As Reported by David Corr, former editorial staff member of the Vineyard Gazette, in the Gazette edition of June 1984:

The Star Wars of sportsfishing opens with some 25 boats —a swarm of fiber-glass locusts bristling with antennae and poles —bolting out of Edgartown harbor.

Aboard Windsong’s Lady, arguably the fastest of the fleet, sits Joe DiMaggio, retired cruiser of the center fields for the New York baseball Yankees and the elder statesman of this third annual John Havlicek celebrity fishing tournament. His admiration for Capt. Howard Fafard’s oceangoing penthouse is exceeded only by his awe for a huge yacht named Marco Polo, bound for Edgartown Marine last Saturday morning.

“You could have infield practice in there,” Mr. DiMaggio marvels.

Chappaquiddick and Cape Pogue slide by to starboard, and soon Windsong’s Lady surges east-northeast toward Norton Shoals. Guide Gerry Gerolamo assures Mr. DiMaggio and his fellow fishermen —business executives who donated handsome sums to the Genesis Fund for the prevention and treatment of birth defects —that the fishing there will make them contenders for the title.

Mr. DiMaggio climbs to the bridge, where Captain Fafard is at the helm. A commercial fishing boat winds its leisurely way through the darting starships.

“They call people like us summer dinks,” the captain tells his guest, known for so long to so many as The Yankee Clipper.

Back in the cabin, the talk in the clubhouse is of last night’s reception and dinner at the Harbor View, where the teams were formed. Nick Nicolosi, Bill Leatherbee, and Bill Whittaker are chuckling now over the borderline wit of WBZ-TV satirist Dick Flavin and the wisdom of Carl Yastrzemski in signing baseballs in a certain shorthand.

Soon, Mr. Gerolamo and fellow guide Larry Mercier arrange four right-handed rods around the stern, and at the 9 o’clock starting time, the lures and lines began trolling behind the slowing boat. Within a minute, a rod bends and quivers, and Mr. Gerolamo hands it to Mr. Leatherbee. By 9:04, the businessman has landed the first of 14 bluefish he will catch and release.

Mr. DiMaggio foul tips his first fish, but soon he is handed another wagging rod. The wrists that produced 362 home runs and a .325 batting average between 1936 and 1951 reel and jig, reel and jib, until the fish leaps out of a wave, mouth open wide, some 20 yards behind. A chair is fetched with a device to hold the rod and spare the fisherman’s groin. At 9:10, Mr. Gerolamo gaffs and hauls aboard a 10-pound bluefish.

“You got him, Clipper!” exclaims Mr. Nicolosi.

“Way to go, Joe!” the captain chimes in.

The still-flopping blue won’t fit in a  Styrofoam cooler, so an equipment box is emptied to hold the fish until the weigh-in back at Larry’s Tackle Shop. There it will be filleted and offered to elder Vineyarders by an Island council on aging.

Directed by Mr. Gerolamo, the captain steers Windsong’s Lady on a figure eight course through the telltale oil slicks where the scent of bluefish comes to you before the sight.

Mr. DiMaggio is up again, the gnarls of 70 years few on his hands. Separated by the reel, those hands grip — cradle, rather — as Ty Cobb held a bat. The feet spread into an open stance, and the keen brown eyes stare down the line as if at a Bob Feller fastball windup.

“Now I’ve got Moby Dick,” Mr. DiMaggio says of the fighter on his hook. With the same efficiency he exercised on his first, he coaxes home the biggest blue of four to be kept aboard the Lady, a 12 and a half pounder.

Everyone on the Lady is catching fish now. By 11:05, Mr. DiMaggio will land his fifth and final blue, and retire to cheerleading and cajoling from the bench.

A noon lull turns the conversation from fish to the struggles of New York banks and money matters, including the knees of one of the former athletes on the other boat.

“What is Bobby Orr doing now?” asks Mr. DiMaggio.

As the sun begins its westward slide, Mr. DiMaggio catches a few links lost in the rush to the Vineyard the day before. He croons, “Put your head on my shoulder,” but leaps to the fray with a “Whoa!”” as the tide changes and the fish resume biting. There’s a tournament to be won.

“We need these two, fellas,” Mr. DiMaggio warns. Mr. Leatherbee and Mr. Nicolosi are Mantle and Berra now, picking up where Joltin’ Joe left off. Still, he is called upon once more to pinch hit.

Lines are out at 3 o’clock, with the Windsong’s Lady tally at 35 bluefish caught, 31 released. The starship races the fleet back to Edgartown, where fish scales and photographers and TV cameras await. He says a few words for Channel 7, signs one napkin, and throw a “Fine-how-are-you?” to a greeter, before heading down Dock street and then a turn onto Main and into Arnold’s Ice Cream Shoppe for a butter pecan sugar ice cream cone.