Joseph Paul DiMaggio (dɪˈmædʒioʊ; born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio; November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "The Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. Born to Italian immigrants in California, he is widely considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time and is best known for setting the record for the longest hitting streak in baseball (56 games from May 15 – July 16, 1941), which still stands.
DiMaggio was a three-time American League (AL) Most Valuable Player Award winner and an All-Star in each of his 13 seasons. During his tenure with the Yankees, the club won ten American League pennants and nine World Series championships. His nine career World Series rings are second only to fellow Yankee Yogi Berra, who won ten.
At the time of his retirement after the 1951 season, he ranked fifth in career home runs (361) and sixth in career slugging percentage (.579). He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955 and was voted the sport's greatest living player in a poll taken during baseball's centennial year of 1969. His brothers Vince (1912–1986) and Dom (1917–2009) also were major league center fielders. Outside of baseball, DiMaggio is also widely known for his marriage and life-long devotion to Marilyn Monroe.
DiMaggio was born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio on November 25, 1914, in Martinez, California, the eighth of nine children born to Sicilian immigrants Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio, from Isola delle Femmine. Rosalia named her son "Giuseppe" after his father in the hopes he would be her last child; "Paolo" was in honor of Giuseppe's favorite saint, Paul of Tarsus.
Giuseppe was a fisherman, as were generations of DiMaggios before him. Joe's brother Tom told Maury Allen that Rosalia's father wrote to her saying Giuseppe could earn a better living in California. Giuseppe and Rosalia decided that he would go to America for one year: if things were better, he would send for her; if not, he would return home.