Fear Strikes Out (5 page)

During the late fall of 1946, just after I had become a senior at Leavenworth High, Dad said one day, “I want you to go to college.”

“College? Me? Who’s going to pay for it?” I demanded.

“Wouldn’t you like to go to college, son?”

“
Like it?
Holy cow! I’d love it! It’d be wonderful to go to college. But—it’s impossible!”

“Well,” my dad said, calmly, “you’re going.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. The only boys I knew who ever got to college were guys who had won football scholarships or had returned from the service and were getting their tuition paid under the G.I. bill. I didn’t fit into either category, and I told my father so.

“You don’t have to fit into either category,” Dad said. “You’re going to Duke University.”

“Duke?” I repeated, stupidly.

“That’s right. Duke gives baseball scholarships. Jack Coombs, the old Philadelphia Athletics pitcher, is the baseball coach there. He’s one of the finest in the business. He’s going to teach you a lot of baseball, son.”

“Why—sure. That’s fine. That’s great. Only what makes you think I can get one of those scholarships?”

“You’re going to be offered one next spring. And you’re going to take it.”

“I thought you were so anxious for me to play ball.”

“I am. I intend for you to play ball. But you’ll only be seventeen when you get out of high school. You’ll be too young to play professional ball. Besides, I
want
you to go to college. You can sign a contract when you graduate.”

He smiled. Then, his gruff voice toned down almost to a whisper, he mused, “Imagine. A son of mine a college man!” Then he glared at me and snapped, “You’d better stay in shape. Don’t do anything foolish.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t.”

Two weeks later, I broke my right wrist when I fell on it chasing a forward pass during a touch-football game at the Y.M.C.A. playground. I knew it was broken the minute I hit the ground, because I could hear the bone crack.

Ed Readell, the “Y” recreational director, helped me up, then said, “Come on, Jim. We’ll get that set quick.”

“It’s broken, isn’t it?”

I was talking almost automatically. The pain was intense, but that didn’t bother me.
What would my dad say? What if the arm didn’t knit properly? What if I couldn’t throw hard any more? What if I couldn’t hold a bat? How could I face my father with a broken right wrist? Why, I might not even be able to play basketball! And the season was only three weeks away.

Ed stayed with me while the doctor set my wrist.

“Is it bad, Doc?” I asked.

“It’s a good, clean break,” he replied.

“Will it knit right?”

“It should. Ought to be stronger than ever when it does.”

“When will it be O.K. again?”

“Oh, five-six weeks. We’ll take the cast off in about three.”

“Can’t you take it off earlier?” I pleaded.

“Why?”

“So I can play basketball. The season starts in three weeks.”

Bernie Sherwill and I were co-captains of the school basketball team. We had a fine team coming up—maybe even a championship team.

“Doc, I’ve
got
to be ready to play basketball.”

“We’ll see,” he said. That was as far as he would go.

Outside, Readell asked, “Can you get home all right?”

“Please, Ed. Do me a favor? Come home with me—just for a few minutes?”

“Why, sure—if you want me to.”

I couldn’t face my father alone. On the way to our house, I said, “Tell my dad the doctor said my arm will be all right. Tell him I’ll be able to play basketball—and baseball. Tell him what the doctor said—that I’ll be stronger than ever. And tell him it wasn’t my fault I got hurt.”

I made Ed go in ahead of me. Dad was in the kitchen when we walked in. Before Ed could say anything, he saw the cast on my arm. Without a word, he sat down heavily, cradled his head in his arms and cried like a baby. Then he looked up and sobbed, “After all I tried to do to keep you for baseball, look what you did to yourself. Now everything’s gone—basketball, baseball, college, the big leagues—everything.”

It took us half an hour to calm him down and another half hour to convince him that it was only a routine break, with no complications. By the time Ed got up to go home, Dad was himself again.

“If you hadn’t been punished enough already,” he roared, “I’d give you a beating you’d never forget. What right did you have to play football? I’ve told you and told you to stay away from that game.”

“It was only touch football,” I said.

“Sure. Sure. ‘Only touch football.’ Nothing to it! Risk your whole career for a lousy game of touch football! I ought to knock you right into the middle of next week.”

