New York Yankees Joe DiMaggio Baseball Player Art

About Joe DiMaggio

 I image almost every baseball fan is familiar with the name Joe DiMaggio.  He is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time playing for at the time one of the greatest baseball teams, the New York Yankees.  There is nothing much I can add to all of his stats.  I have also painted DiMaggio a number of times but thought it would be fun to try and do a simple, small drawing of him.  This ink drawing of Joe DiMaggio by sports artist John Robertson  is 11 inches by 14 inches on
watercolor paper.  Actually the paper is a little bit bigger by one in high to 15 inches.  The watercolor paper I drew Joe on is in a spiral watercolor paper binder so when it is torn out it can be trimmed down to the standard frame size of a 11” x 14” size.

 Interesting Info about Joe DiMaggio

 It seems the only way one generation (who have not followed baseball) of people know Joe DiMaggio is that he was a spokesman for the brand Mr. Coffee.  The older baseball crowd knows him by his nickname “Joltin’ Joe” or “The Yankee Clipper.” He was called by his many fans “Joltin’ Joe“because he was such a strong, hard hitter.  And others called him “The Yankee Clipper” because he sailed so gracefully through the outfield when making a catch in the wide center field of Yankee stadium.   And one of the big reasons people knew him was that he was one time married to Marilyn Monroe.  He was immortalized in the Paul Simon song, ‘Mrs. Robinson” with the line, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio /  Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you” -  meaning where has our heroes gone, where has the innocence of our youth gone and where are the days of the past as times have changes dramatically (this song was written in the sixties) and they are not coming back.  That’s a bit sobering.

Joe DiMaggio retired from baseball just as I was getting interested in the game.  1951.  I was young and listened to the Yankees games on the radio – the LA Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and did not come to L A for another six years.  So I was a Yankees fan and saw DiMaggio as a hero.  Heroes diminish and I lost some of my interest in baseball until the Dodgers showed up in LA. 

 Final Thoughts about Joe DiMaggio

 He was always being quoted and there are plenty around to draw from but I think the most interesting one must have been from when DiMaggio spoke about his days of his own innocence when he first started playing baseball.  He said, "I can remember a reporter asking me for a quote, and I didn't know what a quote was. I thought it was some kind of soft drink."

Sports painting of baseball great Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees Portrait

Baseball Art: Joe DiMaggio Painting Portrait

Baseball painting portrait of Joe DiMaggio  is 50" x 70" acrylic on unstretched canvas by sports artist John Robertson

As a boy and like so many others I thought Joe DiMaggio was the baseball player to follow and worship.  We did not have a major league team in Los Angeles at the time so the Yankees were the team we followed.  (What? No TV?  Nope.  Not then. This was 1948-1951) Joe was nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" and "The Yankee Clipper" and was what we all wanted to grow up to be - American Major League Baseball center fielder for the Yankees.  Dreams.  Boyhood dreams.

Kevin Costner about Joe DiMaggio

Even adults thought that Joe DiMaggio was something special.  Kevin Costner, who made that great baseball movie, “Field of Dreams” said about Joe DiMaggio, “There are certain people’s names that are reminders of what men can be like. To this day, when I hear the name Joe DiMaggio, it is so much more than a man’s name. It reminds me to play whatever game I’m in with more grace and pride and dignity…He is a man who speaks to us about how to walk through life and how to receive the admiration only the famous can know…and about how to wear defeat and disappointment as if it were just a passing storm. Men like Joe DiMaggio are not just of their own time. They are men for the ages.”

I remember in 1952 collecting Topps Baseball Cards – buying packs and packs of gum to get that Topps, Joe DiMaggio 1952 card. So I gathered about one-hundred-and-seventy-five cards before discovering that he retired before the production of the 1952 cards were printed. (I still have the 1952 Topps cards I collected as a boy.  And no they are not in good condition.  Who knew then.  I glued the cards into a paper scrapbook so on the back of the cards there are these great hunks of Elmer’s Rubber Cement and bits of paper attached to the cards.)

