When Joe DiMaggio died, a 57-year old man with a gray pony-tail was one of the select few allowed to attend the family funeral. He was a casket-bearer that day, his face anonymous to the national ...

By the time the lights went on again, DiMaggio had vanished. Perhaps the best insight into why DiMaggio quit came from brother Tom: "He quit because he wasn’t Joe DiMaggio any more." ...

Joe DiMaggio was more than the most complete all-around player of his generation. He was more than the player who set one of the game's most cherished records, hitting safely in 56 consecutive games.

"All this dignity that he carried himself with was really about his own worship and adoration for what Joe DiMaggio meant to other people," says New York Times columnist Robert Lipsyte on ESPN ...