“He’s all right now,” I whispered to Ed. “Go ahead home. And thanks a million.”

The next Tuesday I went to church and made a novena to St. Joseph that my wrist would be all right again. I made one every Tuesday until it had healed. I talked the doctor into taking the cast off after two weeks. Then I spent the next week soaking it in hot water. I played the first two games of the basketball season with the wrist taped up. But the kids on the opposing teams knew I’d broken it, and they chopped at it every chance they got. Just before the third game started, I got an inspiration. I taped up the
left
wrist. It worked fine. With everyone whacking at the good wrist, the bad one healed nicely.

It was a good year. Mom came home just before Christmas—she had been in and out of Norwich several times in the intervening years—and Dad, all wrapped up in our best basketball season, was in a good mood most of the time. Leavenworth High went to New Haven for the Connecticut schoolboy basketball championship tournament in March, and my father was there for the final round. Halfway through the game, I dislocated my jaw. The trainer came out and snapped it back into place on the spot. The sight was too much for Dad. He collapsed at his seat and had to be taken to the hospital. He had suffered a heart attack. I knew nothing about it until the game was over.

My dad’s condition did not seem serious, and, at his insistence, I went to Boston the following week for the New England school basketball championship tournament. After winning the Connecticut title, we ripped through the Boston games, winning the finals when I scored twenty-nine points, seven in the last minute of play. We beat Durfee High School of Fall River, Massachusetts, 51–44. Those last seven points of mine gave us the title. The next morning the Boston papers hailed me as the hero of the tournament, and Boston fans saw my name in sports-page headlines for the first time.

But I wasn’t happy. All I could think of was Mom and Dad and how much they needed me. We hadn’t said anything, but college was out of the question. I’d have to make some quick money, and I’d have to keep on making it. I didn’t know how long before Mom might have to go back to the hospital and Dad wouldn’t be able to work any more. Only one thing pleased me. My mother was more like her old self than she had been in ten years. She seemed happy and calm as she worked around the house, and all of the old apprehension appeared to be gone.

Before my father came home from the hospital, I said to her, “I’m not going to college, Mom.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I’ll have to work.”

“That’s up to you, Jimmy. But go if you want to. Well get along.”

After my father got home I brought the subject up again.

“Do you
want
to go to college?” Dad asked.

“How can I go? There’s no money in the bank.”

“Well, it’s for you to decide.”

“I don’t want to go to college, anyhow,” I said, deliberately keeping my voice steady. “I don’t like to study that much.”

None of us ever mentioned it again.

During those last few weeks before I graduated from high school, I was more restless than ever. Night after night I tossed around for hours as I tried to figure out how I could play ball and still make enough money to support my folks. I didn’t stop at trying to solve the problem of meeting current expenses. My head kept spinning with long-range worries about the family’s permanent security.
How much would Dad and Mom need if they both were well? How much if Dad could never work again? How much if Mom had to go back to the hospital? How much to see that they always had a car? How much to get them out of that heatless, cold-water flat? How much could I collect for signing a baseball contract? How much did I want to collect? Would it ruin my career if I were a bonus player? If I weren’t I’d have to get another job. And what kind of a job could I hope to get if I intended to tie myself up playing baseball seven months of the year? I needed money—plenty of money. How else could I set up my parents for life?

The dollar signs weren’t just dancing back and forth in the half-world between wakefulness and sleep which ruined my nights. They were being waved in my face during the days, too. After graduation the baseball scouts closed in. Some talked big bonuses, but I was much too young for that. In those days, a bonus player—a boy who got more than six thousand dollars for signing a contract—couldn’t play minor-league ball for more than one year. Then he had to go right to the major-league club that signed him. That would mean I’d be in the big leagues at eighteen, when I should be getting experience in the minors. I wouldn’t be good enough to make a major-league club at that age. I would still be three or four years away
. What could I learn sitting on the bench, even a big-league bench? I couldn’t accept a bonus. But if I didn’t, what would I do for money?

My problem was complicated by the fact that my dad thought I was too young to sign with anybody. On the day I graduated, he said, “Get a job this summer. You can play ball next year.”

“How can I play ball next year if I lay off this year?” I demanded.

“Can’t you get a job where you can work and play ball, too?”

“Where?”

