Fear Strikes Out

by Jim Piersall

“They’re not going to hurt you,” she said. “No matter what caused you to do those things, the fans enjoyed watching you.”

  “Do you suppose they’ll expect me to do all that stuff again, honey? Because I never did it before, and I could never do it again.”

  “All the fans want to do is help you. That’s all anyone wants to do. They won’t expect you to do anything that will be harmful to you.”

  I turned the pages of the scrapbook. I was starting a game here and there, because Vollmer’s hitting streak was over, but Boudreau was also using Faye Thronsberry, a rookie, and Ken Wood, a veteran, in right field. I was showing no signs of settling down, and Boudreau, confused and upset himself over the situation, didn’t know whether to play me or not. If he played me, I went through my act and distracted everybody in the ball park. If he didn’t I hounded him to death. One course of action seemed just as bad as the other.

  One afternoon in early June, the Red Sox pulled a big trade with Detroit. We sent Walt Dropo, Fred Hatfield, Johnny Pesky, Bill Wight and Don Lenhardt to the Tigers for George Kell, Johnny Lipon, Dizzy Trout and Hoot Evers. Dropo was a first baseman. Pesky and Lipon were shortstops who could also play second base. Hatfield was a third baseman, Lenhardt and Evers were outfielders and Wight and Trout were pitchers. Kell, the best third baseman in the American League at the time, was the key man in the trade.

  We had a night game in Boston against the Cleveland Indians on that date, while the Tigers were playing the Athletics in Philadelphia. As soon as the trade was announced, the five men leaving our club flew out to join the Tigers. The four former Detroit players coming to us were due in town in time for our game that night.

  But they were delayed, and none of them had arrived when Boudreau posted the lineups in the locker room. It looked as if we were going to be short of infielders. According to Mary, Boudreau called me into his office and said, “Jimmy, I’m putting you down to play shortstop tonight. Now just go out there and take it easy. Don’t try to be funny. Just concentrate on getting ready for the game. And remember—this is only a provisional lineup. If Lipon shows up in time, he’ll be our shortstop.”

  I galloped out to the field and worked around shortstop like a man possessed. I cut in front of other guys to take balls during infield practice. I jumped around getting throws meant for somebody else, I ran back and forth between second base and third, yelling encouragement and instructions to everyone within hearing, and I generally made a pest of myself. But I was happy, because I was back in action, and I was sure everything would be fine when Boudreau told me to take batting practice with the regulars.

  But half an hour before the game, when I walked into the dugout, Boudreau pulled me aside and said, “The others just arrived. I’m sorry, Jimmy, but Lipon’s going to play short tonight.”

  I went off in a corner of the dugout, broke down and cried. I wept for ten or fifteen minutes, right out there where everyone who went near the dugout could see me. The next day the sports pages carried the story of my sobbing breakdown. It was right there, in print, for all the world to see. I blushed to my ears as I read it in the scrapbook.

  A few days after the weeping incident, Boudreau decided to give me a real chance to make the club as the right fielder. He announced that I would play there regularly, and I was greeted by my constituents out there like a long-lost brother. After bowing and waving and tipping my cap in response to the reception, I stepped up close to the bleachers, and led the fans in a prolonged and organized cheer for myself. They loved it.

  I looked up at Mary and mused, “Y’know, honey, bad as this all looks, I’ll have to admit I was a pretty funny guy, at that.”

  “I should say you were a pretty funny guy. The fans thought you were a real comedian.”

  “I guess they were right. But where do you suppose I got my ideas from? I never was much of a gagster before. I must have had a suppressed desire to be a clown or something.”

  “You must have, honey. All I know is I didn’t dare pick up the papers every day. I never knew what I was going to read next about you.”

  I saw what she meant, for the next headline I came across in the scrapbook read, “Rookie Piersall Teases Old Satch Paige.”

  The story was a graphic description of a game against the St. Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles) the night before at Fenway Park. It had been a real thriller, for the Red Sox scored six runs in the ninth inning to come from far behind to win. Going into that inning, the Browns were ahead, 9–5, and Satchel Paige had gone in to protect their lead.

