Publication date:
15 May 2016Length of book:
296 pagesPublisher
Lyons PressISBN-13: 9781630761240
DiMag & Mick is a portrait of DiMaggio and Mantle as the old and young exemplars of what was a more confident, masterful age not only in baseball but in the country where they were held up as cultural heroes over two generations, symbolic of an America celebrating its recent triumph over Nazism and ever-curious about the new age of color television, rocket ships, and technology. Tony Castro shows DiMag and Mick as fathers and sons, rebels and heroes, and reveals the rite of passage of two men who would go down in baseball immortality – DiMaggio as he reluctantly prepares to leave the spotlight of adoration and hero-worship for glitzy world of Marilyn’s exploding Hollywood celebrity, and Mantle in his awkward attempt to leave his country roots of Dust Bowl Oklahoma for the big city exposure and expectations of greatness being placed on him. Yankee legend and glory holds a special magic all its own, and Castro examines the heart and soul of that mystique, especially the bond of the players themselves and how that came to breed and spread the perception that there was any animosity between DiMaggio and Mantle – two polarizing personalities who drove many teammates away from one and galvanized their friendship with the other.
This is a dream of a book. Castro, author of perhaps the best biography of Mickey Mantle, America's Prodigal Son, takes on the myth that in 1951, Joe DiMaggio, in his last season, snubbed the rookie who would replace him in center field for baseball's greatest dynasty. Castro offers a revisionist history of the friendship of the two Yankee greats. Castro reveals a fascinating bond where others, over the decades, found no relationship at all.