(Credits: Far Out / Sony Music Entertainment)
Mon 17 November 2025 0:00, UK
There is no shortage of people wearing New York Yankees caps in the UK, despite the fact that very few of those people could name a single current member of the actual baseball team (Babe Ruth, who played 100 years ago, seems to be the go-to answer). Things aren’t necessarily as different as you’d expect in the US, however, where the gradual decline in the national popularity of baseball has also made the Yankee cap far more of a fashion statement than any sort of indication of sports fandom.
There was once a time, of course, when baseball truly was the beloved “National Pastime” of America, and its greatest heroes weren’t just household names, but in some cases, the biggest celebrities in the country. That was certainly the case during the playing career of Joe DiMaggio, AKA ‘The Yankee Clipper’, who spent his entire 13-year Major League career with New York, taking three years off in his prime to serve in World War II.
After his retirement in 1951, DiMaggio arguably achieved an even greater level of fame and scrutiny when he started dating and eventually married Hollywood’s most popular young actor, Marilyn Monroe. They were the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce of their day, in some respects, but DiMaggio was a far less extroverted gentleman than Mr Kelce, and the tension between his desire for privacy and the stratospheric level of Monroe’s fame eventually destroyed their marriage after less than a year – largely because DiMaggio had become increasingly jealous, controlling, and abusive.
Nonetheless, to the American public, “Joltin’ Joe” still represented something pure and humble and patriotic – a no-nonsense icon of ‘The Greatest Generation’ that many conservative-minded folks nostalgically preferred over the new type of more outspoken athletes and celebrities emerging during the 1950s and ‘60s.
To the counterculture, by contrast, DiMaggio was a square, an old man, a relic of the past.
That’s why, when Simon and Garfunkel released their hit song ‘Mrs Robinson’ – first as part of the soundtrack to the 1967 film The Graduate, and later on their own 1968 record Bookends – the 54-year-old DiMaggio wasn’t sure what to think of the most famous lyric therein:
“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Simon and Garfunkel – ‘Mrs Robinson’
As Paul Simon later recalled to USA Today in 2008, DiMaggio’s initial reaction “was that maybe we were making fun of him”.
Once Simon actually got the chance to meet the Yankee legend, however, ‘Mrs Robinson’ had already reached the number one spot in the country, “And obviously people weren’t taking it as mocking DiMaggio,” Simon said. “He was pleased.”
“It’s a funny thing about that song,” DiMaggio told the Detroit Free Press years later in a 1984 feature. “When it first came out, it was 1967 and I was a special coach out in Oakland. I was working with young players and they didn’t think much about me one way or another—until they heard that song. I remember them dragging me inside to listen to it. They were really impressed that someone would write me into a song like that.”
Paul Simon was actually too young to have been a DiMaggio fan himself; his Yankee hero was the outfielder who became the team’s star after DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. The extra syllables in Joe’s name fit the song better, however, and a legendary musical name-drop was born.
“Here was a famous ballplayer who was not of my generation,” Simon said, “and I ended up writing a memorial for him. Our lives intertwined because of that song.”
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