Fear Strikes Out (13 page)

“I’ve had a headache since I was fifteen years old,” I said. “Now it’s gone. I’m not nervous any more either.”

“Good, Very good.”

“Will I stay this way?”

“No reason why you shouldn’t.”

“Doc—what did they do to cure me?”

“You were given electroshock treatments.”

“I was that bad?”

“You were pretty bad, Jimmy. The shock treatments got you out of the acute stage. Now you have to do the rest yourself.”

“How?” I asked.

“By learning to relax. You must take everything as it comes—in stride. Don’t let yourself get upset, no matter how bad things seem. If you feel yourself going off a deep end, stop whatever you’re doing, so that you can calm down. You’ll have to work at it at first. Later, it will come naturally, just like catching and throwing a baseball.”

“That always came naturally to me.”

“Only as far as you can remember,” the doctor said. “But when you were small, it had to be taught to you. Now you’re going to teach yourself how to relax. You can do that, too.”

I looked around. We were sitting in one corner of the violent room.

“How can I relax here?”

“We’ll get you out tomorrow, and let you have a room to yourself for a little while.”

“When can I see my wife?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Doc, how is she?”

“Wonderful,” he said. “A fine girl. Until we told her to stop, she came out here every day—and it’s a three quarters of an hour drive for her.”

“Why did you tell her not to come?”

The doctor shrugged.

“It was just a long trip for nothing. She couldn’t see you.”

“You say it’s a three quarters of an hour drive. From where?”

“From where you live, on Walnut Street in Newton. You rented a house there.”

I frowned and rubbed my forehead, as if I were trying to bring some forgotten detail out of it. I didn’t remember renting a house in Newton or any other suburb of Boston.
I must have stayed with the Red Sox. But how could that be? They were going to make me into a shortstop.

“How long did I stay with the Red Sox?” I asked.

“About half the season. They sent you to Birmingham late in June, but not because they weren’t satisfied with the way you played.”

“Why, then?”

“Well,” the doctor said, “you were pretty nervous. They thought that by sending you to a place where you had had such a wonderful season the year before, they could get you to calm down.”

“How did I end up here then?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. You’ve talked enough today.”

I was given a room of my own in the morning, and the doctor came in to see me at about eleven o’clock.

“When’s Mary coming?” I asked.

“Around two. How do you feel today?”

“Swell. It’s great to get out of that—other room.”

“I’ll bet it is, Jimmy.”

“When do I get back into circulation?”

“In a little while—a few weeks ought to do it. You’ll stay here for a couple of days, and then we’ll put you in with a group of fellows who are convalescing.”

“I’m anxious to see Mary.”

“And she’s anxious to see you,” the doctor said. “I just spoke to her a few minutes ago. She and the children send their love, and she can’t wait to see you.”

The children? There was Eileen—and, yes, I remember—Doreen. That’s right—we have two little girls now. Let me see—when was Doreen born? I remember—on March 5—Eileen’s first birthday. Mary called me from Scranton to tell me.

“I have two girls, haven’t I, Doc?” I said.

“You remember the birth of the second one?”

“Sure. Mary phoned. I was in Sarasota with the Red Sox, so I couldn’t get to Scranton.”

“You were there just before Doreen was born.”

“I was?”

“Yes. You had a few days off between the end of the special training school and the beginning of regular spring training. Jimmy, you remember Doreen’s birth. What else do you remember?”

I hesitated, then said, “Well, it’s hard to say because everything is so hazy.”

“What’s the last clear recollection you have, outside of Doreen’s birth?”

“Walking into the Terrace at Sarasota, when I reported for that special training school. I remember getting out of the limousine and taking my suitcase and going over the patio and stepping into the lobby and—”

I stopped.

“—and what?” the doctor asked, gently.

“And—nothing. I guess that’s all.”

I looked hard at the doctor.

“Good Lord,” I said, slowly, “that was January 15. Have I been out of my head ever since?”

“I told you, Jimmy—you were a very sick boy. Can you remember anything else?”

