ABSTRACT
Early Life Joseph Paul DiMaggio, Jr., was the eighth of nine children born to Giuseppe and Rosalia DiMaggio, Italian immigrants who migrated to California around the beginning of the twentieth century. Giuseppe, who made his living as a crab fisherman, moved his family to San Francisco the year after Joseph's birth. As youngsters, the DiMaggio boys worked with their father, attended local public schools, and played sandlot baseball, a sport for which they seemed to possess a natural gift. Two of Joseph's brothers, Vincent and Dominic, also had major league baseball careers, though their older brother Tom, who followed Giuseppe into crab fishing, was said to be the family's most proficient baseball player.
