Meet Gus Zernial, the American League slugger who blasted home runs for the Chicago White Sox, the Philadelphia/Kansas City As, and at his career’s end, the Detroit Tigers.

Zernial has faded from memory, but the plate accomplishments of the player nicknamed “Ozark Ike” after the 1950s popular comic book character are worth recalling.  During the six-year period from 1950 through 1955, no AL player hit more home runs than Zernial’s 177. Only the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra hit more AL home runs than Zernial, who finished his career with 237 that included nine grand slams and 10 pinch-hit home runs. The U.S. Navy WWII vet hit multiple home runs in a game 32 times and ended his career with a .486 slugging percentage.

In 1951, while the White Sox were training in Pasadena and Marilyn Monroe’s Hollywood career was waxing, her agents wanted to profile her with well-known athletes. Zernial filled the bill. As a popular Stars’ basher, pictures with Zernial and Monroe would be perfect for movie magazines and gossip rags. In his autobiography, Zernial wrote that Monroe was more than another blond bombshell but was “very intelligent.” When the photo shoots ended, Zernial’s teammates wondered if he asked Monroe for a date. Zernial replied, “Not hardly. My wife was sitting right on the field!”

When word reached New York Yankees’ Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio that Zernial had been chosen for a Monroe photo op, he asked, “Why should a bush-leaguer like Zernial meet her when I have not?” Always cold and aloof, Di Maggio penned harsh criticism about Zernial in his future books and when the two played in the same golf tournaments, Joe D. ignored the fence-buster. DiMaggio incorrectly assumed that Monroe and Zernial were romantically linked.

To convince DiMaggio that his relationship with Monroe was strictly business, Gus authorized his agent to release her phone number to the former Yankee. DiMaggio called her every day for two straight weeks but the starlet never returned his messages. When Marilyn learned from Mickey Rooney that Joe D. was a nationally recognized superstar, she agreed to a date.

DiMaggio, age 37, liked blonds and Monroe, age 25, was partial to famous, wealthy, more mature suitors. In the 1950s, DiMaggio’s $100,000 salary was huge. The couple dated for more than two years until, in 1954, they married in San Francisco’s City Hall. Nine months later, Monroe filed for divorce, citing “mental cruelty.” In her divorce papers, Dorothy Arnold, Di Maggio’s first wife had similarly cited “cruel indifference.”

Immediately after their separation, DiMaggio had her phone bugged, and when she moved into Park Avenue’s Waldorf Astoria, he wore a fake beard and held The New York Times over half his face while he sat in the lobby for hours, waiting for a glimpse of her. Even as she spiraled downward with drugs, booze, and mental illness, and after she became intimately involved with both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, convinced she’d marry one of them, DiMaggio remained true to her.

When Monroe was found dead in her home in 1962, the coroner listed the cause as suicide. Zernial later wrote that he “suspected foul play.” The Yankee great identified Monroe’s body, ­organized a small, private funeral, and designed her simple, elegant headstone: “Marylin Monroe, 1926-1962.” Neither James Doughtery nor Arthur Miller, Monroe’s first and third husbands, attended her funeral.

DiMaggio never returned to her grave, but he remembered the wish Monroe had expressed to him many years ago, when they were first dating: that when she died, she wanted flowers delivered to her grave every week, just like William Powell did for Jean Harlow. Until his 1999 death, DiMaggio had fresh roses delivered to Monroe’s crypt twice a week. He never remarried, and on his deathbed, his last words were, “I’ll finally get to see ­Marilyn again.”

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].