I've heard nearly identical stories a time or two in the past. Somebody would ask Joe for a full name signature. If he was in an OK mood, he would begrudgingly give a "Jos. P. DiMaggio", explaining, "That's the way I sign my checks".
The strangest part of it is when I authenticated the autographed material in the DiMaggio estate, all the checks I recall seeing were signed "Joseph DiMaggio". The checks covered the 1980-90 period as I remember. DiMaggio seemingly saved every scrap of paper that came into his life. All I can think is that perhaps he may have signed checks this way years prior, but I don't recall ever seeing any with that variant. A better guess might be that DiMaggio, ever the guarded sort, was extremely wary to dole out a "Joseph DiMaggio" for fear of forgery leading to loss of money. As we know, money, or the loss thereof, always weighed heavily on his mind.
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