Daily News from New York, New York • 7

12 ru rui nn IE lmj II ft o-r-II? 1 rJ 1 5s Ji.fji MM FARREUL DAILY NtWS 1 ii fell i 1 -1 in winner by his teammates. He marvels at how DiMaggio was able to move about in "so many worlds" from his adolescence as the son of an Italian immigrant fisherman in San Francisco's North Beach; to the mob and the nightclub and saloon culture of the '50s in New York; to Monroe, Sinatra and the Kennedys in the '60s; and finally to Presidents and dignitaries like Henry Kissinger who wanted to be his friend. "The upshot is we gave this guy a hero's life," Cramer said, "and he never Engelberg flaunted the ring at DiMag-gio's March 1999 funeral in San Francisco and at his memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral. At the time, he told the Daily News, "He gave me that ring on his deathbed.

I'm never taking it off my finger." Cramer said a DiMaggio family member confronted Engelberg about the ring at the funeral and was told by the lawyer, "Joe said I could have the ring for one year and then it was to go back to the family. Cramer, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Middle East with the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1979, took more than five years to complete the DiMaggio book, which will be published Tuesday by Simon Shuster. He interviewed hundreds of DiMag-gio's associates and every living former teammate, including an obscure outfielder named Hank Workman, whose major league career spanned all of two games with the 1950 Yankees. "Workman told me how he had to light a Chesterfield, take one puff of it and have it waiting for Joe when he came in from center field," Cramer said. Cramer said he spent all of his six-fig- ri I i 5 i l-f ure advance conducting his exhaustive research.

He made numerous attempts to interview DiMaggio himself but, like all previous DiMaggio biographers, was rebuffed. "Joe didn't want to help anybody to see his life," Cramer said. "Now you know why. You could read a decade of sports clips and never know anything about this man." It is Cramer's opinion that DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player ever and that despite his aloofness was regarded as the ultimate i had a happy day." usi'o its rranj 1 1.