Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Ed Abbaticchio: Forgotten Pioneer" from Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball by Lawrence Baldassaro, Foreword by Dom DiMaggio:

"In one of the first stories on Joe DiMaggio to appear in a national publication, Quentin Reynolds, associate editor of Collier’s magazine, recounted the following exchange among baseball writers covering spring training in 1936: “‘He says you pronounce it Dee-Mah-gee-o,’ one of the sports writers said gloomily. ‘That’s a very tough name to pronounce and also tough to spell,’ another added. ‘DiMaggio sounds like something you put on a steak,’ one writer said in disgust.”¹

That same spring, following several letters from readers offering the correct pronunciation of the DiMaggio name, an editorial note pointed out that in a recent interview with a New York Times reporter, DiMaggio himself said that “if there is any further argument on this point he will have to change his name to Smith.”²

From the time Italian Americans first appeared in the Major Leagues, sportswriters and typesetters were baffled by their names. Compared to the more familiar Anglo-Saxon and Celtic names that dominated baseball rosters, Italian names seemed long and confusing; they did not trip off the tongue like “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” Both phonetically and culturally, their foreign-sounding names set Italians apart, a reminder that they were somehow not quite as American as those who had come before them."

 Lawrence Baldassaro is a professor emeritus of Italian at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is the author of numerous articles on baseball, coeditor of The American Game: Baseball and Ethnicity, and editor of Ted Williams: Reflections on a Splendid Life.

To read a longer excerpt or to preorder Beyond DiMaggio, visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Beyond-DiMaggio,674696.aspx.

For notes 1 and 2 please refer to the print edition of the book.