by Jim Piersall
Garrett had had no more luck trying to settle me down than anyone else had. He was placed in a position similar to that of Ted Lepcio when I was with the Red Sox. Like Mary, they both had to stand by and watch me crack up, doing what they could by talking to me but not daring to go much further, in the desperate hope that I might get straightened out by myself. Every morning when they got up, they were saying to themselves, “This might be the day.” And every night they went to bed, thinking, “Maybe tomorrow.”
I bought a ticket on a Boston plane that left Birmingham late in the afternoon of July 17. We made several stops on the way, including one at LaGuardia Airport in New York, where Bill Cunningham, the able Boston Herald sports columnist, and his secretary, Miss Frances Donovan, got aboard. Apparently, as soon as I saw Cunningham, I rushed over to him and began pouring my troubles into his unwilling ear. Evidently I talked all the way to Boston, where we arrived at one-thirty in the morning. Here, in part, is what he wrote in his column a day or so later:
“I chanced to be on the plane that unexpectedly brought the Red Sox problem child Jimmy Piersall into Boston at one-thirty A.M. From approximately eleven-forty-five P.M. until the ship set down in Boston, I’d heard little but the machine-gun chatter of this tormented youth who so foolishly is throwing away a promising career...
“It’s my considered opinion that the less written now the better, and if anybody’s really interested in helping the young man, a complete press blackout until he can get his bearings would be the best medicine that could possibly be prescribed.
“I’m no authority on such matters, but my guess is he’s heading straight for a nervous breakdown.”
Cunningham was an accurate prophet. My breakdown was just around the corner. It happened within forty hours after I arrived in Boston. And, suffering more pangs than I suffered, living more horrible minutes than I lived, fighting more fights than I fought, sinking farther into depths of desperation than I sank, hoping more than I hoped, and praying more than I prayed was Mary. I went through it all under the unhealthy anesthesia of a mental blackout. Mary was fully aware of everything that went on. She carried me through every step of the way without so much as a sleeping pill—and, to this day, she remembers every dreadful minute. She told me all about it during those days when we sat quietly in our rented house and relived the past together.
The house was alive with reporters and photographers the day after I flew into town from Birmingham. All of the papers, the major press services, the radio and television stations—every conceivable dispenser of news—sent out representatives. Everyone interviewed me, and while I reveled in the prospects of so much publicity, I was reasonable and rational in my speech. I told them all the same story—that I was through with clowning, and from that moment on, was going to be no more and no less than a ballplayer. I said that I would go back to Birmingham and do the best I could to help the Barons win the Southern Association pennant, and that my one hope was to get back to the Red Sox as soon as possible. And once with them, I would forget all about these mad antics.
I parried the embarrassing questions—
“Did you spank Stephens’s little boy?” ... Of course not—I just patted him, that’s all.... “Did you really calm down the way Boudreau told you to?” ... Certainly.... “What about all those stories of your tearing through the Southern Association the way you tore through the American League?” ... Nothing to them—I’ve just been sticking to baseball.... “Are you really carrying on a running feud with the umpires down there?” ... Not that I know of—the umpires and me have been getting along fine.... “Is it true that you mimicked your own manager behind his back while he was protesting a decision?” ... Absolutely not—my manager is a close friend of mine.... “Did you squirt the plate with a water pistol?” ... Someone dreamed that one up.... “And play catch with a scoreboard boy?” ... I should say not.... “Why did you make two trips back to Boston in less than three weeks?” ... To see my family.... “Are you going to take your wife and children back to Birmingham?” ... As soon as I can get them packed and out of here.... “Do you really think McKechnie and not Boudreau is running the Red Sox?” ... Boudreau is the manager—do you think I’d say anything like that? ... “Well, did you say it?” ... I was sore—I didn’t know what I was talking about—Boudreau runs the team, not McKechnie.... “And how about Vollmer—did you say he couldn’t blow his nose?” ... A fine ballplayer and a good friend of mine—why should I say anything to hurt him? ... “Is it true that some of the Red Sox wanted to beat you up on a train and Lepcio stopped them?” ... I don’t know—ask Lepcio....
All day and all evening that sort of thing went on. Questions, questions, questions—one interviewer after another. Sometimes there would be slight variations, but in general the questions were the same. Mary hovered in and out of the living room while I held court. Every so often, she would suggest that I be excused from answering any more questions, but I wouldn’t stand for it. I insisted on seeing everyone and answering everything.
Late that afternoon, the Red Sox office called. Cronin wanted to see me. He would expect me in his office at ten o’clock the next morning. I had a long talk with him, then went home and said to Mary, “I’m going to see a doctor. They want you there, too.” We drove back to the ball park, where Cronin met us, and then we headed for the doctor’s.
Before we sat down, the doctor called in another doctor, and then the five of us—the two doctors, Cronin, Mary and I—went into a long huddle. The conversation was pretty general, as if we were all just passing the time of day, and I took part in it. After a while, one of the doctors suggested, “I think it would be a good idea for Jimmy to go off somewhere for a rest.”