“How do I know where? Look around. Maybe Tracy can help you.”

But the next day I had to go to Boston to work out with the Braves. Billy Southworth, then the manager, wanted to see me. I spent a couple of hours at Braves Field, while he watched me make circus catches in the outfield and then gun the ball in. I hit the ball pretty well in batting practice, too. Southworth pulled me aside and asked, “How old are you, Jimmy?”

“Seventeen,” I said.

“All right. We’ll give you twenty thousand dollars to sign with us. Talk to your father when you get home, and let me know tomorrow.”

Twenty thousand dollars! Wait’ll Dad heard about this! We’d be on Easy Street.

But my dad was not impressed.

“To begin with,” he pointed out, “you’d be a bonus player. After a year you’d rot on the Braves bench. In the second place, I want you to play with the Red Sox, not the Braves. And in the third place, you’re still too young for professional baseball. I want you to work and play semi-pro baseball on the side this summer.”

Within the next week, I got offers from the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Tigers and Yankee scouts mentioned bonuses, but named no figures. The Dodgers offered me a two-thousand-dollar advance against a three-year bonus contract at four thousand dollars a year, which would not have made me a bonus player. We didn’t want to do anything until we heard from the Red Sox.

The Red Sox scout was a thin, slight man in his late thirties named Neil Mahoney. Both Dad and I had met him, and we both liked him immensely. He had jet-black hair, black eyebrows, sharp intense eyes and a sort of bittersweet smile. He talked in an even, low voice and, unlike the other scouts, he made no attempt to put any pressure on us.

He came in one day and started discussing the Red Sox.

“We’ve got a fine organization,” he pointed out. “Our farm system is one of the best in baseball. You’ll learn a lot on your way up, Jimmy.”

“How long would it take him to reach the big leagues?” Dad asked.

“Usually about four years, depending on the boy. Of course, you can’t foresee anything in this business, but if everything goes all right, it shouldn’t take Jimmy any longer. And by the time he reaches the Red Sox, they’ll be looking for outfielders. We’ve got two of the best in the world, Ted Williams and Dominic DiMaggio, but they’re not going to last forever.”

“Williams, DiMaggio—and Piersall,” I said, slowly. “Holy cow! What an outfield!”

“I’ve heard worse,” Mahoney nodded.

“We’ve had some pretty good offers,” my father said. “What will the Red Sox do for us?”

“Three years at four thousand dollars a year. We’ll give you two thousand dollars of it when you sign.”

It was the identical terms the Dodgers had offered. I wanted to accept on the spot. But Dad said, “Jimmy isn’t going to sign with anyone now.”

“All right,” said Neil, standing up to go. “But when he’s ready, will you let me know?”

My father agreed. After Mahoney left, I said, “What do we do now?”

“I talked to Bill Tracy yesterday, and he can get a job for you. Go and see him.”

Bill’s brother Frank was assistant general manager of Factory H at the International Silver Company plant in nearby Meriden. He had an ideal job lined up for me. I would load freight cars during working hours and play ball for the company team, the Insilcos, several nights a week, for which I’d get extra money. On top of that there were other independent semi-pro teams around, and I could play for one of them when it didn’t conflict with Insilco games.

We called Neil Mahoney and he came back to see us. My dad told him about the job. “Will the Red Sox let Jim sign a contract now, but not go into the organization until next spring?” he asked. “In that way, he could take this job now.”

“That can be arranged all right,” Mahoney agreed.

“And what about my dad?” I said, on an impulse. “I’d like to have him get a physical checkup.”

“Tell you what we’ll do,” Neil said. “We’ll send your father to the Lahey Clinic in Boston for a thorough checkup and pay all the bills. How would that be?”

That was the clincher. I signed with the Red Sox.

I went to work at Meriden a few days later, and I think it was then that I first really understood how utterly dependent on me my parents were. They were both incapacitated—my dad would never recover completely and I had no way of knowing how long Mom would continue to be all right—and the pressure was all on me to keep them going. Now I was assailed with new worries.
Suppose something should happen to me? Suppose I got sick? Suppose I got hurt and couldn’t work or play ball? My folks needed me. I had to make all the money I could while I was still healthy. I couldn’t waste a minute.