Free Fear Strikes Out by Jim Piersall, Hirshberg Page A

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