Fear Strikes Out (21 page)

As it turned out, I had to wait a long time to test this situation, for the fans were as wonderful to me as everyone else. We opened the 1953 season in Washington, then went to Philadelphia, then home to Boston, then to Detroit on the first leg of a Western swing and finally to Cleveland before I heard an unkind word from the stands. At the Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, one guy got on me but I managed to ignore him. He didn’t start riding me until late in the game, and I could take him or leave him. At that point, I could leave him.

But I was bothered by some of the things he said, and concerned over what might happen when we returned to Cleveland on our next trip. No one else anywhere, even in Chicago, had shown anything but the utmost consideration for me. There was a little flareup in Detroit, when one of the players rode me, but that had no effect on my nerves. The only thing I wanted to find out was just how much I could take from the stands.

On our second trip into Cleveland, I made a spectacular catch, and a guy in the stands yelled down, “Hey, screwball, look out for the man in the white suit!”

Mr. Yawkey had just torn up my contract and given me a new one at a salary raise. I turned around to the guy in the stands and yelled, “How would you like to make the dough this screwball’s making?”

A roar of laughter drowned out the heckler’s voice, and that was the last I heard from him that afternoon. Ever since then, I’ve been able to take anything, although, even now, I get very little of that sort of heavy humor from the stands.

My fears about whether or not I could play big-league ball were still gnawing—although vaguely—when we opened the season in Philadelphia. We had to wait two days, because of rainouts. We finally played on April 16, and I got two hits. I had another hit the next day in Philadelphia, and I was beginning to get some confidence in myself. From then on, I managed to get by at the plate, but, aside from the fact that I was coming back, I didn’t attract any real attention until May 8.

We returned to Boston from a Western trip and opened a series with the Yankees on that date. Late in the game, Johnny Sain, the Yankee pitcher, who was a fine hitter, slammed one that was headed for the bull pen in right field. I got a good jump on the ball, ran with my back to the plate and, just before it dropped into the bull pen, managed to grab it. That catch saved the game, which we won in extra innings when Billy Goodman hit a home run.

Mickey Mantle, the Yankees’ great switch hitter (a batter who hits from either the right or the left side of the plate), was batting right-handed the next day when he hit a ball to deep right-center field for what appeared to be an almost certain triple. The ball was headed for a corner formed by one side of the bull pen and the fence in front of the center-field bleachers. I ran back, and balancing myself with one hand against the bull pen, I reached over with the other and caught the ball. A veteran New York reporter wrote in his paper the next day, “In twenty-seven years of covering baseball, I never saw a catch like it.”

Those two catches, along with plays I later made both at Fenway Park and in Yankee Stadium, seemed to convince Manager Casey Stengel of the Yankees that I was a great outfielder, and he later proved he felt that way when he picked me to play in the 1954 major-league all-star game in Cleveland. That was one of the big thrills of my life, for Stengel is a veteran baseball man who knows his business. The fans and the writers accepted me as a star, but I wanted recognition from someone who knew baseball from all its technical angles. When Casey selected me to play for him, I felt that I had really made the grade.

Early in the 1953 season, after he had seen me make those catches off Sain and Mantle, Stengel said, “Guess this Piersall must be the best outfielder in ten years, except for Willie Mays.” When the season was over, he said, “Piersall is the best right fielder I’ve ever seen anywhere.”

I robbed Mickey Vernon, who won the American League batting championship that year, of a sure triple in Washington. Later I took two home runs away from him on successive days in Boston. After I made the first of the two Fenway Park catches, Cronin is reported to have said, “That’s the best catch I’ve ever seen.” The next day, after I’d robbed Vernon again, they tell me Cronin said, “I take it back.
That
was the best catch I’ve ever seen.” Incidentally, by that time, Vernon would gladly have strangled me.

In September, I hit the jackpot at Yankee Stadium. One day I took an extra-base hit from Irv Noren of the Yankees with a diving catch. The next day, I hoisted myself up on the edge of the bull pen with one hand and speared a long wallop by Joe Collins with the other, depriving him of a homer. On the day after, Hank Bauer hit one in the same general spot. Susce and Kinder, who were in the bull pen, were so sure that it was going in for a home run that they yelled, “No, no, Jimmy!” as I went after it. But when I made a stab for it anyhow, the ball landed in my glove, and it was just another out for Bauer. I guess it was that series that convinced Stengel.

