DiMaggio Orders Doctors to Keep Quiet

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. —  Joe DiMaggio must be feeling better: He told his doctors to shut up.

Two days after awakening from a coma, an irate DiMaggio ordered them Sunday to stop giving public updates on his recovery from lung cancer surgery and pneumonia.

Doctors had said Friday that the 84-year-old baseball great was very close to death. Now, he’s talking and trying to recapture the privacy he has always cherished.

“We allowed Joe to talk this morning and he was very angry,” said Dr. Earl Barron, who heads the six-person team treating the Hall of Famer. “He said, ‘No more press.’ ”

Barron said he could no longer comment on DiMaggio’s health. He refused to say whether his condition had been upgraded from critical to serious, as had been expected.

DiMaggio has guarded his privacy since his retirement from baseball in 1951, and information about his condition has been tightly controlled since he checked into Memorial Regional Hospital on Oct. 12. He had surgery two days later to remove a cancerous tumor in his right lung.