How JBM even got Tramp hot under the collar

A few weeks ago, this column had a chat with Robert Lipsyte, an American sportswriter of such eminence that ringing his house was like ringing 1-800-OLYMPUS and asking for Zeus himself.

In all the excitement, though we forgot to ask him about an incident in a baseball press box which just predated Lipsyte’s arrival in journalism, when the New York Yankees of Joe DiMaggio played the Detroit Tigers. A Tiger chased down one of the balls struck by DiMaggio and made a spectacular catch, to loud applause.

Later DiMaggio blasted the ball a hundred feet over his opponent’s head and out of the stadium, and one of the New York sportswriters leaned out of the press box and roared down: “Let’s see you catch that, you idiot,” with the word idiot standing in as a kind of low-alcohol substitute for something stronger.