THE DUGOUT: Dom DiMaggio: Living in a shadow

“He’d watch the stock ticker all day and the Red Sox all night.”

Such was the life of former Boston Red Sox great Dominic DiMaggio in the eyes of his son. The older brother of the legendary Yankee’s slugger Joe DiMaggio, Dom spent his entire career with the Red Sox. The two enjoyed nine years of interlapping rivalry. The elder was considered a better batter; the younger regarded as more apt with the outfield glove.

Standing at just 5-9 with circular eyeglasses, Dom DiMaggio was given the nickname “Little Professor” early on in his career. He may not have earned a doctorate degree in anything more than batting discipline, but there was no doubting DiMaggio’s skill with numbers. After retiring from baseball in 1953, DiMaggio formed a plastic manufacturing company and was active in the stock market.

Although the diminutive DiMaggio didn’t measure up to his younger brother both literally and figuratively, he was a great baseball player in his own right. Earning seven All-Star appearances, Dom DiMaggio boasts a career batting average of .298 and the longest hitting streak in Boston Red Sox history at 34 games. Joe DiMaggio stakes claim to the major-league leading 56-game hitting streak, but his lighter older brother did steal more bases than his Hall-of-Fame brother.

Dom DiMaggio died this past Friday in his home in Massachusetts at the age of 92. He had been battling with pneumonia for some time and was surrounded by his family when he passed at around 1 a.m. Ironically, a replay of a recent Red Sox game was playing quietly in the background.

Many feel that Dom DiMaggio could have become a Hall-of-Fame member like his younger brother if it hadn’t been for the three years in which he served his country in World War II.

To his credit, though, DiMaggio never felt overshadowed by his brother or the fabled Red Sox outfield that also consisted of Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams. As his son said in an Associated Press release, “Dad had a great deal of respect for Uncle Joe and what he did ... But he never felt inferior.”

To put it mildly, Chicago White Sox pitcher Jose Contreras has been struggling.

He has an 0-5 record to go with his poor 8.19 ERA. The 37-year-old was taken out of the starting rotation in favor of Clayton Richard. Instead of being expatriated to the bullpen, Contreras asked to be given a minor leauge assignment with the Charlotte Knights. In order for the transaction to actually take place, Contreras had to clear waivers, which means that all other teams had 48 hours to claim the struggling veteran with the $11 million contract, should they have wanted.

No other team claimed Contreras so he will spend his next few starts trying to gain control and iron out the kinks in his delivery. His replacement, Clayton Richard, has posted an ERA of 4.32 so far this year from the bullpen. He made his first start in Contreras’ place on Tuesday.

David Ortiz continues his power outage for the Boston Red Sox.

Despite the fact that his team is among the best in baseball at this point in the season, Ortiz has yet to hit a home run and has a batting average of .224. He boasts just 11 extra-base hits through the first 31 games of the season.

Many have placed blame on Ortiz’s wrist injury of last year, although Big Papi has refuted that, saying that his wrist is pain-free. Red Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan has diagnosed the problem as an early cocking of the hands into a hitting position.

This has resulted in numerous instances of Ortiz violently striking out swinging on pitches that rarely top 90 on the radar gun. Ortiz is late on almost every pitch, which leads to the ball being punched to left field the majority of the times when the left-hander does actually make contact with the ball.

Magadan tells the Boston Globe that all Ortiz’s problems will be solved eventually and this problem will just take a matter of time to correct.

The Manny Ramirez saga continues as more and more developments are made public.

We now know that Ramirez gave a urine sample during Spring Training of this year for testing. The results showed an alarmingly high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone — typically a 1:1 raio. Sources claim that Ramirez’s ratio was between 4:1 and 10:1.

Major Leauge Baseball then sent the sample to the World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal to determine whether the high ratio was a result of synthetic testosterone, in other words: steroids.

The results determined that whatever caused the unusual spike in Ramirez’s testosterone to epitestosterone ratio was indeed synthetic and injested by the 36-year-old slugger. A legal battle over personal medical records was eventually won by Major League Baseball and revealed a prescription for the drug human chorionic gonadotrophin, otherwise known as hCG — No. 55 on MLB’s banned drug list.

Ramirez had planned to appeal, but after finding out that the synthetic testosterone in his system could not have been produced by the hCG, there was no chance of getting out of his suspension because there were now two drugs he had to account for.

In his released statement last week, Ramirez claimed that his suspension was a result of the prescription hCG that he took, and not of steroids. He wasn’t exactly lying, but according to various investigative reporters, Ramirez wasn’t telling the entire truth, either.

Andrew Kneeland is a sophomore at Sahuarita High School. He is an intern at the Green Valley News.