Fear Strikes Out (2 page)

“Watch closely,” he said. “That’s the only way you’ll learn.”

If I got restless or squirmed around, he would snap, “Quiet down and watch the ball game.” But there was no question I could ask about the game that he wouldn’t answer. He was impatient about a good many things, but never about my curiosity over baseball.

“You must learn baseball backwards and forwards,” he told me. “The more you know, the better ballplayer you’ll be.”

I could tell what a batter should do in a given situation before I could write my name. By the time I was in the first grade, I was an ardent Red Sox fan. I listened to their games on the radio when I wasn’t out playing ball, and I knew the names of everyone on the team. I grew up a Red Sox fan. It never occurred to me to cheer for anyone else, even though in Waterbury we were within radio range of the Braves, who were then also in Boston, the two New York teams, the Giants and the Yankees, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. My dad was strictly a Red Sox man. So was I.

When I was five years old, my parents entered me in the kindergarten of the Sacred Heart School, a parochial school operated by the Sacred Heart Church, which was on East Main Street, almost next door to my house. My father is a Protestant, but my mother, a devout Catholic, wanted me to be brought up in the Church, and my father had no objections.

I did not dislike school, although in common with all the other kids, I could think of a lot of things I’d rather do than go there. The nuns at Sacred Heart were gentle and understanding, and I could relax when I was with them. One of them became almost a second mother to me. Her name was Sister Margaret. She was my first-grade teacher.

The first time I ever had any direct contact with Sister Margaret was just before recess on my first day in her class. We were walking towards the school yard when I stepped out of line. Before I knew what was happening, she had swooped down on me and, gently pulling me by the ear, put me back where I belonged.

Later, while we were outside, she came over to me and said, softly, “You’re Jimmy Piersall, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Sister,” I mumbled.

“I’m glad to see you, Jimmy. Your mother is my very dear friend.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

“You’re a nice boy. And after this, you
will
keep in line, won’t you?”

“Yes, Sister.”

After a while, she began referring to me as “my Jimmy.” If anyone asked for me, she would say, “My Jimmy’s outside playing ball. I can hear his voice.” Or, if I got into trouble and she heard about it, it would be, “That’s too bad. I guess I’ll have to go and pull my Jimmy’s ear.”

At first, she pulled my ear only when she was really displeased about something I did, but she never hurt me. As I grew older and we became closer, she began pulling my ear in jest, until it finally got to be a game with us. She does it now as a greeting whenever we meet.

I could talk to Sister Margaret the way I talked to my own mother. She knew my mother so very well and felt so close to her that we had our affection for Mom in common. By the time I was in the second grade, Sister Margaret developed into more than just a dear friend. She became the one stabilizing influence in my life, the only person I knew to whom I could pour out my problems and with whom I could relax completely. I came to love her as I loved my own mother because, in effect, that was exactly what she had to be to me.

One day, while I was in the second grade, I came home from school and found my father sitting on the divan downstairs, staring into space. He seemed deeply agitated, so I decided not to bother him. Instead, I went into the kitchen, looking for my mother. She was not there. I went to the foot of the stairs and called up to her, but she didn’t answer. Then, alarmed, I looked back at my father. He was still sitting there, his brows knit in a frown, but he seemed to be more puzzled than angry. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked a little as if he had been weeping.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked.

“She’s gone away,” he said, shortly.

For a minute, I didn’t get the full significance of it.

“Gone away?” I repeated aimlessly. “Where has she gone?”

“Away. Just away.”

I stood and stared at him for a few seconds, my eyes filling, my lips quivering, my shoulders shaking. His face softened and, beckoning with his forefinger, he said quietly, “Come here, son.”

I rushed across the room and collapsed, sobbing, in his arms. He talked to me, but I have no idea what he said, nor do I know how long we sat there. The first thing I remember is looking up at him and asking, “When will she be back?”

“Soon. She’ll be back soon,” my dad said.

“How soon?”

“A little while.”

