As coach Joseph Paul DiMaggio (/dəˈmɑːdʒioʊ/; born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio, Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈpaːolo diˈmaddʒo]; November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "the Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American professional baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees.

Born to Italian immigrants in California, he is considered to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time and set the record for the longest hitting streak (56 games from May 15 – July 16, 1941).

DiMaggio's brother Tom told Maury Allen that Rosalia's father wrote to her saying Giuseppe could earn a better living in California.

After being processed on Ellis Island, Giuseppe worked his way across the country, eventually settling near Rosalia's father in Pittsburg, on the east side of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nearing the end of the 1932 season, his brother Vince, playing for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League (PCL), talked his manager into letting DiMaggio fill in at shortstop.

[4]: 34  In his full rookie year, from May 27 to July 25, 1933, he hit safely in 61 consecutive games, a PCL-record,[7] and second-longest in Minor League Baseball history.

[18] After a poor 1951 season, various injuries, and a scouting report by the Brooklyn Dodgers that was turned over to the New York Giants and leaked to the press, DiMaggio announced his retirement at age 37 on December 11, 1951.

[20] Through 2011, he was one of seven major leaguers to have had at least four 30-homer, 100-RBI seasons in their first five years, along with Chuck Klein, Ted Williams, Ralph Kiner, Mark Teixeira, Albert Pujols, and Ryan Braun.

[22] DiMaggio could have possibly exceeded 500 home runs and 2,000 RBIs had he not served in the military during World War II, causing him to miss the 1943, 1944, and 1945 seasons.

Mickey Mantle recalled that he and Whitey Ford witnessed many DiMaggio blasts that would have been home runs anywhere other than Yankee Stadium (Ruth himself fell victim to that problem, as he also hit many long flyouts to center).

After being out of baseball since his retirement as an active player, DiMaggio joined the newly relocated Oakland Athletics as a vice president in 1968 and 1969 and a coach in just the first of those two seasons.

During his only campaign as a coach, he helped improve the talents of players such as Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, and Joe Rudi who became part of the team's nucleus which won three consecutive World Series in 1972, 1973, and 1974.

[27] Major newspapers began to write about DiMaggio's streak early on, but as he approached George Sisler's modern-era record of 41 games, it became a national phenomenon.

"[29] On June 29, 1941, DiMaggio doubled in the first game of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium to tie Sisler's record and then singled in the nightcap to extend his streak to 42.

[30][31] A Yankee Stadium crowd of 52,832 fans watched DiMaggio tie the all-time hitting streak record (44 games, Wee Willie Keeler in 1897) on July 1.

[34] On July 17 at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, DiMaggio's streak was finally snapped at 56 games, thanks in part to two backhand stops by Indians third baseman Ken Keltner.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist and sabermetrician Edward Mills Purcell calculated that, to have the likelihood of a hitting streak of 50 games occurring in the history of baseball up to the late 1980s be greater than 50%, fifty-two .350 lifetime hitters would have to have existed instead of the actual three (Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Shoeless Joe Jackson).

His Harvard colleague Stephen Jay Gould, citing Purcell's work, called DiMaggio's 56-game achievement "the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in American sports".

He spent most of his military career playing for baseball teams and in exhibition games against fellow Major Leaguers and minor league players, and superiors gave him special privileges due to his prewar fame.

[23] Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio, both from Isola delle Femmine, were among the thousands of German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants classified as "enemy aliens" by the government after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

[citation needed] According to her autobiography My Story, co-written with Ben Hecht,[46] American actress Marilyn Monroe originally did not want to meet DiMaggio, fearing he was a stereotypically arrogant athlete.

[49] The union was troubled from the start by DiMaggio's jealousy, controlling attitude, and him physically abusing Monroe,[50] as well as her busy life as an actress.

[51] Then 20th Century Fox's East Coast correspondent Bill Kobrin told the Palm Springs Desert Sun that it was director Billy Wilder's idea to turn the shoot into a media circus.

[48] DiMaggio was also devastated, and wrote to Monroe, saying, "I love you and want to be with you…There is nothing I would like better than to restore your confidence in me…My heart split even wider seeing you cry in front of all those people.

[55] He was also linked to Liz Renay, Cleo Moore, Rita Gam, Marlene Dietrich, and Gloria DeHaven during this period, and years later to Elizabeth Ray and Morgan Fairchild, but he never publicly confirmed any involvement with any woman.

Val Monette, the owner of a military post-exchange supply company, told Allen that DiMaggio left his employ on August 1, 1962, because he had decided to ask Monroe to remarry him.

[57][47][58] Oftentimes, he refused to talk about her publicly or otherwise exploit their relationship, and in the rare moments when he did speak to reporters, he was unable to hold back tears.

In a 2007 interview with The Columbus Dispatch, Marotta joked that "millions of kids grew up thinking Joe DiMaggio was a famous appliance salesman.

[59] DiMaggio's funeral was held on March 11, 1999, at Saints Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco,[68] and he was interred three months later at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.

[76] In 2013, the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award honored DiMaggio as one of 37 Baseball Hall of Fame members for his service in the United States Army Air Force during World War II.