Although his name has become synonymous with New York City, Joe Di Maggio was born in Martinez CA in 1914. His father, a native of Sicily, descended from a long line of fisherman, and he moved the family to California Bay Area just before Joe was born. According to the younger Di Maggio’s autobiography, Lucky To Be a Yankee: “I was born in Martinez, but my earliest recollection was of the smell of fish at Fisherman’s Wharf, where I was brought up. Our main support was a fishing boat, with which my father went crabbing. If you didn’t help in the fishing, you had to help in cleaning the boat.
“Baseball didn’t have much appeal to me as a kid, but it was better than helping Pop when he was fishing, or helping clean the boat. I was always giving him excuses, principally that I had a weak stomach, but he insisted I was lagnuso (lazy) and to tell you the truth, I don’t know which he thought was the greater disgrace to the family, that a Di Maggio should be lazy or that a Di Maggio should have a weak stomach.”
Joe Di Maggio’s Restaurant opened in 1937, just one year after Joe played his rookie season for the New York Yankees.
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