N E W Y O R K, Oct. 15, 2000 -- Joe DiMaggio’s lawyer cheated him out of several hundred thousand dollars in memorabilia in the last days before his death, according to a new biography on the New York Yankee great.

In his book, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, Richard Ben Cramer says Morris Engelberg, DiMaggio’s lawyer and friend through the 1990s, had the Yankee Clipper sign baseballs while he was hospitalized.

Excerpts of the book, due to be released Tuesday, were included in the Oct. 23 issue of Newsweek magazine.

Information Allegedly Controlled, Too

Cramer says Engelberg made a secret deal to get 2,000 baseballs made specially for Joe DiMaggio Day at the end of the 1998 baseball season, with the intent of having them unwittingly signed and then sold for his own gain without DiMaggio’s knowledge.

According to the book, Engelberg gained DiMaggio’s trust because he made more money for him than any of his previous business managers. Cramer claims Engelberg took thousands of items DiMaggio signed, including baseballs, lithographs and canceled checks.

In October 1998, two weeks after the Yankees held Joe DiMaggio Day on the last day of the season, DiMaggio was hospitalized and had a cancerous tumor removed from his right lung. Then, after contracting pneumonia in his other lung, DiMaggio was placed on a respirator.

Cramer says Engelberg manipulated the release of information during DiMaggio’s fatal illness, often dispensing false updates and prognoses. DiMaggio died on March 8, 1999.

Engelberg was unavailable for comment. A message left on his home answering machine by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.

Was Planning to Remarry Marilyn?

The author also details how DiMaggio, viewed as a consummate gentleman on and off the field, was a lonely man who didn’t trust people and was obsessed with money and privacy.

Cramer tells how DiMaggio rushed home after an earthquake in San Francisco before Game 3 of the 1988 World Series, and emerged with $600,000 in a garbage bag.

According to the New York Daily News, Cramer reveals DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe had agreed to remarry before she died of a drug overdose in 1962.

Cramer also details DiMaggio’s ties to organized crime, including a trust fund set up by mobster Frank Costello, according to the newspaper.