Joe's family played a very important role throughout his younger years and in his baseball career days.  Joe's father, Giuseppe, was not a fan of baseball in Joe's younger years.  By the time three of his boys were playing ball and earning money doing it, he was a super fan.  He would get up early to check the box scores and see if any of his boys had hits.  Joe, in his autobiography, said that Giuseppe had developed an uncanny ability to call various outcomes of the ball games.  He also thought that his father's pride and joy was his younger brother Dominic, who was the best defensive player in Joe's opinion.  Giuseppe would spend his days preparing meals and talking baseball with the customers who came to DiMaggio's Grotto on Fisherman's Wharf.  He would make a traditional Italian dish called "cioppino", which was eaten with your hands or not at all!

Joe was born on November 25, 1914 to Rosalie and Giuseppe DiMaggio.  Joe's given name was Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio Jr.  He was named after his father because in the Sicilian tradition the children are named after the grandparents first.  After Dominic was born in 1917,the family moved from Martinez, CA to San Francisco and rented a house in the North Beach section.  Rosalie and Giuseppe had nine children: Nellie, Mamie, Tom, Marie, Mike, Frances, Vince, Joe, and Dominic.  Growing up, Joe looked up to all of his older brothers, but was closest to Vince.  He admired Vince because of his fluency with English and his abilities to charm and sing.  As a child, Joe struggled with English and would slip back into Sicilian.  Because if this, he was picked on by the other children and became a more quiet kid. 

The home they rented was near Fisherman's Wharf where Giuseppe kept his boat for crabbing.  As a young boy, Joe had to choose between helping with the fishing or cleaning the boat.  Giuseppe wanted his sons to follow in his footsteps and become fishermen as well, but the last three DiMaggio boys had other ideas.  Joe was consistently called lazy by his father because he didn't want to work on the boat.  Joe wasn't as passionate asVince about baseball growing up.  He would play baseball because it wasbetter than fishing or cleaning.  Giuseppe was not a fan of the sport either.  He is known to have said that the game had "Too many shoes, too many pants" when asked why he didn't like the sport.  Giuseppe was a traditional Italian immigrant, therefore, Bocci was the game to play.  Bocci was the Italian version of lawn bowls.  When Joe was freed from his obligations on the boat, he stopped playing baseball and started selling newspapers.  He tried various jobs to lend a hand financially.  Giuseppe and Rosalie did not have much money and only the two eldest, Nellie and Tom, ever got to wear new clothes.

Joe often followed in Vince's footsteps growing up.  Vince had played baseball for their high school varsity team on Sundays as third baseman.  However, Vince dropped out of high school to work in a fruit market.  Eventually, he was signed with the San Francisco Seals and farmed to Tucson.  Meanwhile, Joe was playing baseball with the neighborhood boys on the old Horse Lot.  It was Vince's idea that Joe could make money playing baseball like he was.  Two years later, Joe dropped out of Galileo High just like Vince did.  His mother protested this action and Joe would later reflect that he wished that he would have listened to her.  Especially when reporters would fire questions at
him and he wouldn't understand what they were asking him at first.

Joe's earliest recollection of playing the game was when he was attending Hancock Grammar School at the age of ten.  He had played the game near his home on Fisherman's Wharf by the North Beach playground.  He had almost stopped playing baseball when he was fourteen because he was more interested in tennis for a short time.  Tennis players Maurice McLaughlin and Bill Johnston had visited San Francisco around this time.  But Joe kept playing baseball on the old Horse Lot as third baseman.  The area was named the Horse Lot because the dairy farmers used it as a parking area, therefore, the only spectators of the games were the horses.  They used rocks for bases, an old ball held together by bicycle tape for a baseball, and an oar handle for a bat.  They also used their hands as mitts because they could not afford gloves.  Eventually, some of the neighborhood boys put a team together and invited Joe to play.  The newly created Boys' Club League won the championship in their division and the local olive oil dealer, named Rossi, provided the team with uniforms and equipment.  When he began playing for the Sunset Produce Team in the Class A League, he switched from third base to shortstop and received his first professional offer soon after.  The Mission Red A's, who were part of the San Francisco Missions on the Pacific Coast League, asked him to try out for the Red A's and offered him $150.00 per month if he made the team.  The team was managed by former Yankee catcher, Fred Hoffman. 
Hoffman had also coached the St. Louis Browns.