When I took successive hits away from Al Rosen and Bob Lemon of the Indians in Cleveland the day I shut that heckler up, Bill McKechnie, our coach, said, “That kid gets balls Speaker wouldn’t have reached.” That was truly praise from Caesar, for McKechnie was a member of the old school of baseball men and Tris Speaker had been hailed for forty years as the greatest outfielder who ever lived.

Before the season was over, Boudreau told the writers one day, “I don’t care if Piersall doesn’t hit .240. He can play right field for me on his fielding alone.”

Actually, I had a good year at the plate, ending up with a respectable, if not sensational, .272 batting average. I was satisfied. Between my opportunities to make miraculous catches and the very fact that I came back at all, I was the talk of baseball that year.

When the season was over, I was selected the outstanding Red Sox player of the year in a poll conducted by Leo Egan, sports announcer for Boston’s radio station WBZ. He had set up a new award in Ted Williams’s name, consisting of a silver bowl and a new Nash automobile. At the time, Williams had just returned from a second tour of duty in the United States Marine Air Corps. With Williams standing by, Egan made the presentation to me just before the season ended, and that was one of the thrills of my life. Later, to add frosting to the cake, the Associated Press, after conducting a poll among the nation’s sports writers, named me as the outstanding sophomore player in the American League.

In his column, “Sports of the Times,” Arthur Daly of the
New York Times
wrote:

“Piersall steals things. He steals singles, doubles, triples and homers from other ballplayers in the most blatant manner imaginable. Even when you see him do it, you think your eyes have been performing tricks on you. The youngster is incredible. He scales fences, swings on bullpen gates and teeters on low walls. But he always makes his catch.

“Piersall is a phenomenon in modern baseball, where the home-run hitter hitherto has ruled in solitary splendor as the gate attraction. The kid from Waterbury, Connecticut, packs ’em in just so they can watch him catch and throw a ball.”

It was heartwarming to read words like that. Even more heartwarming was a line in Harold Kaese’s sports column in the
Boston Globe
, for it hit right home. Kaese wrote one day:

“More than any other player, the comeback big leaguer of 1953 is Jim Piersall, twenty-three-year-old Red Sox right fielder. He came from farther back than any of them.”

I guess I
had
come from farther back than any of them and, perhaps, in a shorter time. But I still couldn’t be really certain I had this thing licked until I had proved two things to myself. One was my ability to weather any real storm of adversity. The other was my ability to face the past in a manner that might help others.

The 1953 season was a remarkable one for me, but there was no particular reason why it shouldn’t have been. Everything went my way. I was surrounded by people who wanted to help me. Mary, Dr. Brown, my close friends, Yawkey, Cronin, Susce, my own teammates, opposing players, umpires, writers, fans—everyone I could think of—had their hands out ready to pull me over the bumps and the hurdles. But the hurdles were very small. The highest was the little heckling I got in Cleveland, once the others had me all straightened out. I didn’t get hurt, I didn’t get into any fights, I didn’t have to argue with the umpires and I didn’t have to worry about what would appear in the newspapers.

I made some remarkable catches, but I couldn’t have made them unless the ball was hit in my general direction. I made some good catches in 1954, but I didn’t have half the chances that I had the previous year. But 1953 was the big year for me. That was the season everyone was watching me to see if I
could
come back. That was the big year for me, and once it was over, I didn’t have to worry about chances for great plays.

There was another factor in 1953 that didn’t exist a year later. Our big guy was Ted Williams, and, shortly after we came North in 1952, Williams left to go back into the service. He didn’t return until late in the 1953 season. Without Williams, the Red Sox had no big drawing card, no one to talk or write about. In his absence, fans and writers turned to me, and after a while every unusual catch or throw I made was big news. Then, when Williams returned, he naturally took over the spotlight, but not until he had loaned it to me at the precise time I needed it most—when encouragement and help from press and fans meant more than it ever could either earlier or later.

