DiMaggio touched many hearts while spending time in Las Vegas

Tuesday, March 9, 1999 | 10:08 a.m.

In the early 1970s, Joe DiMaggio often could be found at one of his favorite Las Vegas hangouts, The Tower of Pizza restaurant on the south end of the Strip.

The restaurant's infamous owner, Gaspare Speciale, would customarily hug the Hall-of-Fame baseball legend. On one occasion, Speciale introduced DiMaggio to another friend, Izzy Marion, a longtime local businessman and youth baseball coach.

"To Italian-American people and baseball fans everywhere, Joe DiMaggio was everything," Marion said Monday shortly after learning that the 84-year-old Yankee Clipper had died early that morning of cancer at his home in Hollywood, Fla.

"I grew up in an Italian-American home in Detroit, where my father was so proud of DiMaggio he would say 'Joe DiMazha this and Joe DiMazha that."'

A Tigers fan, Marion would make it a point to go to Briggs Stadium when the Yankees came to town specifically to watch DiMaggio play.

"He had a swing that was so level," Marion, former longtime owner of the Salon di Pompeia beauty shop at Caesars Palace, said. "Off the field he was a gentleman.

"Even though he was sick for some time, his death still comes as a shock to me. Joe stood so high above everyone else in athletics. He had no equal."

If in the 1970s or '80s you were to ask: "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?" the answer often would have been Las Vegas. DiMaggio not only came to visit friends like Marion and Speciale, but he also loved to play the local championship golf courses.

DiMaggio celebrated his 65th birthday in Las Vegas on Nov. 25, 1979. The late Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun, a good friend, was among his party guests at the old Dunes hotel-casino.

Then a pitchman for Mr. Coffee, DiMaggio often hosted local events like craps, tennis and golf tournaments, especially at the Izzy Becker-run Riviera hotel-casino.

Former Riviera vice president of entertainment Tony Zoppi, who now lives in Dallas, recalled the annual Dewars Celebrity Tennis Tournament where "some of the biggest names in sports came (and) Joe would be the referee."

"Joe had arthritis in his back -- it was so bad he could hardly walk," Zoppi said of the ailment that had forced DiMaggio to retire from baseball in 1951. "(The hotel) used him for special events. If you sent out an invitation with Joe's name on it as the host you'd draw. People were in awe when he walked through a casino or a restaurant."

And DiMaggio was loyal to his friends whether they were highly respected business leaders like Greenspun, Marion, Zoppi and Becker, who now is retired and living in Florida, or notorious figures like Speciale, who from his young adulthood to just before his death in 1991 at age 68 was convicted of several gambling-related crimes.

Joe remained friends with the native New Yorker Speciale, who in 1989 was placed in the state's gaming black book and thus outlawed from going into Nevada casinos.

"Joe was a bit of an enigma," Zoppi said. "He didn't accept you right away. You had to earn his friendship. But once you became his friend, it was for life."

Zoppi recalled inviting DiMaggio to his hometown of Newark, N.J., to be the grand marshal of the Columbus Day parade 20 years ago.

"People would come up with their babies and say 'Joe, touch my baby,' " Zoppi said. "It was almost like the pope."

Some New Yorkers-turned-Las Vegans like Edi Gomez, longtime commissioner for Southern Nevada American Legion Baseball, recall going to Yankee Stadium and watching DiMaggio lead his team to nine World Series titles during 13 seasons.

"This is a sad day," Gomez said. "There just isn't enough I can say about how good Joe was for baseball. He was a very beautiful man. I would like to see kids today forget about the money and just play the game like Joe played it."

UNLV baseball coach Rod Soesbe, a longtime Yankee fan, keeps on a wall in his home an autographed print of Joe DiMaggio. It serves as a source of inspiration.

"He had a great competitiveness, hustle and a desire to win," Soesbe said. "You want the players you coach to emulate that. Off the field, Joe was professional and humble."

Don Logan, general manager of the Las Vegas Stars AAA ball club, said DiMaggio's loyalty to one team both during and after his career is admirable.

"Joe had an aura about him -- he stood for a lot of things about this game that we have to start to get back to as an industry," Logan said. "He showed us that life was not a sprint, but a marathon and that he was loyal to what he believed in to the end. His legacy has endured."

DiMaggio, who recorded a 56-game hitting streak in 1941 -- a mark that may never be broken -- also batted .325 lifetime, hit 361 home runs, was three times American League MVP, played for 10 pennant winners and was 11 times an all-star.

And he accomplished all of that and more for what would be considered small change in today's megamillion-dollar professional sports market.

"The most he ever made was $100,000 a season," Zoppi said. "That was astronomical in his day. Now they sign for $100 million. I often thought what Joe would receive if he played today. They couldn't pay him enough."

DiMaggio was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955, four years after he retired from baseball and a year after he divorced actress and fellow icon Marilyn Monroe.

As the country was sharply divided by the Vietnam War and a perceived decay in moral values, recording artist Paul Simon paid tribute to DiMaggio and his sterling image in his 1968 chart-topping single "Mrs. Robinson."

After asking "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?" Simon says: "A nation turns its lonely eyes to you." The Northern California-born son of poor Italian immigrants had indeed become a symbol for the ages.

In recent years, DiMaggio maintained a masterful control over his celebrity. He jealously guarded his image through the controlled marketing of baseball memorabilia and selected personal appearances at Yankee Stadium and other venues.

DiMaggio survived a well-publicized near-fatal bout with pneumonia last year and underwent cancer surgery last October. Plans had been for DiMaggio to throw the ceremonial first pitch to open the season at Yankee Stadium on April 9.