ON THE wall of fame at Enrico's Sports Bar, Haven and Pratt streets, in Highlandtown, there are photographs of all the great ones owner Bud Paolino's met and treasured over the years, from Rocky Marciano and Jack Dempsey to Mimi DiPietro and Du Burns to Charley Eckman and Pope John Paul II.

But three of the old black-and-white pictures stand out: Joe DiMaggio in his glory, in his famous widespread eating stance, never breaking stride, devouring steamed crabs at Bud's old place on Lombard Street with piles of the crustaceans in front of him and DiMaggio wearing a plastic bib to protect his outfit.

It's a suit and tie.

Joe DiMaggio might have been the only man in the history of Baltimore, or San Francisco or Ocean City or the entire seafood-eating populace of North America, who ever ate steamed crabs in a suit and tie, or imagined he needed to.

"I knew Joe real good for 35 or 40 years," Bud Paolino was saying the day after DiMaggio's death, at age 84, sent people reaching into their memory banks all over the country. "He probably came out here 20 times over the years. He was a very, very, very shy man.

"And he never changed over the years. A few of us would eat with him, guys like Al Isella and Benny Trotta. Benny brought him out here. He was promoting fights in those days, and Joe loved the fights. Joe was a nice guy, but he never really talked. The others would make conversation. Joe was shy, like me. And he was real dignified, and he always wore a suit and tie."

In the sea of words now washing across the country, this stands out: not just the great DiMaggio hitting streak or the marriage to Marilyn Monroe, but the need for a private place, and the walls DiMaggio erected around himself to hold onto his sense of who he wanted the world to see.

Some of it was the nature of the man, and some the nature of his background: the fisherman's son thrust into sophisticated New York, the high school dropout who found himself in the heart of fast-talking Manhattan, the Italian who had heard all the slurs.

"When I first came up," DiMaggio once said, "they asked me for a quote. I didn't know what a quote was."

But he knew a blood libel when he saw one. He was 24 when Life magazine profiled him. The piece wasn't intended to be critical. It's just off-handedly insulting, an echo of the era's casual prejudice. Here are a few things it said:

"Although he learned Italian first, Joe speaks English without an accent and is otherwise well adapted to most U.S. mores. Instead of olive oil or smelly bear grease he keeps his hair slick with water. He never reeks of garlic and prefers chow mein to spaghetti."

"Like heavyweight champion Joe Louis, DiMaggio is lazy, shy and inarticulate."

Sixty years later, it's still stunning to read such language. No wonder the guy spent the rest of his life erecting a carefully structured image for the world to see.

Americans boast of the national melting pot, and see baseball as one of our great democratizers. It sure is. There's a song in "Ragtime," called "What a Game," where a man joyously sings:

"It's like the Constitution

The institution

Of dear ol' baseball

Where every man is treated the same"

At which, voices are heard through the grandstand, crying:

"Kill the kraut."

"Run, you polack."

"Strike that kike."

"Kill the mick."

That's the other national pastime, plucking at each other's ethnic differences, looking for a few handy vulnerabilities, putting down the other guy so we can give ourselves a psychological boost atop his shoulders.

DiMaggio, by the accounts of more than a few who knew him, could be a pill. But he also knew he was a carrier of Italian-American pride, the way Hank Greenberg was for the Jews, and Jackie Robinson was for blacks. Hitting a Bob Feller fastball was only part of his problem. The rest was finding himself in a country that casually reaches for the ethnic stereotype, and wanting to do the right thing, and not always certain he knew how, and thus walling himself off as a defense mechanism.

"He'd walk into my place," Bud Paolino was saying this week, "and everybody in the place stood up. It was like a general walking in."

In World War II, Paolino was one of the first guys who landed on D-Day. When he reached Holland, he says, "Our password was 'Joe DiMaggio.' I was with all these guys from New York, and they brainwashed me about Babe Ruth and DiMaggio. Whoever figured I'd meet the guy all those years later?"

When Paolino told DiMaggio about the wartime password, Joe seemed to take it in stride. He knew the world had been watching him almost all his life. Playing a game of baseball must have seemed like a relief. For more than 60 years, the world examined his every move. No wonder the guy wore a suit and tie even when he ate steamed crabs.

Pub Date: 03/11/99