Early Life



He was born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio in Martinez, California on November 25, 1914. "Giuseppe" (Joseph) was for his father; "Paolo" (Paul) for St. Paul, his father's favorite saint. He was the fourth son and the eighth child born to Giuseppe and Rosalie DiMaggio. The couple immigrated to America in 1898 from Sicily and moved to North Beach, a heavily Italian neighborhood in San Francisco when Joe was a year old.


Giuseppe, the father, was a fisherman, as were generations of DiMaggio’s before him. He hoped all five of his sons would follow his footsteps. The two oldest sons, Tom and Michael, joined their father as fishermen but, Joe had no desire to follow in his father’s chosen career. As Joe recalled, he would do anything to get out of cleaning his father's boat as the smell of dead fish made him sick to his stomach. This earned him Giuseppe's ire, who called him "lazy" and "good for nothing.”


Instead of fishing, Joe followed his older brother Vince, along with his younger brother Dominic onto the sandlot baseball fields of San Francisco. It was only after Joe became the sensation of the Pacific Coast League that Joe’s father was finally won over.