Where has your reputation gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Ironically, the book records how, in life, DiMaggio abhorred anyone whom he suspected of profiting through the exploitation of the star's name and fame.

Cramer lifts the cloak of glory from DiMaggio's shoulders to reveal a man whom, he alleges, was married to the mob for longer than he was married to screen idol Marilyn Monroe.

Joltin' Joe carefully cultivated an image of dignity and grace, but in Cramer's account, DiMaggio spent a lifetime exploiting those who sought to offer him friendship, loyalty and protection.

Nineteen months after his death from cancer at the age of 84, DiMaggio - the son of an immigrant Italian fisherman - is also depicted as being obsessed with money, never paying for new cars, trips or meals if someone else was around to pick up the bill.

These, and other revelations, are giving Yankee fans an uncomfortable ride on the subway lines linking the Shea and Yankee Stadiums.

DiMaggio's marriage to Monroe in 1954 was an amazing coupling of America's most revered sportsman with its most adored actress. But it was a relationship that lasted just nine tempestuous months during which DiMaggio is alleged to have struck his famous wife.

Cramer claims that when a friend of the film star asked whether DiMaggio had ever hit her, she replied "yes" before adding, mysteriously, "not without cause".

Yet he also insists that rumours that the pair were about to remarry were true. Alas, Monroe's sudden death in 1962 brought a tragic end to their rekindled love.

DiMaggio had quit baseball some 11 years earlier, losing an annual retainer with the Yankees of $100,000 (£71,000).

"But he wasn't walking away from a hundred grand," says Cramer. "He was walking into more than a million in cash." This is alleged to have been the proceeds of a retirement 'trust fund' set up for DiMaggio by mobster Frank Costello. Whenever he frequented a club owned by Costello, another few hundred dollars would be added to the account.

Cramer details DiMaggio's relationships with other gangsters.

In one instance, the FBI asked him why he played golf with Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana.

DiMaggio insisted that Giancana was just someone he happened to meet.

But Cramer writes: "He wasn't going to volunteer the fact that Giancana was a pal since Joe was playing ball. He wasn't going to say that Sam G was always good for a broad, or a pay-day in Chicago."

That, Cramer claims, was one of the things the mob liked about Joe.

"He didn't talk. And no one was ever going to make him talk. Why would the cops be bothering a hero?"

Money meant a lot to DiMaggio, so much so that it was the first thing he thought about when a dreadful earthquake struck San Francisco during the Bay Bridge World Series game between the Giants and Oakland A's in October 1989.

Cramer describes how DiMaggio left Candlestick Park, where the game was taking place, and hurried home in order to retrieve a bag from the rubble and dust. Only then did he inquire after the whereabouts of his sister.

DiMaggio, the eighth of nine children, spent the night of the earthquake at an exclusive club.

According to Cramer: "He'd sleep well there - with the garbage bag, which held six hundred thousand dollars, cash."

The biography has met with mixed acclaim on this side of the Atlantic.

USA Today reviewer Bob Minzesheimer described it as "muckraking". Yet in the same newspaper, broadcaster and columnist Larry King said: "This work will go down as one of the most definitive stories of a life and its times, sports or otherwise".

DiMaggio claimed he never understood the Simon and Garfunkel song and once asked Simon whether the reference to him was derogatory.

The songwriter explained: "It has something to do with heroes, people who are all good and have no bad in them at all.

"That's the way I see Joe DiMaggio, perfect in every way."

Sadly, when it comes to human failings, it seems DiMaggio was just an ordinary Joe.