Joe DiMaggio only ever asked one person to sign a baseball for him — Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 1987, the Yankee Clipper was invited by the Reagan White House to a state dinner honoring the Russian leader, who died earlier this week at the age of 91.
“Gorbachev specifically asked that Joe DiMaggio be invited, as he had a fascination with the Yankee icon,” longtime DiMaggio pal, Dr. Rock Positano, told Page Six.
Positano, who wrote a book, “Dinner with DiMaggio: Memories of An American Hero,” about his friendship with the baseball legend, added that it was also unusual that the famously shy, retired athlete would accept the invitation, but he wanted to attend as “he had read a lot about the Soviet leader.”
Before the dinner, DiMaggio, hoping that he could get an autograph, picked up a dozen baseballs from a sports store and put one in his coat pocket.
But it stayed there and DiMaggio saw his chances fading until his dinner mate, Maureen Reagan, came to the rescue.
It was Maureen who instructed DiMaggio to take his baseball to the office of the chief usher and promised that things would be sorted out. The next day DiMaggio was watching the two leaders on television and much to his surprise, noticed that Reagan was rubbing a baseball in his hands.
A short time later, DiMaggio received the baseball in the mail that was signed by both Reagan and Gorbachev.
“It was one of Joe’s most cherished baseball memorabilia acquisitions,” Positano said.
”I was a witness to history,” he told the NYT after the event. ”I have done a lot of things in my time. But that day became one of the nicest days of my life, and one of the most meaningful.”
”In my life,” he added, ”that’s the only time I ever asked anybody to sign a baseball.”
DiMaggio, widely considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time died in 1999, aged 84.