Hall of Fame baseball player Joe di Maggio (1914-1999) was born in Martinez, California, the eighth of nine children of Italian immigrant fisherman Giuseppe and his wife Rosalia di Maggio. He grew up in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, where he learned from the age of ten to play baseball. Like his brothers, Joe helped his father in the fishing industry but hated the smells and being out on a boat and was thrilled when he was invited to the training camp for the San Francisco Seals. He made the team in 1933. He signed for the New York Yankees in 1936.

The following year the Di Maggio family opened their restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf and a huge neon sign showed Joe in his familiar baseball hitting stance. The walls of the restaurant were lined with pictures of Joe and his brothers Dom and Vince, who were also baseball players, and their baseball buddies. Eldest brother Tom managed the restaurant, and it was so successful that the elderly Guiseppe was able to retire from the fishing industry and occasionally cook in the kitchen.

Joe, whose first marriage ended in divorce, married film actress Marilyn Monroe in 1954 and the couple lived in a home near Fisherman’s Wharf and would eat at the restaurant.  They separated after only nine months of marriage and divorced. After Marilyn died of a barbiturate overdose in 1962, the now-retired Joe arranged her funeral and paid the expenses.

In time, Joe sold his interest in the family restaurant and briefly returned to baseball in 1968 as a coach for the Oakland Athletics. In the 70s he became a spokesman for Mr Coffee and the Bowery Savings Bank.

In the mid-80s, the family’s restaurant closed.  We believe this 1940s menu was for a special dinner to honor William Harridge (1883-1971), who was an influential President of the American League and inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

Joe di Maggio died in Hollywood, Florida, at the age of 84.