So I didn’t have to meet the test of adversity at all in 1953—there wasn’t any adversity. Not until spring training in 1954 did I have to face an unpleasant reality. Then one day I ran into the fence and chipped a bone in my right wrist. It wasn’t serious and I stayed out for only ten days, returning in time to open the season, but it would have worried me to death two years before. I took it in stride. Instead of thinking about the remote possibility that it might cause later complications, I calmly accepted the probability that the wrist would be as good as ever after the chip had healed.

But something happened in August that worried everybody who was interested in my future. We played an exhibition game with the New York Giants at Fenway Park, and one of the pregame features was a throwing contest between Willie Mays and me. Mays, the Giants’ center fielder, was the most exciting young ballplayer of the 1954 season, a kid who could hit and throw and make out-of-this-world catches. Baseball followers often compared us as fielders, but never had a chance to see us in action at the same time, since the Giants are in the National League and the Red Sox in the American. So, for purposes of settling arguments for the moment, at least, this throwing contest was given a great deal of advance publicity.

There was a sellout crowd at Fenway Park, and I was anxious to make a good impression. We both stood in right center field, taking alternate fly balls, hit to us by Willard Nixon, one of our pitchers. We could throw to the plate from any angle, as long as we didn’t go any closer than a point marked off by red stakes.

After I had made three or four throws, I ran in close to the stakes to take a shallow fly ball. It dropped in and out of my glove. In a hurry to get the ball away, I stopped, picked it up and threw it, all in the same motion. The minute the ball left my hand, I felt a twinge in the upper part of my back, just below my right shoulder. That was the end of the contest for me. I ran into the dugout.

I thought I had nothing more wrong with me than a tired shoulder, so I decided to play in the game, although the weather was threatening and a light rain was falling at the start. I went to right field wearing a rubber jacket over my uniform. In one of the early innings, I made a routine throw, and that time I felt a sharp pain. I got out of the game, went into the locker room for a heat treatment and hoped for the best. The next morning I woke up with a ballplayer’s walking nightmare—a sore arm.

For nearly a month, I was plagued with the miseries in my arm. It was much more serious for me than it might be for other outfielders, since fielding rather than hitting was my long suit. A ball club can stand a light-hitting catcher or infielder, but normally, outfielders are expected to provide punch. As Arthur Daley had pointed out, I was a rare bird—an outfielder who attracted fans on his fielding alone. If I were a .300 hitter or a home-run slugger, I could get by with a poor arm. Not being either, a bad arm could knock me right out of the big leagues.

Now I really had something to worry about—but I didn’t worry. At first, I hardly realized how casually I was taking what could be a major tragedy. I read a few stories labeled, “Is Piersall through?” and they didn’t bother me in the least. I was certain that my arm would come around sooner or later. I worked out, rested it, played a little, and did everything the club doctor told me to. Just before the season ended, I knew my arm was all right again. I was throwing as well as ever and I suffered no twinges.

“If you can take that without worrying yourself to death, you can take anything,” Mary remarked.

She was right. Once I had recovered from the arm ailment, I was confident that nothing would ever really bother me again.

E
ARLY IN THE 1953
season, I was faced with the prospect of being in a prime position to help others, but I wasn’t sure whether I could handle it or not. When we arrived in Chicago on our first trip West, a man named Don Slovin phoned me at the Del Prado Hotel and asked to see me on a personal matter. We made arrangements to meet the next day. He turned out to be a fellow about my own age.

“I have recovered from a breakdown similar to the one you had,” Slovin explained. “I now belong to a small group, all of whose members are in the same boat. They have either recovered from or have been threatened with a nervous or mental collapse. We call ourselves ‘Fight Against Fears’ and we meet periodically.

“We help each other just by letting down our hair and talking frankly about our troubles,” he went on. “We don’t have formal speeches or anything. We just get together, and when anyone has anything to say he says it. Sometimes somebody is very close to the line and desperately needs help, so we try to give it to him on the spot.