There are gold nuggest throughout SI’s Q and A:
SI: (On his DiMaggio profile) Your friend David Halberstam called the piece the best of sportswriting of the 20th century. Did you think afterward that you had captured DiMaggio honestly?
Talese: I never think much about that when I’m doing it. I don’t write about the straight-on main guy. It’s not DiMaggio. It starts off with the Fisherman Wharf, which is the tradition and the history of the immigrant DiMaggio family, which made its living as fishermen. And at the Wharf I see this blonde. I don’t know her name. She’s good-looking. What was she doing? She’s probably a tourist and looking at the beautiful body of water that is near the DiMaggio restaurant. And then I go into the restaurant, as I described, and some people didn’t know it was me in the story. But it is me, obviously. I went third-person because I didn’t want to intrude. It’s not Garrison Keillor pluming into this or some first-person Jimmy Breslin goes to the circus or Norman Mailer goes to the Pentagon. The first person with those guys is natural. But I’m a quiet intruder with good manners, and I go into the restaurant and see to my surprise that it’s DiMaggio looking out of a window and standing there, smoking a cigarette. I didn’t move in at first. I didn’t have an appointment. I had a letter exchange with him. The reason I got to DiMaggio was that there was an old-timers game some months before. I met DiMaggio through a photographer name Ernie Sisto. DiMaggio said I could come out when we were in the locker room. So [in the restaurant] then he kind of walked away and I never talked to him. I went back into the entrance where I had entered the restaurant and I ran into this guy. I didn’t know it was a DiMaggio relative. I said, “Is Joe going to come back?” He says, “Joe who?” I’m like, Jesus Christ, how stupid do they think I am? What’s going on here? I saw DiMaggio. I know what he looks like. Then I leave and DiMaggio comes back, and all that stuff is in the piece. I was walking to my rented car and this damn car pulls up and the window goes down and there’s DiMaggio’s face. “Do you have a car?” “Of course I have a car,” I said stupidly. He says, “Well, I would have given you a ride.” Then he drives off. Oh, Christ. Here’s an opportunity to be in a car with the guy who I flew across the country to see and who is not known for being open for interviews. I built my way back. I hung around with people who knew DiMaggio: Lefty O’Doul, the old manager and baseball player, and Reno Barsocchini, who was the guy at his wedding when he married Monroe and who after the breakup of the marriage helped DiMaggio pack in L.A. and come back to San Francisco. I went to the bar and hung around. I was beseeching these guys to build a bridge from DiMaggio to me. The allowance was made that I could go around a golf course with him. You have to be well behaved if you are around people who don’t know you and give you the benefit of the doubt. And I am. I was raised in a store and I had parents who had a sense of decorum.
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