Fear Strikes Out (8 page)

“Thirty-five dollars,” he replied.

“O.K.”

After that I did all my nocturnal figuring with that as a base.
After I had set aside thirty-five dollars for my parents, how much would Mary and I need to live on? And how long would there just be the two of us? We both wanted a family. How much more would it cost to have one? And what if one of us should get sick? How could I possibly figure out how much that would set us back? No matter what happened, the thirty-five dollars for Mom and Dad would have to be taken out. That was a prime responsibility.

But whenever I brought up the subject of money with Mary, she laughed it off.

“Don’t lose any sleep over it,” she insisted. “We’ll get along.”

“I know, but I want you to have a nice place to live. Honey, I’ve got to make a lot of money.”

“You will. I know you will.”

“We’ll have to live with Mom and Dad, and I hate to think of your being in that flat.”

She kept assuring me that it was all right, but the more I thought about it the less I liked the idea. Mary would never be happy on East Main Street, no matter what she said to the contrary. I began to wonder if I could swing a house. I had some cash in the bank and if I could work out reasonable payments—

W
E WERE MARRIED
on October 22 at the Church of the Nativity of Our Lord in Scranton. Mary’s cousin Ruth Holleran was maid of honor, and Tony Howley was my best man. The priest who married us was the Reverend John O’Brien, Ann’s brother. Father O’Brien had become a good friend of mine. He later officiated when his sister married Dan Kuchar.

A number of people came over from Waterbury. My folks, and one of my aunts—my mother’s sister—were there, and so was Bernie Sherwill. Al Dostaler, who had played on the Leavenworth High School basketball team with Bernie and me, the Tracys, and Jarp O’Neil came, too, along with several family friends. It was a wonderful wedding and everyone, including me, was very happy.

Back in Waterbury, we moved in with my parents, and I went back to my old job at the plant in Meriden. I kept thinking about the possibility of buying a new house, but I knew I couldn’t afford it yet, so I didn’t say anything to Mary. Then, right after Christmas, Mary told me there was a baby on the way. For three weeks, I walked around on air, but my happiness didn’t last any longer than that. Mary got sick a month before it was time to go South to start training for the 1950 season, and for a while her condition was pretty serious. I spent my days at the hospital and my nights alternately praying and ripping my jagged nerve ends apart with frantic worry. She lost the baby, of course, but by that time I just wanted her to get well. She improved enough to go to spring training with me, but she wasn’t herself, since she tired easily and still had a lot of pain. The Colonels were training at Deland, Florida, that year, and the doctors thought it would do Mary good to be where the weather was mild.

Mary’s recovery was slow—much too slow. She still wasn’t right when we got to Louisville for the opening of the season, and she was so shaky that I dreaded every trip we had to make. Then in May she got sick again, and this time the situation was desperate. For days she lived on other people’s blood, as she had to have one transfusion after another. Her life hung in the balance and so did my sanity. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, even baseball. All I could do was go to the hospital, stare at Mary, head for the ball park when it was time for the game, go through the motions of playing and then go through the motions of trying to sleep. I dreaded the proximity of a telephone for fear that someone would reach me with bad news.

After a few days, I began to develop stomach pains myself. I didn’t dare tell Ryba about them, because I was afraid he would bench me, but I couldn’t fool Mike for long. He knew Mary was very sick, and all he had to do was look at me to realize that I was pretty badly off myself.

“Go home,” he said one night. “Don’t come back until Mary’s out of danger.”

“But my job—” I started to object.

“Forget your job. It’ll be here when you get back.”

The next few days seemed like months, and I couldn’t begin to estimate how much they took out of me. All I know is that life had turned into an everlasting vigil of prayer, desperate hope and nerve-racking worry while my head pounded with pressure and my stomach writhed with pain. Then, one morning, good news came. A nurse met me on Mary’s floor and whispered, “She’s going to be all right.”

For the first time in a week, I smiled. I stayed with Mary most of the day, and then, my stomach pains gone, I had my first square meal since she had taken sick. That night I told Mike I was ready, and he put me back in center field. At Mary’s insistence and with the doctor’s approval I made the next road trip. By the time I returned to Louisville, she was fine. She had made a miraculous, almost unbelievable recovery.

