Fear Strikes Out (9 page)

With that burden off my mind, I concentrated on baseball. Payne Field, where the Red Sox train, has a huge expanse of outfield, and I had a wonderful time roaming all over it to catch fly balls. Lost in the sheer joy of grabbing them, I didn’t realize what kind of impression I might be making on anyone who was watching me.

One day, after he had seen me in action for a week or so, Dominic DiMaggio, the Red Sox veteran center fielder and one of my baseball idols, came over to me and said, “Kid, from what I saw of you in Boston last year and here this spring, you’re the best center fielder in the American League right now.”

I thanked him and strutted off, glowing all over with pride. Talk about praise from Caesar! The man I most admired as a fielder, the man beside whom I had wanted to play almost as long as I could remember, had just paid me the supreme compliment. Dominic DiMaggio had, in effect, told me that I was even better than he was himself. What more could I ask?

As the time for cutting down the squad approached, I tensed up, expecting the ax to fall any day. But I was not in the first batch of men to go, nor was I in the second. Steve O’Neill didn’t spend too much time with me but, judging by the fact that he kept me with the Red Sox, he apparently was satisfied.

One day he said, “You’re a big-league fielder right now, Jimmy, but I want you to become a pull hitter. If you can learn to do that, you might make this club sooner than you expect.”

I was a right-handed batter, but what is known in baseball terms as a “straightaway” hitter—in other words, I was inclined to swing late at the ball, and it would go either to center field or to the right of center. A right-handed “pull” hitter, on the other hand, could snap his bat around so fast that the ball would go to left field.

The Red Sox were always looking for right-handed batters who could pull the ball, for Fenway Park in Boston, their home park, has a short left-field fence. A good pull hitter could hit it often for extra bases and, if he had enough power, could clear it for home runs. If I could learn to pull the ball consistently, I’d become a valuable asset to the ball club.

O’Neill encouraged me, and when it came time to break camp at Sarasota I was still with the Red Sox. We barnstormed our way north, and I got into several exhibition games. We were scheduled to open the season in New York against the Yankees on April 17, two days after our last exhibition game, which was against the Braves in Boston. I hadn’t seen Eileen yet, so O’Neill at my request gave me permission to go to Scranton after the last Braves game on the fifteenth. I was to meet the team in New York in time for the opener. That started me off on an intensive, nerve-racking week of mad driving which, to begin with, found me commuting between New York and Scranton, a little matter of four hours each way.

I drove to New York from Scranton the morning of the seventeenth, a Tuesday, and then went back home after the game. I did the same thing the next day. I got a break when it rained on Thursday. Although I had to drive to New York again, the game was postponed, so I got an early start back to Scranton. I needed it, since I had to be at Fenway Park in time for the Boston opening on Friday. I picked up Mary and Eileen, dumped our luggage into the car and drove through to Boston, getting in well after midnight on Thursday. I was dead tired when I got there. I had driven some six hundred miles without relief and I was so tense that I couldn’t sleep even the few hours I allowed myself after we arrived in Boston.

In the meantime, it was obvious that I was going to have to spend a lot of time riding the Red Sox bench. Instead of Williams, DiMaggio and Piersall, the opening-day outfield consisted of Williams, DiMaggio and Billy Goodman. Four days after the season began, Goodman was shifted to first base, but Clyde Vollmer, a big right-handed power hitter, replaced Goodman in right field.

Two days after we got to Boston, I went to O’Neill and said, “When am I going to get into a ball game?”

“When I can find a spot for you,” Steve replied.

“I know, but meanwhile I have to sit on the bench.”

I was nearly crying.

“Don’t get discouraged, Jimmy,” he said, kindly. “You’re just a young fellow. You’ve got a lot to learn. I want you to sit and watch these fellows for a while.”

“Steve, I can’t stand sitting and watching other guys play ball. I’ve got to get in there myself. Please—if you don’t intend to play me, send me somewhere else.”

O’Neill looked sharply at me, then said, “You mean you want to go back to the minors?”

“I’d rather play there than sit and do nothing here.”

He called me into his office after the ball game that day.

“O.K., Jimmy,” he said. “You’re going to Louisville.”

We left town that night. I wanted to drive straight through, but Mary made me stop on the way so I could get at least a few hours sleep. I reported back to the Colonels the next afternoon.

But the situation there had changed. Ryba had gone with the St. Louis Cardinals as a coach, and Mike Higgins was the new manager of the Louisville club. He is now manager of the Red Sox, and we get along very well. But in 1951, he wasn’t too happy to see me. The Colonels had a big, right-handed batting pull hitter named Karl Olson, and Mike wanted to use him in center field. My appearance on the scene complicated matters since Higgins had to put me back in action.

Aside from the fact that I upset his plans, Mike didn’t find me easy to take. I was a scared, tense kid who had just been through a series of shattering experiences. I made Higgins nervous with my perpetual moving around, my constant yelling, my everlasting restlessness and my eternal rush to get things done.

I knew the pressure was on me if I wanted to keep the center fielder’s job. I had to hit the ball hard or be benched, and I was not a slugger. I fought a hopeless battle, knowing from the start that I couldn’t win it. Sooner or later, I was bound to be replaced. As it was, I played in seventeen games at Louisville and batted .310, which is more than adequate in any league under normal circumstances, but Olson had to get his chance, and Higgins finally took me out. At the time I resented it, but, looking back on what happened, I realize that he had no alternative.