  Paige was a tall, skinny, ageless Negro who, in spite of the fact that he must have been close to fifty then, was one of the best relief pitchers in baseball. Old Satch had every pitching trick in the book and he invented a lot more of his own. When he had his stuff, he was almost impossible to hit, although because of his age he couldn’t be used for more than a few innings at a time. He had already pitched two innings that night, but there didn’t seem to be any doubt that he’d be able to hold a four-run lead. The fans were beginning to file out of the park when we went up to bat for the last time.

  Piersall was the leadoff man, and he wasn’t figured to have much chance to do anything with the old guy. But, according to the stories, Piersall cupped his hands and yelled, “I’m gonna bunt, Satch!” He not only bunted the first pitch, but beat it out for a hit, and then, as a base runner, he began driving Paige crazy with a new set of zany antics.

  When Paige wound up to pitch, he looked like a cross between Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle. Instead of giving his arms full play, as most hurlers do, so they can put all their strength into a pitch, Paige, his bony elbow sticking out at right angles to his body, only brought his long right arm up halfway, and he did it in slow motion. Then he brought his hands down in front of him and fired the ball. He was easy to imitate and funny to watch, unless you were the batter trying to hit against him.

  Hoot Evers was up for the Red Sox, but the fans were watching Piersall. As he led off from first base, he began putting on a vaudeville act that convulsed the customers and had Paige mumbling to himself. Every move Paige made Piersall made. Every time Paige turned towards first base, Piersall mirrored the turn as he skipped back to the bag. When Paige stood still and looked towards the plate, Piersall flapped his arms like a chicken and made noises like a pig. The fans were yelling and laughing and clapping their hands, but all the harassed Paige could hear was Piersall’s “Oink! Oink! Oink!” from first base.

  Paige finally managed to start pitching to Evers, who eventually got an infield hit that moved Piersall to second base. George Kell was the next hitter. Piersall danced and howled and mugged and imitated and flapped and oinked from second base now, and Paige was trying very hard not to pay any attention. In the meantime, the cagy Kell ran the count to three balls and two strikes, then fouled off a succession of Paige’s best pitches. The old man was beginning to feel his age, perhaps, because he finally threw a fourth ball at Kell and that filled the bases with nobody out.

  Now on third base, Piersall cupped his hands and oinked and kept repeating, “You’re the funniest sight I ever saw, Satchmo,” and aped his motion and whistled and screamed, while Paige went to work on Vern Stephens, the next hitter. Stephens popped out, and that brought up Billy Goodman with the bases still full, one out and the Red Sox still trailing, 9–5.

  But Paige had lost control of the situation. He walked Goodman on five pitches, forcing Piersall home with the sixth run. As Piersall trotted between third base and the plate, he laughed and screamed and imitated Paige some more, and Satch tried to ignore him, but was really upset by then. Ted Lepcio followed Goodman by hitting a clean single to drive Evers home, and that cut the Browns’ lead to 9–7. The bases were still full, and Sammy White, the Red Sox catcher, was up.

  By this time, the stands were in an uproar. Piersall was crouching on the top step of the dugout, his hands cupped over his mouth, and the oinks were pouring out as fast as he could say them. White was a right-handed
hitter with a lot of power. Old Satch kept his back to the Red Sox dugout so he couldn’t see Piersall, but he knew Piersall was still yelling at him.

  He turned and tried to concentrate on White, and for a while it looked as if Satch might get him. The count went to two strikes and one ball, but then Paige threw one pitch too many. Sammy whipped his bat around and the ball sailed over that short left field-fence for a grand-slam home run. White was so happy that he did a little clowning himself. As he came home from third base, he got down on his hands and knees, then crawled the last ten feet and kissed the plate.

  White’s homer won the game, of course, but Piersall got most of the publicity. John Drohan, veteran Boston Traveler baseball writer, put it this way:

  “Jim Piersall, who threatens to become the greatest baseball attraction the Red Sox ever had—if he doesn’t get killed by a pitched ball—took last night’s spotlight away from the game’s pitching attraction for three decades, Pitcher Satchel Paige.

  “Even though Sammy White hit the grand-slam homer that beat the Browns 11–9 in one of the greatest Donnybrooks ever seen in Fenway Park, Sam pointed to the laughing Piersall and said, ‘There’s the guy who made it possible.’”

