th
# 70 •OCTOBER 19 , 2015
mobility to graduates. As
the professional football
league became more prominent after World War II
and surpassed baseball
as the American national
game in the 1960s, Italian
players became among
the best in the professional ranks.
Who is your favorite Italian American sport champion? Is there anecdote
about him or her , that few
people know, you’d like
to share with our readers?
as communists, socialists,
or anarchists, views considered antithetical to the
American capitalist and
democratic systems. In
baseball they learned that
if one argues with the umpire (the referee or boss
of the game) he could be
expelled from the game
(or the workplace).
since the late nineteenth
century, and an Italian led
all college players in scoring as early as 1915; but
very few Italians had the
finances to attend college. There athletic prowess
increasing earned them
athletic scholarships (free
room and board, tuition,
and books in exchange
for their athletic services)
Italian players had been to the universities and
participants in the Ame- providing greater social
rican game of football
There are so many great
Italian champions it would
be hard to pick just one.
I would have to recognize Joe DiMaggio, considered to be the greatest
baseball player of his era
(1936-1951), as the turning point in Italian American identity. He was a
humble hero who adhered to his Italian roots, honored his parents, overcame racial stereotypes, yet
won acceptance in American mainstream society,
as evidenced by his brief
marriage to the Hollywood goddess, Marilyn Monroe. Before DiMaggio’s
ascendance Italians were
still viewed as a separate
racial group, less than and
WE THE ITALIANS | 49
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