He attempts to simmer what is boiling over within him:  “But I must think, he thought.  Because it is all I have left.  That and baseball” (103). He used the game of baseball to repress the thoughts he did not want to face. Like all heroes involved in great quests, Santiago looks to a higher power for inspiration.  Since he is a man, superior to all living beasts, the higher power must be supernatural.  Thus he invokes the immortals.  The immortals begin with a great image of male strength:  Joe DiMaggio.  He articulates DiMaggio’s larger than life status in an earlier conversation with Manolin:  “Have faith in the Yankees my son.  Think of the great Dimaggio” (17).  Throughout the quest, Santiago looks to the supreme potency of Dimaggio as a measuring stick of his own masculinity.