Fear Strikes Out (12 page)

The airstrip gleamed in the morning sun, and my winter clothes felt itchy and heavy as I stepped off the plane. In spite of the long sleep, I was jumpy and uncomfortable, and the band of pain was tight across my forehead. I washed up and had a cup of coffee, but the headache persisted. By now I had about three quarters of an hour to kill before the Sarasota plane would be ready. I went into a far corner of the waiting room and sat down, turning my head so that no one could get a clear view of me.

Oh, God, why won’t the Red Sox leave me alone? I want to be a big-league ballplayer and I’m good enough to be a big-league ballplayer if they’d let me. What did I ever do to make them treat me this way? If they don’t want me to play the outfield for them, why don’t they trade me? Nobody in the whole outfit has any use for me. Why? What started all this? And why do they have to go through such a complicated arrangement to make me quit? Why do they have to go through this farce of announcing that I was going to be a shortstop? They know I’ll never make it, so why doesn’t somebody just pull me aside and say, “Look, Jimmy, you don’t belong here with us. We’re going to let you go”?

Well, maybe they’ll do it now. I can’t practice without a glove. Lucky Mary didn’t pack my two-suiter. She’d have put the glove into it, and I wouldn’t have had any excuse not to work out. I’d have had to hang around Sarasota. This way, I can tell them I have no glove, then turn around and go home. That’ll be better for me. Why wait for the Red Sox to tell me to go? I’ll leave of my own accord.

The Sarasota plane was called. Mechanically, I stood up and, keeping my head down, walked towards the gate.
There might be other ballplayers here. I don’t want any of them to see me. If someone recognizes me, he’ll come over and talk to me and I don’t want to talk to anyone.
Head down, hat pulled over my eyes, I went up the steps and into the plane. I left the suitcase in the luggage compartment and walked the length of the plane.
Thank goodness, there’s nobody in that last window seat.
I strapped myself in and looked out into the bright sunlight.

The motors turned over, and the plane shook with the vibration, then taxied out to the runway. I didn’t dare look away from the window. There was no one sitting beside me, but I didn’t know who might be across the aisle.
There must be ballplayers aboard. Please, God, don’t let any of them see me.

It’s barely half an hour by air from Tampa to the Sarasota-Bradenton airport, with a stop at St. Petersburg in between. When we arrived at Sarasota, I sat still until all the passengers who were going there were off the plane. Then I stood up and, without looking up, moved through the plane. After getting my grip, I carefully walked down the steps, moved through the waiting room and got into a rear seat of the Sarasota limousine. I kept my head down the whole time. When it was necessary to look to see where I was going, I raised only my eyes.

Now I mustn’t be seen. This is the last leg of the trip. The next stop will be the hotel. I mustn’t talk. I mustn’t be recognized. I mustn’t let anyone know I’m here—not in the limousine. I mustn’t look up. I may catch the eye of someone who knows me, and I can’t stand that.

I was dimly aware of a clattering headache, much worse than usual, and my hands were clammy with sweat. There were butterflies in my stomach and the tension seemed unbearable as we approached the Sarasota-Terrace Hotel. The blood was pounding through my veins and my nerves seemed to whine aloud for release.

Why am I so nervous? I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll check in and go upstairs to my room. I won’t talk to anyone except maybe my roommate. I’ll have a roommate, of course. Maybe he won’t be in yet. Then pretty soon, I’ll get a call, maybe from Boudreau or one of the coaches, and they’ll tell me what time to report to Payne Field. I hope it’s this afternoon, so I can get this all over with. I’ll be given a uniform, and I’ll get into it. The boys will be pretty quiet this first day, so nobody will notice that I’m not talking to anyone. After a while, we’ll go out on the field. Then Boudreau will say, “O.K., Piersall, you go to shortstop.” And I’ll say, “But I don’t have a glove. How can I go to shortstop?” And he’ll say, “No glove? Then you can’t work, can you?” And I’ll say, “No, I can’t work.” And he’ll say, “Well, you might as well go home then.” And I’ll say, “I might as well.” And he’ll say, “We really don’t want you anyhow. This business of shifting you to shortstop was just to let you know we don’t want you around.” And I’ll say, “Thanks for being honest.” And that will be that.

