you on our side.") Simon wrote "Mrs.Robinson" about two years ago. "When I wrote the Joe DiMaggio line, I didn't know what I was writing. It's often that way because I write phonetically and with free association. I said that line all of a sudden. As soon as I said it, I said to myself, 'That's a great line. It touches me. It has a nice touch of nostalgia and leads to several interpretations, which could be good.' " The line has come to mean many things to many people. A search for lost youth and for all values. For baseball it means a longing for the days when Joe DiMaggio symbolized the grand national pastime, the one and only sport-when kids like Paul Simon, born in 1941-collected baseball cards and dreamed the dream of being at the ball park in a pin-striped Yankee uniform. Simon has not yet met DiMaggio. He said, "I read that he was puzzled by the line. We were gong to come down to Old Timers' Day last year and meet him. I would have been delighted, but we got hung up with other things." Simon thinks that Mickey Mantle, who broke into baseball during his period as a passionate fan, would be somebody he'd like to meet. When somebody suggested that Mantle might not be all that the youth might have expected, he rejected the thought. The voice of the poet said, "It doesn't matter. I pick and choose my illusions. I liked the Mantle of my youth, and I won't let anything interfere with it." Simon was a Yankee fan. (Garfunkel was a Philadelphia Phillie fan, but baseball was never the passion with him that it was with Simon). Simon writes of love and alienation and longing and the underdog's view of life-everything that cries out to say he was a Brooklyn Dodgers or even a New York Giants fan-but he stands fast on being a Yankee fan. A sure and true Yankee fan. "I do not choose to be defensive about my neuroses for the Yankees all these years," he said. "I remember the first basball cards that I bought. I saw that the player had pin stripes and was excited that he was a Yankee. It turned out he was Eddie Yost of Washington, but that was all right because I read that he was born on Oct. 13. That's my birthday and that's Lenny Bruce's birthday. I suppose Lenny Bruce would have been a Dodger fan, wouldn't he?" He said, "I still buy the cards sometimes to see what they are like and to see if kids still chew the gum." Once, he ran around the bases in Yahkee Stadium after a game. Yesteday he returned as a star, a multi-millionaire, and he was so pestered by autograph hunters that he couldn't settle down and enjoy the game the way he once might have. "I yearned for Mantle out there today. I didn't know many of the other players. Of course, I don't have the same feeling for the game that I once had. When I was about 16 my interests in baseball transferred to music and girls. They are more gratifying." He once played for an under five-foot league. One awful day he learned that he would not be allowed to play in the final game of the season because he had grown over the summer and no longer was under five feet. He said, "They wouldn't let me play;can you imagine that?" Who says Yankee fans don't know suffering? He was a stickball hustler. "We'd go to other playgrounds and play for $2 a man and lose like, 7-1. Then we'd say, 'Let's play for $10 a man.' And we'd win." Enlightened baseball people such as Mike Burke of the Yankees have become aware of the new youth. They are reaching out to teenagers by bringing Joe DiMaggios such as Paul Simon into the ball parks. Simon thinks about that and says, "Of course, there are few things as gratifying as hitting a ball--solid."
|
|
2. Yankee Fans 
