Baseball in "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

The motif of baseball and Joe DiMaggio in Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" implements the current events of the time, as well as providing Santiago a comparison between DiMaggio and himself.
Hemingway incorporates the current events of the time. In Cuba, as well as in America, baseball was the most popular sport in the fifties. All of the names mentioned in the novella related to baseball would have been instantly recognized in 1952, the year of its release. Joe DiMaggio in particular epitomizes the baseball hero, and even sports hero, of the forties and fifties. DiMaggio's hit…