“I’ve got some vague impressions. Seems to me I borrowed Paul Schreiber’s glove in Sarasota. He’s the Red Sox batting-practice pitcher. I asked him if I could use the glove when he wasn’t pitching and he said it was O.K. I think he gave the glove to me later.”

“Where was your own glove?”

“I left it home.”

“Why?”

“Because the Red Sox were going to make me into a shortstop, and I figured they couldn’t do that if I didn’t have a glove.”

“I see,” said the doctor, casually. “Do you remember anything else?”

“Not really. It seems to me I had a terrible argument with an umpire somewhere, but I couldn’t tell you exactly where or what it was all about. It must have been after the baseball season began, though, because there was a big crowd.”

“What else?”

I thought awhile, then said, “I guess that’s all, Doc.”

“I see.”

“Doc—how come I remember all the details about Doreen’s birth, but I can’t recall anything else that happened since last January?” I asked.

“Because Doreen’s birth was something good—something that you wanted to remember. You see, Jimmy, shock treatments often cause amnesia in some form or other. It can be partial or, as in your case, practically total. This is particularly true about unpleasant events. Almost everything that happened to you while you were sick was unpleasant, and you’ve forgotten it because you wanted to forget it. But the one pleasant thing that did happen—your little girl’s birth—is just as clear in your mind as it would have been if you had been perfectly normal at the time.”

The doctor, a pile of newspapers under his arm, dropped in on me after lunch. We talked for a few minutes, then he said, “Here—these papers are for you. Take a look at the sports pages.”

We talked for a few minutes, then, after he went out, I picked up one of the papers. I turned to the sports page, and became absorbed in the first story I had read about the Red Sox since I had been sick. As soon as I finished one paper, I turned to another. The doctor had given me not only eight Boston papers but both the Worcester papers as well.

I was still reading when I heard a step, followed by a rich, soft, marvelously familiar, “Hello, Jimmy, honey—”

I looked up, then jumped to my feet. Mary was standing there, her arms outstretched, her mouth half open, her blue eyes brimming. My own eyes misted and my throat constricted as I walked towards her, and the next thing we knew, we were laughing and crying together in each other’s arms.

After a while, she said, “You’re all right now.”

She was stating a fact, not asking a question.

“I know, honey. I’m O.K. I’ll be out of here soon. Tell me about the babies.”

She was there for three hours, telling me all the latest news about Eileen and Doreen and Mom and Dad and George and the house and our friends in Scranton and Waterbury, while I just sat and stared at her. When it was time for her to leave, she stood up and the lowering sun, coming in through the window, caught her hair, and it glistened like copper. I grinned and said, “Gee, honey, I guess you
are
a redhead, after all. Remember—that time in the Tiptoe?”

“How can I ever forget the Tiptoe?” she exclaimed.

“Well, the night before Tony introduced us, I asked him who the redhead was.”

“I’ve told you and told you I’m not a redhead. My hair is brown. Don’t call me a redhead.”

We both laughed. Then I kissed her and asked, “When are you coming back?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. And you know what? Dr. Brown said that after that I can see you twice a day, in the afternoon and in the evening.”

“That’ll be wonderful, honey. Only—well, he told me it’s three quarters of an hour each way. If you make two trips, you’ll be riding three hours a day.”

“Don’t you think it is worth it?”

“It’s worth it to me.”

“Well, silly,” she said, “it’s worth it to me, too.”

The doctor let me have a radio when I was moved to the convalescent ward. This was a pleasant, sunny room, big enough to accommodate eight men. All of us were in nonviolent stages of our sickness. The doctor assured me that I would be able to go outdoors soon, and it wouldn’t be long after that before I would be released from the hospital.

Each day I listened to the broadcast of the Red Sox game. When Mary was with me, we would sit hand in hand, and after it was over she would say, “Next year, honey, you’ll be with them,” and I’d nod and breathe to myself, “Please, God, let her be right.”

Neither she nor the doctor told me any details of what I had been doing on the ball field while I was with the Red Sox, but I knew that I had been acting queerly most of the time.

“When you get back home,” the doctor said, “you can look at the newspaper clippings and see for yourself. Mary can tell you anything you want her to then. Right now I want you to concentrate on getting well.”

