Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

DiMaggio

1951. Yankee Stadium. Mezzanine section. Our family was polenta poor but our dentist, Dr. Fusco, had a father-in-law who was big with White Owl Cigars, one of the Yankees’ sponsors. He got us these front row seats. A fan in the row behind us, wearing a fedora and shirt sleeves, yelled out, “Put ’er away, Joe!” DiMaggio was in his final year, hobbled, being replaced by this Mantle kid, yet still the classiest figure in all of sports. So I yelled it too. “Put ’er away, Joe.” Joe didn’t, couldn’t. But that was all right. I had spoken to him.

Find Jim DeFilippi’s books, including a micromemoir collection, at his Amazon Author Page: Jim DeFilippi.

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