He set me down, then gently turning me so that I faced him, he said, “We’ll take care of each other for now. I’ll do the cooking and you’ll do the dishes. We’ll make our own beds and work together with the cleaning. And before you know it, your mom’ll be home. Now how about a game of catch?”

We were very close that day, my dad and I, maybe closer than we’ve ever been before or since. We went into the back yard and played catch for hours, then, back in the house, he cooked dinner for us both. After he put me to bed, though, I lay and sobbed for a long time. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like without my mom.

I told Sister Margaret the next day.

“My mom has gone away,” I said, in a dull monotone.

“You’ll see her soon,” she remarked.

I looked sharply at her.

“Do you know where she is?”

“She’s not very far away.”

“Will she ever come home again?”

“Of
course
she will,” Sister assured me.

When I got home after Mass on the following Sunday, my dad, dressed in his best suit, was waiting for me in front of the house. Parked on the street, the sun’s rays dancing over its shining top, was the car he had bought during a period of prosperity a few months before. My father was very proud of that car. Every Sunday he spent hours polishing it, and he wiped it clean of the day’s accumulation of dirt every evening.

He was smiling broadly.

“Get in, son,” he said, jovially. “We’re going for a ride.”

“Where?”

“To see your mother.”

“Mom?”

I couldn’t say more. Without another word I got into the car, and Dad, after making sure the door was shut securely, walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat.

An hour later, we pulled into the grounds of what looked to me like an exclusive private school. It was a pleasant spring afternoon, and the wide expanses of grass were already a rich sea green. There was a sign leading into the driveway, but we were going too fast for me to read it. I didn’t know it then, but for the next ten years I would have plenty of chance to spell out the words. They read, “Norwich State Hospital.”

Mom seemed perfectly all right to me. She cried a little as she embraced me, then sat with us and talked for an hour or so. She asked me about school and baseball and church and Sister Margaret, and I told her everything I could. She and Dad talked quietly, except for one or two occasions when he raised his voice a little. Dad and Mom never could talk quietly together for any length of time.

“When will you be home?” I asked, just before we left.

“After I’ve had a good rest,” she replied. “It won’t be long. And Jim—”

“Yes?”

“Take good care of your father.”

“I will, Mom.”

She was home six months or so later, and our threads of life, on the surface, at least, seemed to pick up where they had been left off. But it wasn’t the same. Mom, usually so calm and steady, didn’t move around the house with the quiet dignity of the old days. Sometimes she worked fast as she did the household chores, as if she couldn’t wait to get them over with. She was nervous and fidgety, and she did things in quick, jerky movements. And when she talked, her voice rose occasionally, although she talked little. Every so often I caught her shuddering convulsively.

Then, a year later, disaster struck again. It was just before my ninth birthday, and I was coming home from school. As I approached the house, I could hear my parents arguing, my father’s booming voice raised in the anger that I dreaded, my mother’s querulous and shrill. As I turned from the street into the path that led to our entrance on the side, I nearly collided with my dad, who was rushing out. I stepped aside and he brushed past me without a word.

Mom was in the kitchen, sobbing hysterically. I tried to put my arm around her, but she shoved me aside.

“I’ve got to get away from here,” she kept repeating. “I can’t stand it.”

She said it louder and louder, while I stood by, frightened, worried and unable to do anything to quiet her down.

Then, suddenly, she stood up, crossed the room and headed down the steps. I jumped up and followed her, but she was on the path before I had reached the door. When I got outside, she was walking rapidly towards the street, where, as usual, trucks and buses were roaring back and forth, in and out of town. Before I knew it, Mom was stepping off the curb, and, to my horror, slowing up to a deliberate shuffle. Oblivious to the traffic, she looked neither to the right nor the left as she started to cross the street.

For a moment I froze where I stood. Miraculously, she didn’t get hit, although swearing, sweating drivers had to jam on brakes and swerve to one side or another to keep from running into her. She was more than halfway across before I realized what she was trying to do. I dashed madly after her, and, without bothering to look at the traffic myself, rushed up behind her and pushed her the rest of the way across. Then, after waiting for a break in the traffic, we crossed back to our own side together and went into the house.