“What’s the matter—are you afraid I’ll start worrying about myself?”

He smiled.

“No, I’m not afraid of that. But you’ve got to think about the future now. You can pick up the past later.”

“You know, Doc,” I said, soberly, “that’s no joke—about my worrying, I mean. I’ve always been a worrier.”

“Sure—and you’ve always had a headache, too. The headache’s gone. So has the worrying. It’s all over now. You’ve been cured. You’re starting from scratch. It’s as if you had just been born again.”

“But if I’m afraid that something will go wrong—”

“It’s that fear which you have to avoid. You worried yourself into this place by being afraid of the future. You thought the whole world was against you.”

“The Red Sox,” I corrected him.

“No, the world.”

“But it was after I read that the Red Sox were going to change me from an outfielder to a shortstop that I fell apart.”

“If that hadn’t made you do it, something else would have. You were ripe for a crackup, that’s all. And the reason you were ripe was your fear of the unknown. That’s been knocked out of you now. You must keep it out.”

It was Mary who first told me that I had started the 1952 season at shortstop for the Red Sox.

“I
started
the season?” I said, incredulously.

“You were a darn good shortstop,” she told me.

“But I thought Boudreau had said if I looked promising he’d send me to the minors for a year.”

“He did say it, and I suppose he intended to do it, but you were better than he expected you to be, so he kept you. If you hadn’t been so nervous and upset, he’d probably have left you at shortstop right along.”

“But I’m not a shortstop.”

“You were for a while,” she said. “You had the job for the first month of the season—and you did well at it, too.”

Now it was early September, and I was permitted to go outside and play ball in the warm sun. Mary was allowed to tell me more about myself, while Dr. Brown was preparing me for my release from the hospital.

“How bad was I—with Boudreau, I mean?” I asked Mary, one day.

“Pretty bad, honey. You were so terribly nervous that he wasn’t sure what to do with you. Neither was anyone else, for that matter.”

“But what did I do?” I persisted.

“I’ll show you when we go through the scrapbooks at home. Anyhow, Boudreau benched you after a month, and then he shifted you back to the outfield.”

“And that didn’t straighten me out?”

“By then, I guess nothing could have straightened you out,” she said. “You acted more and more peculiar, so they finally sent you to Birmingham.”

“So the doctor told me. I don’t remember going to Birmingham at all.”

“Well,” she said, wryly, “they remember you all right.”

“Was I very bad there, too?”

She nodded.

“You came back to Boston twice,” she said. “The second time—you stayed.”

“Here?”

“No. First they took you to a private sanitarium, but you got violent, so they had you transferred to the State Hospital at Danvers. That’s over on the North Shore, out of the district where we live, so they shifted you here to Westborough.”

“I’m glad they did. Otherwise, I’d never have run into Dr. Brown.”

“He’s a swell guy, all right,” Mary said. “He told me over and over that you were going to recover, and that was the only thing that kept me going.”

One day Dr. Brown handed me a fistful of letters and cards.

“These are for you,” he said. “Read them.”

“For me? Who’d write me here?”

“Friends—and fans.”

I picked one up and looked at the signature, but it meant nothing to me. The letter, written in a schoolboy scrawl, was short and sweet. It read:

“D
EAR
J
IMMY
, I watched you play all the time you were with the Red Sox and for my money you’re the best outfielder in baseball. Please get well so that I’ll be able to watch you again next year.”

I laid it aside and looked at a postcard. That one said, “Stay with it, Jimmy. We’re all pulling for you.”

The other letters and cards were written along the same lines. As I read them one by one, my eyes smarted and I couldn’t swallow. When I looked up at the doctor, the tears began to flow, and without shame, I let them come. After a while, I pulled myself together and said, “These people are strangers, yet look at the trouble they go to for me.”

“They’re not strangers, Jimmy,” he said, softly. “They’re fans—and fans are friends. They want you to know they’re with you, that’s all.”

Every day after that, I was given new mail to read. Sometimes Dr. Brown would bring it in, sometimes an attendant would pass it along, sometimes Mary would have a batch of it with her. The letters had always been opened before I saw them, and obviously had been screened.