  The reference to the danger of my being killed by a pitched ball, while facetious, did contain a grain of sobriety. Both pitchers and umpires had developed an intense—and understandable—dislike for me. From what I was told and from what I read in the scrapbook, I spent a lot of time on my back, hitting the dirt to get out of the way of pitches that might otherwise have crowned me.

  Ever since the Yankee Stadium incident with Honochick, my relations with umpires (and theirs with me) had been very shaky indeed. They cracked down on me whenever they could find an excuse, and I gave them plenty. Before I was through, I paid so many fines to Will Harridge, the president of the American League, that I finally sent him a note reading, “If this keeps up, I’ll be paying some umpire’s salary.”

  One day, while I stood at the plate, clowning and mocking every move made by Connie Marrero, veteran Washington Senators pitcher, he threw three straight strikes at me. I just watched them go by without taking my bat off my shoulder. Then, when Art Passarella, who was umpiring the plate, called me out, I whirled and yelled, “I wouldn’t want to have that on my conscience!”

  Two days after the Satchel Paige game in Boston, the Red Sox started on a Western trip. Since our home stand had been a long one, most of my clowning had been at Fenway Park.

  Now the fans around the country, who had been hearing about Piersall through their local newspapers, were looking forward to watching him perform in the flesh.

  Chicago was the first stop. Comiskey Park, where the White Sox play, is almost surrounded by a high double-decked grandstand, so the fans and the right fielder are, as at Fenway Park, within easy hailing distance of each other. Piersall spent his first day there getting acquainted. He exchanged wisecracks, did some calisthenics, took a few bows, and generally gave the customers a taste of what to expect from him.

  There was a Sunday doubleheader the next day, and over forty thousand people, one of the biggest White Sox crowds of the year, came out to watch it. Piersall must have been inspired by the mob—or maybe it was inspired by him—and he put on one of the corniest and most confusing series of acts ever seen during a major-league ball game. He was so bad in the first game that Boudreau wouldn’t start him in the second.

  He went through all his old antics, and added a number of new ones. During the game, while the Red Sox pitcher was warming up, he started doing a hula-hula dance, and the customers behind him responded with a chorus that sounded like a thousand ukeleles strumming. Piersall got a fluke hit off Saul Rogovin, the Chicago pitcher, when the ball hit his bat as he was ducking away, and then he ran out to right field at the end of the inning, flexing his muscles like a professional strong man. When Ray Scarborough was sent to relieve Willard Nixon, the Red Sox starting pitcher, in the fifth inning, Scarborough rode to the mound from the bull pen in a jeep. As it passed Piersall he put up his thumb trying to hitch-hike a ride. He did it again when Bill Henry rode by to relieve Scarborough. The fans loved it.

  Aside from the clowning, Piersall did well in the ball game. He was the only man on the Red Sox to get two hits off Rogovin, who won 7–2. Piersall made several good catches, and two throws that according to the stories in the scrapbook were outstanding. Twenty minutes after the game was over, Boudreau said, “Vollmer is my right fielder.” Piersall started the game on the bench, but later he wandered out to the bull pen, which in Chicago is next to the right-field foul line.

  Vollmer played most of the game, but Boudreau sent word for Piersall to replace him in the ninth. Dutch came out from the dugout to get his glove at the same moment that Piersall dashed out from the bull pen. Before taking his setting-up exercises and going through the routine of giving the fans the full treatment, Piersall made a circus catch of the sunglasses which Vollmer tossed to him, then turned and bowed while the crowd in his corner of the grandstand roared. Later that inning he robbed Chico Carrasquel of the White Sox of a double with a spectacular catch that ended the game, and as he ran into the locker room, he kept turning and bowing to the screaming fans.

  Warren Brown, the Chicago Herald-American sports columnist, wrote the next day:

  “While the young man may never reach the batting heights nor collect salary checks proportionate to those which went Ted Williams’s way, young Jim Piersall, the Red Sox eccentric, continues to make his pitch as perhaps the game’s most distinctive crowd-pleaser.

  “Comiskey Park fans, all over the park, were completely captivated by Piersall’s antics in the first game. When he finally appeared in the last inning of the second game, the ovation he got was as great as anything ever accorded a Williams or a Joe DiMaggio by a crowd whose sympathies figured to be with the home team.

