A Few Weeks or Forever?

Joe DiMaggio hobbled out of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital on crutches one day last week and snapped at reporters: "Leave me alone . . . you guys are driving me batty." It was not like the usually soft-spoken DiMag, but the Yankees' centerfielder had cause for being testy: it seemed possible he might never play again.

All spring he had nursed his right heel, tender after an operation for a bone spur last fall. The heel got worse instead of better. In exhibition games in Texas recently he tried putting some pressure on it, and the pain made sport-page headlines from Maine to Mexico. Last week, while DiMag was flown to Baltimore for diagnosis, the press speculated on 1) whether he would be out of the line-up for a few weeks or forever and 2) whether the New York Yankees would pay him $90,000 for a season of sitting on the bench.

At Johns Hopkins, surgeons examined their patient again. Their verdict: Joe is suffering from calcium deposits on the right heel, an affliction common enough among ballplayers but most often occurring in the elbow of a player's throwing arm (and then loosely referred to as "elbow chips"). The deposits are also akin to bursitis, in which excess calcium settles in sacks near the joints.

After DiMaggio's operation last fall, enough new calcium had formed in the surrounding heel tissue to cause new trouble. The doctors could well understand that Joe felt pain when he tried to run or pull up to a quick stop.

For immediate treatment of Patient DiMaggio the medicos prescribed injections of novocaine and saline to ease the pain, plus local X-ray applications. Future treatment would depend on how Joe responded, but it was pretty clear that he would have to keep off his feet as much as possible.

Two days after DiMaggio's flare-up at the reporters, he talked to them again, and this time sounded more like the old Di-Mag: "I definitely expect to be back in the line-up this season . . . These things have been cured before* and I guess it's just a matter of time."

This week, for the sixth time in his eleven seasons with the Yankees, the big guy would be out of the line-up on opening day. But this time it was no mere strained tendon. As far as baseball was concerned, Joe DiMaggio, one of the greatest outfielders and money hitters in history, was in critical condition.

*Joe could have been thinking of the great Rogers Hornsby, who played for several seasons after a similar operation.

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