We both cried for a long time. Then Mom, calm and lucid, said, “Jim, I’m going away again.”

“To—that place?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back.”

My dad and I saw her at Norwich two Sundays later. She seemed normal and made it evident that she was glad to see us. After I kissed her, I said, “Mom, get well and come home soon. Dad’s not a very good cook and I’m not a very good bed maker.”

She smiled, and assured me that she’d be back sometime, but she didn’t say when. We stayed with her for a while, and then drove home in silence.

After I went to bed that night, I tossed restlessly back and forth, thinking of my mother and wondering why I couldn’t have her with me all the time, the way other kids had their mothers. The more I thought about it, the sorrier I felt for myself, and I finally broke into a fit of hysterical sobbing. I cried and cried until, at last, my father came in and said, “What’s the matter, son?”

I sat up in bed, pointing at him and screamed, “You know what the matter is. I don’t want my mom in that awful place any more. I can’t stand it. I want her home, where she belongs. If you’d stop hollering at her all the time, she’d be all right. You haven’t got any patience with her. You’re always yelling at her. If you didn’t then she wouldn’t have to go away.”

My father didn’t move. He looked down at me a long time, then said, quietly, “Son, you don’t understand her the way I do. And you don’t understand me, either.”

He came over and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Did I ever tell you about my own childhood?” he asked.

I had stopped crying, and, as I looked up at him, I realized that I had never heard him mention his own people. Not speaking, I simply shook my head.

“Well,” he said, “I guess you might say I never had any childhood. I certainly didn’t have any home life. I never knew either of my parents. My father left home and my mother died while I was still a baby. Can you imagine what that means, son?”

I could only shake my head again.

“It means that nobody—
nobody
”—his voice was harsh now—“gives a rap whether you live or you die. I love you. Your mom loves you. You have teachers who help you and friends who want to play with you. I had nobody, I tell you.
Not one person!
”

His voice was rising, but this time I wasn’t frightened. I simply sat and stared at him.

“They put me in a foster home. The State of Connecticut paid for my keep. The people I lived with covered the law. They clothed me and fed me and provided me with a bed to sleep in. But they didn’t give me the one thing I needed more than anything—affection. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I knew that other kids had it. But other kids lived with their own parents, who loved them. I lived with strangers.

“I couldn’t stand it, not loving anyone, not having anyone to love me. One day—I was younger than you are now—I ran away. I scrounged and scrambled for a living, moving from place to place, existing from day to day, hungering for something that wasn’t for me.

“I had to fight to live,” he said, his eyes glowing in the semidarkness. “It was a dog-eat-dog existence. The older I got, the more I realized that if I wanted anything done for myself, I’d have to do it myself or it wouldn’t get done. And if I wanted anything, I’d have to demand it—in as loud a voice as possible.”

He stopped a minute and took a deep breath.

“I don’t mean to yell at people—you, your mom, anyone. I just can’t help myself. You can’t blame me. I
had
to do it for so many years—”

Then he turned and walked out, gently closing my bedroom door behind him.

When I saw Sister Margaret at school the next day, I asked her, “Why does my mother have to keep going to the hospital all the time?”

“Because she has to rest.”

“I know, Sister. But
why
does she have to rest?”

“She tires easily, Jimmy. And she has to work hard.”

I looked at Sister for a long moment. Her face was composed, her eyes clear and calm, her lips parted in a half-smile as she gazed back at me. She seemed so strong and solid and dependable that I was sure she would have a satisfactory answer for anything I asked her.

“Sister,” I said slowly, “why does God punish my mom? Why does He make her keep going to that place? Why does He let her get so nervous and upset and unhappy? She’s a good lady, Sister. She’s charitable. She goes to church. She obeys all the laws. She works hard. She always does her best.
Sister, what has my mom done wrong that these awful things have to happen to her?
”