The Red Sox, who were on the road, sent for me early in September, and I joined them in Chicago. While I was thrilled over the prospect of traveling in the same company with men like Williams and DiMaggio, I suffered from nothing worse than the usual jitters that always engulfed me before making a major change. Big-league ball clubs often bring youngsters up from their farm teams in September so that managers can see them work out after they have been playing the better part of a full season in the minors. My being included in the 1950 crop was not unexpected, since, in spite of my personal troubles, I had had a good year under Ryba in Louisville.

The Red Sox manager was Steve O’Neill, a battered old baseball warhorse who had been in the majors as player, coach and manager for more than forty years. A former catcher, his nose was squashed and twisted and every one of his fingers gnarled and bent from frequent bone breaks. Like Ryba, he was a product of the Pennsylvania coal-mine regions. He had been around the majors for so long that he had become a sort of baseball nomad, never in or out of a job for any length of time. The Red Sox were the third team he managed and he has since been in and out of Philadelphia, where he managed the Phillies for a couple of seasons.

Steve, the patriarch of a huge family, liked rookies and knew how to handle them. A jovial, good-humored man, he rarely got annoyed and I never saw him lose his temper. He was always considerate and kind to me.

“You won’t get to play much, son,” he told me, “but you’ll learn a lot by sitting on the bench and keeping your eyes open. You’d be surprised how much you can pick up just by watching what goes on around you.”

I was so happy simply wearing a Red Sox uniform that, for once, the prospect of sitting on the bench most of the time didn’t bother me. The season had only a few weeks to go and, as Steve pointed out, I could learn by looking. Besides, he told me I might get a chance to pinch-hit a few times, and maybe even start in one of the late-season games.

But I didn’t get my name into a big-league box score until the last week of the season. We were playing the Washington Senators in Boston, when, during the third inning of a hopelessly lost game, O’Neill sent me up to bat for our pitcher, Dick Littlefield. Gene Bearden, a veteran who threw a baffling knuckle ball, was the Washington pitcher, and I was so scared that I threw the bat over the third-base dugout and into the grandstand the first time I swung at a ball. Imagine my embarrassment when I found myself standing at the plate without a bat in my hand.

I turned and walked over to Billy Goodman, the next hitter. He had been crouching in the on-deck circle, but he stood up and met me halfway.

“What do I do now?” I whispered.

“Get another bat,” said Billy. “Here—use mine.”

I did, and it brought me luck. After the count ran to three balls and two strikes, I drove the ball safely to right field for a hit on my first time at bat in the majors. I felt as if I were flying down the first-base line—there were wings on my shoulders.

When I said good-by to O’Neill after the last game of the season, he shook hands and said, “You’ll get there, boy. We’ll see you next spring in Sarasota.”

Mary and I went back to Waterbury again after the season was over, both of us bubbling with happy anticipation. We were expecting again, and this time the doctors assured us that everything would be all right. Furthermore, we had decided to buy a home. We found a new ranch-type house that was not quite completed. The builder assured us we could get in before Christmas, so we settled down with my folks while we waited. Mom and Dad were going to move in with us, and I was glad I could get them out of their old apartment.

Mary, busy with decorating and furnishing the new place, was having a wonderful time. I went back to work for International Silver, so we had that additional income, and there was really no financial problem, but I had misgivings. Something seemed to be wrong somewhere, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I should have been happy. Mary was out of the woods and a baby was on the way. I was moving my parents out of an ancient flat where they had lived for years. I was about to go into a brand new home, complete with the latest gadgets and equipment. I was in my own home town, among my own people, and working at a familiar off-season job. Everything should have been perfect.

It wasn’t. Night after night, after Mary was asleep, I would lie in bed, tossing around and worrying about the house.
Was I doing the right thing? Would I be able to meet the payments? Would Mary be happy once we were settled down? Did I want to commit myself to living in Waterbury permanently? A house was a pretty permanent thing. Once in there, would it be easy to get out? Yet why should I want to get out? How could I be thinking of getting out? I hadn’t even moved in. What was the matter with me?