“Rest?” I asked suspiciously. “What kind of rest?”
“Oh, just a little vacation from baseball. I’d like to see you sitting back and forgetting everything for a while.”
“Do I need that kind of a rest?”
“I think you could use one,” said the doctor.
“Where can I go?”
“I know just the place for you—it’s quiet and restful—an hour out of the city—not too hard for your wife to reach when she goes to see you.”
“What do you mean—not too hard for her to reach?” I snapped. “Isn’t she going to be with me?”
“You’ve got to get away from everything, Jimmy,” the doctor said. “Even your family.”
“Now, wait a minute—what kind of a place is this? It sounds like a hospital.”
“It’s not exactly a hospital—it’s more like a rest home.”
I jumped and shouted, “I don’t need any rest—and I’m not going to any hospital.”
Nobody moved. Then one of the doctors said, quietly, “All right, Jimmy, calm down. Nobody is going to send you anywhere you don’t want to go. We just want to help you.”
I relaxed and shrugged my shoulders. Then, without sitting down, I said, “I know. Can I talk to my wife alone for a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
The three men left the room, and Mary and I talked. Gently, she tried to persuade me to do what the doctors wanted, but I wouldn’t listen at first. The very word “hospital” was enough to set me off again. I wanted no part of any hospitals.
“What difference does it make what you call the place?” Mary said. “You need a rest. Let the doctors decide where you should go to get one.”
“No hospital,” I said, stubbornly.
“Not for me?”
I said nothing.
“Jimmy, honey—”
“What?”
“If you won’t do it for me—will you do it for our babies?”
I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders. She went to the door and called the doctors and Cronin back into the room.
“Before I say yes or no,” I insisted, “I want to know what kind of a place I’m going to, how much freedom I’ll have when I get there and how long I’ll have to stay.”
The doctors told me that I
would probably only have to stay for three weeks at the most, and that I would have plenty of freedom to come and go as I pleased. I asked Mary again, and she urged me to go. Cronin added that the Red Sox were very much in favor of my going away, and he assured me that my salary would continue to be sent to Mary while I was gone.
“The club will pay all the bills in connection with this,” he said. “We want you to be in the best possible physical condition so that when you start playing ball again, you’ll have nothing else on your mind.”
I finally agreed, and we went out. It was a long ride to the private sanitarium where I was to go, and Mary, who was worried and exhausted, was strongly urged not to drive me there. The place is in a small community in the northern part of the state about an hour and a half from where we lived in Newton. I finally agreed, after some argument, to let someone else drive me, and Joe Cronin arranged for my transportation.
I was permitted to do pretty much as I pleased after I got there. I could use the recreation room, I could wander around the grounds and I was told that I would even be allowed to go into the town provided I got back at a specified hour. Still, I was suspicious of the place. It certainly looked like a hospital to me. I walked out the day after I went in. Mary was called, and she drove right up there. When she arrived, the doctors told her that I had refused to take a shot and had taken off while the nurse had gone to get help. They couldn’t find me around the town and thought I’d probably gone home. Mary turned around and drove back to Newton.
The phone rang just as she walked into the house. It was the sanitarium again. I had just phoned the sanitarium from a pay station—probably in Boston—and told them that I was going back there. Mary got into the car and drove back again. Fifteen minutes after she arrived at the place, I walked in.
We greeted each other casually, and then I said, “How about a game of table tennis?”
We played a few sets, and then she kissed me good-by and drove home. At about noon the next day, she got another call. I had walked out again after refusing to take a shot. I still hadn’t come back when Mary got there, so she decided to look around the town for me, rather than sit around the hospital and sweat out my return.
She found me passing the time of day with a couple of other guys in the shed of a gas station. The others hadn’t recognized me and we weren’t on the subject of baseball. When I saw Mary, I got up casually and went over to say hello to her. She got me into the car and, after some discussion, persuaded me to let her drive me back to the sanitarium.
Back in the recreation room, we played some more table tennis and shot a couple of games of pool together, and then it was time for dinner. Mary left, and promised to be back later. She had a bite to eat in town, and was back within an hour, but in that hour the world fell apart.
Once again, an attempt had been made to give me a shot, and again I had refused. Two attendants came in later and I still refused, and the more they insisted, the louder I became. After a while I lost my head altogether and began swinging and fighting and yelling and screaming, so they had to go out and get help. By the time Mary returned, the police had been called, and I had been the central figure in a wild, free-for-all fight, during which I had gone completely out of control. Because of my condition, I was immediately ordered transferred to the state mental institution at Danvers.
The doctors broke the news as gently as possible to Mary. “We aren’t equipped to handle him here,” they told her. “That’s why we have to have him shifted. He’s been pretty violent.”
Mary hung around the sanitarium until they moved me out of there, but I didn’t recognize her and she hardly recognized me. I was securely tied down, and my eyes were puffed, my face bloody and my clothes torn. They got me into an ambulance and roared off while Mary, now frantic with fear, helplessly stood by and tried not to look.
