Dimaggio Anecdotes

Heroes are often placed on a pedestal in society. While normal people have plenty of flaws, heroes are often looked up to as perfect figures. In sports they are figures that can fill stadiums and perform superhuman feats. The public looks up to these heroes because they don’t appear to have any problems. Throughout his distinguished career on and off the baseball field Joe DiMaggio filled this role of a hero. In “The Silent Season of a Hero” Gay Talese utilizes various anecdotes in a nonlinear fashion and vivid imagery to juxtapose the conceived idea of a hero through DiMaggio; he examines the side of a hero out of the spotlight to reveal to the reader that people like DiMaggio are modest and have the same problems as everyone else.

Talese utilizes anecdotes to enhance the story of DiMaggio by creatively organizing them in a way to help his purpose, instead of writing in chronological order. Talese tells the story of DiMaggio by comparing these anecdotes. He contrasts the vast differences in how

Towards the beginning of the article he describes DiMaggio as “a most distinguished-looking man, aging as gracefully as he had played on the ball field, impeccable in his tailoring, his nails manicured, his 6-foot-2 body seeming as lean and capable as when he posed for the portrait that hangs in the restaurant and shows him in Yankee Stadium, swinging from the heels at a pitch thrown 20 years ago” (para 2). DiMaggio is viewed from the outside as “an immortal” (para 24), and Talese describes his appearance using words such as impeccable, distinguished, tailored and lean to portray this view. He uses this strong imagery to show that DiMaggio was idolized by many. He describes the reception of DiMaggio at Mantle’s ceremony as “a blast of cheering that grew louder and louder, echoing and reechoing within the big steel canyon” (para 61). This imagery provides a strong example of how the public glorified