Where have you gone, Vince Dimaggio?

by Edward Kiersh

Author Edward Kiersh offers vignettes of over 50 former big leaguers in this remarkable look at both the game and life after baseball. Some of these ex-players were recent baseball retirees; others had left the game decades earlier. The assembled players range from top stars (Warren Spahn, Harmon Killebrew, Willie McCovey) to established players (Ernie Broglio, Leon Wagner), to marginal performers like Hector Lopez and Pumpsie Green. The author succeeds in getting the players to really open up with details of both their baseball careers and current lives. Nearly all left the game before the big salaries arrived, and thus needed to earn a living in their life-after-baseball. Some made a smooth transition, but others faced challenges ranging from unemployment, to alcoholism, to financial troubles. Bernie Carbo opened a hair salon, John Blanchard overcame drinking problems to work in sales, and Dean Chance was happy to have a job with a traveling carnival. As for the oldest DiMaggio brother, he was happily retired and studying his bible - sadly, he passed away at 74 in 1986, not long after this book arrived.

Genres: Baseball, Sports

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Tim Blackburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly fun read!! The book was written in 1983 and it provides a brief "what are they doing now" snapshot of 55 former major league baseball players. The gamut of players run from HOF players (Ernie Banks and Warren Spahn among others) to lesser known bench players (Joe Christopher and Bernie Carbo among others). These were players who retired from baseball in the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. The reading experience was so interesting in finding out what these players were doing 10 to 15 years after their baseball career ended. Sadly, the vast majority of those profiled have since passed away but in 1983 they were vibrant middle aged men with hopes and dreams of life after baseball. Remember these players didn't make enough money in baseball to not work afterwards. This was a bittersweet, poignant, nostalgic trip for me to learn what happened to my boyhood baseball card gods. Pure unadulterated brain candy!!

[Roger Heinemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Just like that (snapping his fingers), they turn out the lights, and you're gone. Ninety-nine percent of the guys can't live with that, The game's fun for years, it's a kid's game and you love it. But then all of a sudden you're thirty-five and the bubble bursts. What do you do then? Hey, pal, being told you're over the hump at thirty-five, that's a lot to take." - Johnny Blanchard

Similar to Lawrence Ritter's incomparable "The Glory of their Times", author Edward Kiersh sets out across the country to locate and interview retired ballplayers . "Where Have You Gone, Vince DiMaggio?" lacks the grand purpose of Ritter's book, i.e., to capture a fading era of turn-of-the-century baseball and the roots from which the players from that era had sprung. Kiersh simply wants to know what happened to some of those major league players whose cards we collected and whose careers we followed once those careers ended.

Kiersh presents 55 profiles, each running a handful of pages and often accompanied by a photograph or two. Each is a breezy read and perhaps that's for the best because lying beneath the surface is the occasional sense that perhaps we ought not to linger. What he discovers runs the gamut. While some found successful second careers many have struggled, a few tragically so, and most wish they could somehow return to the game.

Kiersh often recounts some of each players accomplishments during his playing days and he has a disconcerting tendency to revel in their pranks, hi-jinks and at times arguably destructive behaviors.

As someone who collected the cards of most of these players, there was a lot of nostalgia to become reacquainted with them and I found myself rooting for them all over again.