Now we were in front of the hotel, and I was backing out of the limousine, crablike, so that I wouldn’t be recognized by anyone who might be sitting in the hotel patio. I stood aside, facing the big car, while the driver dug my two-suiter out of the trunk. My heart was beating a frantic tattoo on my ribs and my head was splitting and my eyes were smarting, and the winter suit hung heavy on my saturated shoulders. My muscles ached and my mouth was dry and my throat burned and my whole body was being pulled every which way by a thousand frenetic nerve ends restlessly straining and tugging and tumbling all over each other.

I paid the driver, picked up my suitcase and turned towards the hotel. I moved slowly, like a man on a treadmill, and headed for the front door.

Head down—head down—there are people on the patio. Some of them have to be ballplayers. They’ll see you and recognize you and say something. Don’t answer them. Head down—

Without looking in either direction, without even raising my eyes, I crossed the patio and stepped over the threshold. Then I began walking across the lobby....

W
HEN YOU LOOK OUT
the window of the violent room in the Westborough State Hospital, your eye first catches sight of a huge water tower, which is set high on a hill and dominates everything around it. The tower is close by the hospital and perhaps a mile in from the Worcester Turnpike, one of the main highways leading south and west from Boston. I drive over that road often in the wintertime, and whenever I pass the water tower, I say a prayer. I pray for Mary and I pray for the children and I pray for all the people who still must see the water tower only from that other angle and, most of all, I pray that it will never again happen to me.

How many prayers have I whispered as I looked out the windows of the violent room! How many times have I repeated the Rosary in the shadows of that tower! How often have I fixed my mind on prayers to God and St. Joseph and St. Anthony while I fixed my eyes on the tower outside! St. Joseph, patron saint of the family unit, is my favorite. St. Anthony, my name saint, is patron saint for the recovery of lost objects—and I had been on the very edge of losing everything.

That water tower was my friend while I was struggling back from oblivion and it is still my friend, the symbol of prayer and hope and all the things that helped me in my successful battle to recover my wits and banish the fears that had sent me so closely within its sight. When I see it from the highway, it reminds me not of Westborough and the violent room and the old trouble, but of prayers that were answered to a degree far beyond my happiest dreams. When I pass it today, I feel spiritually refreshed and mentally relaxed.

My first memory of Westborough was a flood of sunshine, streaming in from the window facing the water tower and so bright that I tried to shade my eyes with my hand. But I couldn’t reach up, so I turned my head away. I tried again to cover my eyes with my hands, but I could only move from the neck up. I was securely strapped to a bed, and a man I never remembered seeing before was peering thoughtfully at me. When I focused my eyes on him, he said, kindly, “Time to eat.”

I tried to struggle up to one elbow, but the straps were tight.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“In a hospital.”

“What kind of a hospital?”

“You’ve been a very sick boy.”

“What am I doing here? How long have I been here? How long will I have to stay?”

“I don’t know,” the man said. “I’ll get the doctor.”

“Who are you?”

“An attendant. I can’t tell you anything.”

He moved off, and I twisted my head so that I could see part of the room. I was in a sort of alcove, off what appeared to be a fairly good-sized ward. There were about fifteen or twenty men there, some walking rather aimlessly back and forth and others, like me, in similar alcoves strapped down—or at least I presumed that was the case, because I could only see the alcove opposite mine. A few were eating from trays set on a table in the middle of the room. No one spoke.

Suddenly, I was startled to hear a weird, blood-curdling shriek—a piercing, raucous, spine-shuddering animal sound so frightening that my body stiffened in sheer horror. One of the men who had been walking about the room began alternately waving his arms around and tearing at his hair and his clothes, while he broke into a dead run. He crashed into one wall, staggered back, then, like an ant, turned instinctively in another direction. His shrieking, punctuated by an occasional, plainly discernible, “Let me out of here!” continued for what seemed like hours.

Actually, he was overpowered before he could smash himself against another side of the wall. Four or five attendants, including the one who had been standing by my bed, rushed him and, after a brief struggle, took him off to one side, beyond my own sphere of vision. I heard him whimpering for a while and then, finally, evidently strapped down on a bed in one of the other alcoves, he quieted down.

