A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.

DiMaggio frames athletic excellence as inseparable from material need and the discipline it can impose. “Hungry” works both literally (poverty, scarcity) and figuratively (ambition, drive): the player who must earn his way is presumed to practice harder, tolerate setbacks, and seize opportunities more fiercely than someone cushioned by wealth. The second sentence turns this into a sweeping social claim—rich boys supposedly lack the urgency required for the majors—revealing a common mid‑century American belief in hardship as a crucible for merit. Read critically, it is also a romanticization of deprivation that overlooks structural advantages (training, time, health) that money can buy.