  “General Manager Frank Lane of the [White] Sox, conceding that Piersall is not only an excellent ballplayer now, but has unlimited potentialities, said he had encountered young Jim under the stands before the doubleheader began. Piersall was on his way from the clubhouse to the field.

  “‘Hi, Mr. Lane,’ said Piersall, ‘I want to ask you something. Why do you go around giving those big bonuses for kid ballplayers? Why don’t you give Mr. [Tom] Yawkey [owner of the Red Sox] one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and get me? Then you’d really have something.’

  “The best Lane could say to that was to tell Piersall to go ahead and arrange the deal.

  “On the White Sox’s last trip to Boston, [Manager] Paul Richards was seated in a corner of the Kenmore Hotel lobby when a gangling youngster came rushing up, wanted to know how things were going, rattled off a lot of conversation, didn’t give Richards a chance to reply, and went darting down the steps and into the street.

  “ ‘Who,’ I asked Richards, ‘might that be?’

  “ ‘That,’ said Richards, ‘is Piersall. Wish I had him.’ ”

  The Boston newspapers jumped down Boudreau’s throat for benching Piersall. Reluctant to admit that it was because of the clowning, Lou announced that he had done it because Piersall wasn’t hitting and he thought Vollmer might shake loose into another streak. The only trouble with that argument was that Piersall had been hitting very well, and Vollmer, after replacing Piersall, remained in a slump. The Red Sox went from Chicago to St. Louis and drew twenty-one thousand fans in two nights there. Piersall got into two of the three games in the late innings, and went through his repertoire, but Boudreau kept him out of the third game altogether. He benched Vollmer, too. Charley Maxwell played right field for the Red Sox that day.

  Boudreau put Piersall back in the lineup when the Red Sox got to Cleveland for a four-game series with the Indians. He played right field throughout the series, but the Red Sox lost three of the games and Piersall put on another comprehensive clowning act during the Sunday doubleheader that ended the Cleveland stay. His style was a little cramped in Cleveland, because the stands at th
e Municipal Stadium are some distance away from right field, and there was no one for him to yell to. However, he attracted enough attention to be the central figure of the afternoon, and Boudreau benched him again in Detroit. Vollmer was back in right field, but Piersall got into every game, and, back in a ball park where the fans could talk to him, he gave the customers everything he had. Then the Red Sox came home to Boston to open a series against Washington on the night of Friday, June 27.

  “Holy cow,” I said to Mary, “I was worse in the West than I had been in Boston.”

  “You were pretty bad, honey, so bad that I went out to see if I couldn’t quiet you down.”

  “You mean you made that trip with us?”

  “Part of it. I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “Partly because I wanted to talk to Boudreau about you, but mostly because I wanted everyone on the ball club to know that I hadn’t left you.”

  I stared at her.

  “To know what?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s right, honey. You told everyone that I had walked out on you.”

  On the morning of the day the Red Sox left for the Western trip, Mary, scared and upset herself, started out for Scranton, where she intended to stay while we were on the road. The children and Ann, Mary’s sister, were with her. Mary kissed me good-by when I left for the ball park, and then left town. A few days after she arrived in Scranton, she got a call from Jim Tracy, who, in common with his brothers Bill and Frank, had been in and out of Boston all season trying to straighten me out. He had been at Fenway Park for the last game of our home stand, and one of the Red Sox ballplayers asked him if it was true that Mary had left me.

  “That’s when I decided to go to Cleveland,” she said. “I had been thinking about making the trip anyhow. The Scranton papers were full of your antics in Chicago, and when Boudreau benched you, they had it all over Page One. I thought maybe if I could talk to Boudreau, it would help.”

  Mary met me in Cleveland, and we stayed a couple of nights at the hotel and one with Ethel and George Minnicucci, some friends of ours who had moved there from Waterbury. But Mary didn’t get to talk to Boudreau at all, and didn’t even see him until we got on the train to Detroit. We were in the dining car that evening, and Boudreau was sitting at a nearby table with the coaches. They didn’t know we were so close by, and Mary overheard them talking about me.