On her way home, she noticed a sign pointing to the Danvers State Hospital and, even though it was after midnight, she turned off the main road and drove up to the front office. There, she was told that there was no point in her staying around any longer—that they’d do all they could for me and that I probably would be all right. The next day they transferred me to Westborough.
“Holy cow!” I exclaimed, after she told me the story. “How did you stand it?”
She shrugged and smiled a little.
“You know, honey,” she said, “I think we’re all built to stand almost anything. If you told me now that I’d have to go through it all again tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of it. Every night when I went to bed praying that you would be all right, I prayed for strength myself—not just physical strength, but the strength to carry me through this thing. I was never sure how much more I’d be able to take, yet I got by all right.”
“I couldn’t have stood it,” I said.
“Yes, you could—if you had to.”
I FELT SO GOOD when I got home from Westborough that I called Joe Cronin and asked him if I could make the last Western trip with the Red Sox. They had already left Boston and were in Detroit. Cronin didn’t think it was such a good idea and told me so.
“The season’s almost over anyhow, Jimmy,” he said. “I think it would be better for you to pass this one up. And I’ll bet your doctor agrees with me.”
He was right. Dr. Brown told me later he would never have let me make the trip even if Cronin had given me permission. I saw the doctor three times after I was discharged from the hospital. Each time Mary drove me to Westborough and stayed with us while we talked. The doctor and his wife had a house right on the grounds. I visited him there once, and at his office in one of the hospital buildings the other times.
I was very calm about going back to Westborough.
“The place isn’t exactly my favorite amusement park,” I said to Mary, “but I don’t mind visiting there.”
“Neither do I,” she said, “as long as you don’t have to stay. But if it bothers you to go, I’ll ask Dr. Brown to come here. I’m sure he will.”
“No. I want to go. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
One thing we wanted to ask him was whether or not it would be all right for me to go to Scranton for Ann O’Brien’s wedding. She and Dan Kuchar were getting married the third week in September, and Mary was to be matron of honor. Because of my situation, Mary had suggested that Ann get someone else. But Ann insisted on waiting to see if Mary would be able to make it. Ann and Dan had been going together for a long time—in fact they had an understanding at the time Mary and I first met. They were to be married by Father John O’Brien, Ann’s brother, the same priest who had married us.
“By all means, go,” Dr. Brown said. “Both of you. It will give Jimmy a chance to mingle with old friends under the most pleasant possible conditions.”
Before we left for Scranton, Cronin phoned me one day and said, “How would you like to spend the winter in Florida? The Red Sox will pay your expenses.”
I almost dropped the phone.
“You mean the whole winter?” I asked.
“Sure. Go down there whenever you feel like it, and stay right through spring training. I’ll have Tom Dowd rent a house for you in Sarasota.”
Dowd was the Red Sox traveling secretary.
“Gee—I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Cronin—you and Mr. Yawkey—”
“Forget it. When can you leave?”
I told him about the Scranton trip, so he said, “All right, we’ll set it up for October 1.”
Mary did all of the driving when we went to Scranton for the Kuchars’ wedding. The town looked good to me, even though my last memory of it wasn’t a very happy one. The wedding guests were practically all close friends of ours and everyone accepted me as casually as though I had been spending the summer playing ball. Not one person asked me about my illness, for which I was grateful. I had not been among strangers at all since leaving the hospital, and it was the one prospect that bothered me. I wasn’t a bit sure I’d know how to react if someone started rec
alling any of those stunts I had pulled during my illness.
Mary drove us back to Boston a couple of days after the Kuchars were married, and, with only a few days left before it was time to go to Sarasota, we made a last visit to Westborough.
“I’m a little afraid of what’s going to happen when we get there,” I told the doctor.
“What’s there to be afraid of?”
“Well, I’ll run into a lot of casual acquaintances and people I don’t know. What if they ask me about some of those things I did when I was playing ball?”
“What if they do?”
“Well—what shall I tell them?”
“Tell them the truth. Tell them you don’t remember anything that happened. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
“Well—there’s another thing—” I said.
“What?”
“Suppose—suppose I can’t play ball any more?”
“Jimmy—you’re not going to worry about that now.”
“But I want to know. I’ve got to find out if I can still catch a ball, if my arm is still strong, if my baseball instincts are still sharp, if I can hit big-league pitching. How am I going to find out?”
The doctor peered closely at me, his dark eyes snapping. Then he said, “I don’t want you to give one minute of your time, to lose one second of your sleep, to worry one single bit about whether or not you’ll be able to play baseball. It’s a wonderful thing that the Red Sox are doing—sending you to Florida where you can recuperate under the best of conditions. But unless you promise me that you won’t touch a baseball, a glove or a bat until it’s time to start spring training, I won’t let you go.”
“But you let me play ball around the grounds while I was here.”
“That was different. You were playing with a lot of fellows to whom baseball was simply recreation. It’s your profession. If something goes wrong during the winter—or even if you think something is going wrong, it might set you back. I don’t want you to play ball all winter. Understand?”
