Dimaggio Historians - Need your help

fmclaug11

Last night I happened across a ticket stub from Honolulu Stadium dated September 3, 1944 in a pile of ephemera I had purchased some years ago. I did some quick research out of general interest to see what teams were playing in that game (assuming it was some Hawaiin college team) and was more intrigued when I started to read that this was exactly the time when Joe Dimaggio was playing for the 7th Army Air Force in Honolulu and that they regularly played at Honolulu Stadium. I spent a couple of hours last night online trying to find any schedule information about this date and at that Stadium, but information seems to be scarce. I do have information about him playing in an exhibition all-star game on September 4, 1944 but that's the closest info I can find. If anyone has any information that would help determine whether Joe D. did play on Sept. 3, 1944 in Honolulu Stadium I would greatly appreciate it.

ChrisStufflestreet

I looked through some reference materials I had about DiMaggio but found nothing. However, I know from my time in SABR a few years ago that the group has a deep knowledge of WW2 service-related baseball stuff. The department chair is Gary Bedingfield; if you send him an email he may be able to dig around and find something.

Here's a link for Gary's Baseball During Wartime site

pomobileclk

Joe may have been back in San Francisco by Sept 3,1944 according to this article from the AP that ran on Sept 1, 1944

Stone193

That appears to answer the question Bob - nice work.

I didn't know where Joe was during the war.

mike

fmclaug11

Not the answer I wanted, but great detective work none the less! I had found this poster below for a game on Sept 4th which had given me some level of confidence that he may well have been there on the 3rd, but of course I realize the posters could have been made well in advance of the game and him leaving. I read he was getting ill wilth ulcers and was out for quite a while after that. I still think the ticket is pretty cool as there were still alot of major leaguers playing for the Army/Navy teams right then. I'd still like to find out who was actually playing that day because it could have even been the Army, Navy football teams which also used Honolulu Stadium. Good little history lesson...would be neat if someone compiled the stats for the players and kept better records for those games. It doesn't appear that much was documented.

fmclaug11

UPDATE: I was able to get in touch with Art Suehiro in Hawaii...He wrote a book about the history of Honolulu Stadium ("Honolulu Stadium: Where Hawaii Played") and he checked the local archives for me and found that the 7th Army Air Force did indeed play there on September 3rd, 1944 (without Dimaggio), but the game did feature Red Ruffing (pitched) and Joe Gordon among others. Thought I'd pass this along for anyone who was interested.

hotmush

Watchin' the detectives!
Just like watchin' the detectives...