Oh, God, was I that way? Did I run in circles and wave my arms and tear my hair and scream and smash into walls? Did I have these other guys looking at me with dead eyes—or recoiling as I just recoiled when I saw what this man was doing? Why, I must have! Otherwise, I wouldn’t be strapped down like this. That attendant was right. I’ve been a sick boy.

I turned my head away from the room and back towards the window, and for the first time I noticed the water tower. There it stood, high and solid, almost majestic, and, more than anything else, normal. What can be more normal, more commonplace, than a water tower? That’s what I want to be—normal and commonplace—an average guy. I don’t ever again want to be different.

I closed my eyes and clenched my fists and prayed—hard. “Please, God,” I murmured, “make me well and normal so I can get out of here soon, and let me play ball so I can take care of my family. I don’t know how I got here or how long I’ve stayed, but make the rest of the time short.” I prayed for five minutes or so, to God, to Jesus, to St. Joseph, to St. Anthony, and then I opened my eyes. I felt someone loosening my straps and, turning my head back, saw that another stranger was standing by my bed.

He smiled when our eyes met, and I managed a weak smile.
Who is this man? I know him—I’m sure I do. Where have I seen him before?

Then he spoke, in a soft Latin-American accent, and I was sure I knew him. He was of medium height, with jet-black curly hair. His eyes were deep brown and his features were handsomely regular. He had a short, straight nose, his mouth was wide, his chin firm and he had the whitest teeth I ever saw.

“How do you feel?” he asked, his voice pitched low.

“I’m all right. How long have I been here?”

“Two weeks, give or take a day.”

“How much longer will I have to stay?”

He shrugged.

“That’s up to you.”

I stared at him. Then, sitting up, I snapped my fingers and exclaimed, “Say, you’re not—you can’t be—that television guy—Desi Arnaz. That’s who you are. What are you doing here, of all places?”

“Well, to begin with, I’m not Desi Arnaz.”

“Then you must be his twin brother.”

“No,” he said, “I’m not even related to him. But I guess I look like him. I’ve been approached in railroad stations and airports and hotel lobbies and streetcar stops and parties and everywhere else you can think of by people asking for my autograph. You must know how it feels to be hounded by autograph hunters.”

“It’s wonderful. I wish—I hope—how soon will it be before people will be after me again?”

“Not long—if you do what we want you to.”

“I will—and who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Brown—Guillermo Brown. My home is in Mexico. I’m a resident physician here.”

I held out my hand, and he shook it.

“My name’s Jimmy Piersall.”

“I know.”

“Now tell me—please. Where am I and what kind of a hospital is this and what kind of a room am I in and what kind of a doctor are you?”

“You are in the Westborough State Hospital,” he said, “a mental institution. This is the violent room. I’m a psychiatrist.”

“Then I’ve been—”

“—sick. But you’re getting well. In a little while—later this afternoon, we’ll have a talk. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

In the next few weeks, Dr. Brown became friend, adviser and confidant, a willing repository for all my hopes and fears and ambitions and dreams, a spiritual sponge that sopped up the core of my conscious and subconscious mind. We talked every day, sometimes for hours at a time, or rather, I suppose I should say I talked and he listened. A key question here, a nod there, sometimes only a smile, was all I needed from him to get me going. He drew out everything—the good and the bad—and he grew to know me as no one except Mary has ever known me before or since.

The first question he asked when he returned later the day I came to my senses was, “Do you know that you have been sick?”

“I know now,” I replied.

“Good. Very good. It is very important that you admit you were sick.”

“I feel all right now.”

“I’m sure that you are all right,” the doctor said. “You’ll be out of here soon. But you must co-operate. Do as you’re told and everything will work out.”

“Doc,” I said suddenly, “what month is it?”

“August.”

“August?”

“You may have lost a little time, Jimmy. Don’t think about it now.”

I shook my head, slowly. Then I said, “All right. If you say so.”

I woke up the next morning, feeling calm and refreshed and relaxed, and it wasn’t until later in the day that I realized I had no headache. I couldn’t wait to see the doctor and tell him about it.