HERE'S TO YOU, JOLTIN' JOE; BASEBALL GREAT A STAR ON FIELD, IN LIFE.

Byline: Dave Anderson The New York Times

For years, Joe DiMaggio had fresh flowers placed at Marilyn Monroe's grave; now he takes her memory to his grave. During the baseball memorabilia boom, he sold himself as an icon for the millions of dollars he never made as a player, but he never sold his memories of the Hollywood goddess he was married to for 274 days.

Whenever a book publisher talked to him about writing his autobiography, he declined.

``They want me to write about Marilyn,'' he once said. ``I don't want to do that. I'll never do that.''

That's maintaining your privacy, which Joe DiMaggio did even better than he played baseball. He died Monday at the age of 84 from complications arising from lung cancer surgery last fall.

You can still see him on television in grainy black-and-white newsreel film, but only today's old-timers really saw him swing a bat with that sweeping follow-through and really saw him run down deep fly balls in Yankee Stadium in the days when center field was much bigger than it is now.

``He did everything so easily,'' his first Yankees manager, Joe McCarthy, once said. ``You never saw him make a great catch. You never saw him dive for a ball. He didn't have to. He was already there to catch it.''

He inspired songs. His 56-game hitting streak prompted Les Brown's band to record ``Joltin' Joe DiMaggio.'' Paul Simon sang, ``Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.''

He even inspired literature. In Ernest Hemingway's ``Old Man and the Sea,'' the old Cuban fisherman says: ``I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing. They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.''

DiMaggio's father had come over from Sicily and settled in Martinez, Calif., where the great DiMaggio was born across the bay from San Francisco. He would have a 61-game hitting streak as an 18-year-old outfielder for the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League before joining the Yankees in 1936.

``My father would get the San Francisco Chronicle at 5 in the morning,'' he once said. ``If I had a good day, he'd wake my mother up. If I didn't, he'd let her sleep.''

His mother was usually awakened. In 13 seasons interrupted by three years in the Army for World War II, he batted .325 with 361 homers and 1,573 runs batted in as the Yankees won 10 American League pennants and nine World Series.

``When he walked into the clubhouse, the lights flickered,'' Pete Sheehy, the legendary Yankee clubhouse man, often said. ``Then he'd turn to me and say, `Half a cup.' ''

He meant half a cup of coffee. Years later he shilled for Mr. Coffee, an automatic coffee maker, and served as the longtime spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank. Although not yet 37 after the 1951 season, he had turned down the Yankees' offer to continue his $100,000 salary even as a part-time player.

``I'm no longer Joe DiMaggio,'' he said.

That's maintaining your pride, as he did the night his 56-game hitting streak was stopped in Cleveland when Ken Keltner played a deep third base for the Indians.

``Keltner was daring me to bunt,'' he once said. ``I hadn't bunted during the streak.''

And he didn't bunt that night as Keltner turned two sizzling grounders into outs.

In the years when the St. Louis Browns were in the American League, DiMaggio was sitting in the dugout at steaming Sportsman's Park before a Sunday afternoon doubleheader when he was asked how he was always able to perform at such a high level. He gestured toward the grandstand.

``Maybe some of these people,'' he said quietly, ``never saw me play before.''

That's maintaining your ego, which all the great ones have, with dignity. His teammate Bobby Brown, later the American League president, best described DiMaggio's blend of ego with dignity.

``Joe goes through life scared to death people will ask for his autograph,'' Brown said. ``And scared to death they won't.''

He could laugh, too. He often told about the time he hit a home run off Bobo Newsom's fastball. Connie Mack, the Philadelphia A's manager, ordered Newsom never to throw DiMaggio a fastball again. His next time up, he hit a curveball for another homer.

``As I rounded third base,'' he remembered, ``I heard Bobo yell, Hey, Mack, he hit yours farther than he hit mine.''

But now Joe DiMaggio, fulfilling Paul Simon's song, has really ``left and gone away.'' And taken Marilyn Monroe with him.

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2 photos

PHOTO (1) Scenes from Joe DiMaggio's storied life: clockwise from top left, his marriage to Marilyn Monroe; a record hitting streak; a stint in the military; the adulation of fans in 1998; and a legendary career with the Yankees.

Photos by Associated Press; photo illustration by Lori Valesko/Daily News

(2) The Great Bambino, Babe Ruth, left, and Joe DiMaggio, with New York sportswriter Bill Corum, meet for the first time at a banquet in 1938.

Associated Press