For me this is where Joe DiMaggio went

I continued to follow the Yankees until the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles for the 1958 season and my allegiance changed.  But, to me, baseball was never the same with DiMaggio gone from the game.  I really didn’t have much thought about DiMaggio being gone or what it might have meant to me until 1967.  The was the year one of my favorite movies came out, “The Graduate”  a coming of age movie about a college graduate entwined in the process of adulthood, the loss of innocence, manhood, etc.  And in the movie soundtrack is one of the great Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel songs, “Mrs Robinson.”  The classic lines in the lyrics:

”Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you, wo wo wo
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson
‘Joltin Joe’ has left and gone away, hey hey hey
Hey hey hey”

At that time I kicked and fought not to be an adult.  I had dropped out of high school - did my stint in the Navy,  tried college a number of times  and struggled to find direction.  Somehow the movie helped.  I was not alone but “Joltin Joe’ (had) left and gone away.”

Joe" DiMaggio November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999) played his entire 13-year career for the New York Yankees. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 – July 16, 1941), a record that still stands.  DiMaggio was a three-time MVP 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.  At the time of his retirement, 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 the baseball centennial year of 1969.  ---- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quotes about Joe DiMaggio

This is what a couple of other great baseball players said of Joe DiMaggio:

(Joe) DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw. His career cannot be summed up in numbers and awards. It might sound corny, but he had a profound and lasting impact on the country." - Ted Williams


"Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century." - Mickey Mantle

New York Yankees Derek Jeter

Couple of Derek Jeter Quotes


Some of what Derek Jeter says can be directly applied to being an artist.  .  For example Jeter said, " There may be people who have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do - and I believe that." 
I am a perfect example of that thought.  Although there are a lot of great artists out there - a lot of them do not make a living as a painter.  I am fortunate - and lucky - and I work very hard at what I do.  I am in my studio every day painting or finding a way to sell a painting. 

Of course, the problem with that work ethic is that I tend to forget to feed the cat, or water the flowers, or make the bed in the morning.  Now, that was okay when I wasn't married.  I mean, who cares?  Nobody was coming into my studio to check and see if the bed was made.  And the cat could find it's own food - and the flowers?  What flowers?  They were dead long ago.  But now that I am married things have changed.  I will make the bed and sometimes even change the sheets.  As Derek Jeter says, " I have feelings. I'm not emotionally stunted."  But as my wife says,  "Who would know?  You're in the studio all day painting and thinking about yourself."

A little About Derek Jeter


Derek says it again. " I don't really see myself getting a Twitter account..."  You want me out there emoting?  When Derek Jeter was playing do you think he had time for expressing his feelings?  No.  He was busy.  Hw was born on June 26, 1974, in Pequannock, New Jersey and grew up playing baseball.  He enrolled at the University of Michigan, but his time on campus was brief as he rapidly ascended the ranks of the Yankees' farm system. After batting .344 with 50 stolen bases in 1994, he was selected as "Minor League Player of the Year" by several publications, including The Sporting News and Baseball America.

  He was drafted by the Yankees in 1992. During 1996, his first full season in the majors, his performance helped the Yankees win the World Series against the Braves. Since then, he's seen four more Yankees World Series wins in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009. Jeter is the all-time Yankees hit leader and was named team captain in 2003. When he officially retired in 2014, he ranked sixth in MLB history with 3,465 hits."  Thank you for the information from http://www.biography.com/people/derek-jeter-189311


And when it was all over Jeter could start living a normal life, one away from the "bright lights, city lights"   He told NBC that starting a family and raising kids was one of his reasons for retiring from baseball. "I want to have a family," Jeter said. "Who knows when it's gonna' be? But I look forward to it."

Image Baseball Yankee Batter sports art by John Robertson

Sports Painting.  The sports art painting is that of a New York Yankee batter swinging  at the pitch.  The painting is ink and acrylic on New York maps and a map of the New York subway  system.  There is also a map of the United States.  The baseball player painting is 50" x 70" on unstretched canvas.