All through the month of November, while Mary kept going back and forth between East Main Street and the new house, I worried about the situation. She was so happy getting ready to move in that I didn’t have the heart to tell her about my doubts. Instead, I listened while she chattered, telling me about the furniture and the drapes and the colors and the kitchen equipment and all the other things wives talk about that go in one male ear and out the other.

The weeks went by quickly, and one day when I got home Mary met me with a breathless, “The house is ready. We can go in tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.

“Oh, there are a few little odds and ends, but we can take care of them after we move in. Oh, Jimmy, I’m so happy!”

“Well,” I said. “That’s fine.” And, as if to convince myself, I said it again.

We didn’t move in the next day, but the day after. It was December 15, and Mom and Dad were busy getting ready to leave their apartment, but they wouldn’t be completely set for several days. However, they would be back and forth all the time, and it wouldn’t take them long to get settled.

On the day we moved, I suddenly realized what had been bothering me.
I was trapped. We both were trapped—Mary and I—if we bought that house. If we bought it? What was I thinking? We had bought it already. And, for no one knew how many more years, I would have to listen to the rasping, nagging voice of my father hollering at my mom, telling her what she was doing wrong, just as he had been telling her what was wrong as long as I could remember. Suppose he started nagging Mary? I couldn’t live with him any more. I loved him and I loved Mom, and I wanted them both to live a long time. But if I had to listen to them arguing any more, I’d be wishing they were dead so Mary and I could get out from under. Why, we’d be counting the years! What could I do? I couldn’t tell them now they weren’t to move in with us. There was only one answer. We’d have to sell the house.

I told Mary the next day.

“Honey,” I said, “we can’t stay here.”

“Can’t stay here?” Her voice was shaking. “Honey, what do you mean? What’s the matter?”

“We can’t afford it,” I said, a little too sharply.

“But I thought we could afford it. We had it all figured out. Between the baseball income and the winter job, we’re in good shape. And you don’t have to worry about giving your folks so much money every week, because they’ll be living with us.”

“It would be better for me to give them the thirty-five dollars a week.”

“No, it wouldn’t, Jimmy. We’ll be happy here. It’s just what we want.”

“It isn’t that,” I said. “I simply can’t afford to keep it, that’s all.”

“We can’t afford not to keep it. We’ve spent a small fortune on household furnishings and things like that. We’ve made a big down payment. We’ve got a lot of money sunk in this house, honey.”

“We can get it out. It’s brand new. We won’t have any trouble selling it. Mary—”

“What?”

“Let’s get out of here. I want to get out of this house—out of this town—away from everything—”

“But Jimmy, I thought—”

“You were wrong.
Mary, we’ve got to sell the house
. Do you understand?”

Three days after we moved in, we moved out. We went to Scranton, and settled down with Mary’s family. My mother and father returned to East Main Street. Several months later, we got our price and sold the house, furnishings and all.

Mary was puzzled and unhappy. She told me years later that she first began worrying about my health that day when I insisted on selling the house we had just bought. While she knew I was unusually tense and nervous, she had never seen me do anything so obviously irrational, and she was deeply concerned. But I was so much more at ease in Scranton than I had been in Waterbury that she stifled her original impulse, which had been to ask me to seek medical advice.

Anxious to be in the best possible physical condition, I started working out daily at the Catholic Youth Center gymnasium in Scranton. I had no illusions about making the Red Sox ball club that year. I was only twenty-one and had just two years of professional baseball behind me. But I wanted to make a good impression. As always when I was facing a change, I was apprehensive.

On top of that, I was worried about Mary again, for our first baby was expected in March. I had to report on March 1, but I was reluctant to leave her. But she and her father both insisted that I go, and when her doctor assured me that everything would be all right, I left for Florida. Four days after I arrived in Sarasota on March 5, 1951, I got the phone call I was waiting for. It was Mary herself. She told me that she had presented me with a daughter that morning. We called her Eileen.