Now I was back on the bench, and it wasn’t even the Red Sox bench. I was thoroughly confused, completely frustrated and very close to panic-stricken. A few days before we were to go on a road trip, I said to Mary, “I’m going to have to get out of here.”

“Where can we go now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s got to be somewhere where I can play. I’ve got to get off the bench.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Ask Ed Doherty to help me.”

I talked to Doherty on the day before we left town, and our conversation was similar to the one I had had only a few weeks before with O’Neill.

“I can’t afford to sit on the bench,” I said. “I’ve got a wife and baby and parents to support. Will you send me out?”

“Well, I can’t send you up, Jimmy,” he replied. “It’ll have to be down to a team in a league of lower classification than we are.”

“As long as I play every day,” I told him, “I don’t care if it’s Class D.”

I was terribly depressed when we went on the road. On the train to Indianapolis, I sat by myself and stared out the window. I was mentally upset and physically uncomfortable, since I perspired so freely that I was soaking wet half an hour after we left Louisville
. I’ve got four mouths to feed besides my own. How can I do it on a minor-league salary? And now I can’t even make the best minor-league team in the Red Sox organization. I’m nowhere nearly ready for the majors—not if I’m not good enough for Louisville. I can’t get anywhere from the Colonels bench. Where can I go from Louisville? As Doherty pointed out, it had to be down, not up. And how far down will I have to go?

By the time we arrived in Indianapolis, I was so distraught that I phoned Mary and asked her to drive up with the baby. It was only one hundred miles. She promised to come the next day, and told me to expect her in the early afternoon. Before she arrived, I had orders to report to the Birmingham Barons in the Class Double A Southern Association, one grade below the Triple A American Association.

I was standing in front of the Hotel Lincoln in Indianapolis when Mary drove up at about two in the afternoon. Eileen was in the back seat, fast asleep. I opened the trunk of the car, swung my bag in, slid under the wheel and, after a quick greeting, stepped on the gas.

“Where are we going?” Mary asked.

“Back to Louisville.”

“Then where?”

“Birmingham,” I said.

The next thirty hours were a rolling nightmare. We became slaves to an automobile, eating little and sleeping less as we made the long haul to the Deep South. We spent most of the night packing in Louisville, since Mary had got settled in an apartment there only the week before. Then, after a couple of hours’ sleep, we piled into the car and set sail for Birmingham.

I drove all the way, and I couldn’t have told you the route we followed an hour after we arrived. Louisville to Birmingham is something over four hundred miles, and I was determined to get there in time for the game that night. Except for a few stops for gasoline and sandwiches, I drove steadily and without relief. Mary wanted to take the wheel, but I wouldn’t let her. I was afraid she wouldn’t go fast enough to get us to Birmingham in time.

The only conversation I remember came when Mary said, “You’ve got to let me drive. You’ll be dead.”

“I’ll be all right. I want to get there.”

“Why?”

“So I can play tonight.”

“They don’t expect you tonight. Take it easy.”

“I can’t take it easy,” I said. “I’ve
got
to get there in time for the game.”

We pulled into Birmingham at about eight o’clock that night. I dropped Mary and Eileen off at the hotel, left her to check us in and dashed for the ball park. By the time I was in uniform, the game had started.

Red Marion, the Barons manager, was amazed when I walked into the dugout.

“What did you do—fly?” he asked, shaking hands.

“No, I drove. How’s for putting me in the game?”

“You drove? All the way from Louisville?”

“Sure. Hey, Red, can’t I play?”

“Next inning,” he said. “Soon as we get up.”

I went in as a pinch hitter and slapped the first pitch to right center field. The ball landed safely, and I thought I could make three bases on it. As I approached third, the coach gave me the sign to slide. I hit the dirt.

“You’re out!” yelled the umpire. Then, as the dust cleared away, he said, “Hi, Jim! Didn’t know you were in town.”

It was Augie Guglielmo, a Waterbury boy whom I knew well. He used to umpire a lot of our games when I played for the Insilcos.

“Just got in,” I said. “Was it close?”

“Nah. You were out a mile.”

That was the beginning of one of the greatest baseball seasons I’ve ever had. Marion, a tall, skinny, easygoing guy, put me out in center field and let me do pretty much as I pleased. Red’s brother, Marty, the Cardinals’ famed “Mr. Shortstop” in his playing days, now manages the Chicago White Sox. The two don’t look much alike, but their temperaments are similar. No matter what happens, neither one gets excited or upset. All Red ever had to do was give me an occasional pat on the back and tell me how good I was and I wanted to break my neck for him.

I hit .346 and came close to leading the league in batting. More important, I slammed fifteen home runs, pulling the ball to left field several times, and I led all the outfielders in putouts and assists, even though I didn’t get started until three weeks after the Southern Association season began.

“You can’t miss,” Marion said. “You’re a big leaguer right now.”

In August, Johnny Murphy, the Red Sox farm director, stopped by in Birmingham for what appeared to be a routine visit. I didn’t know Murphy very well, although I had met him a number of times. A big man with a huge square jaw and Irish blue eyes, he once starred for the New York Yankees, where he was known as “Grandma” Murphy because he swayed back and forth as if he were in a rocking chair when he wound up to pitch. Murphy was baseball’s best relief pitcher for years. He was a soft-spoken man who did a great deal more thinking than talking. He had little to say, but every phrase was worth listening to. He doled out each word as if he figured there were only so many to a lifetime and he didn’t want to waste one on trivialities. Johnny never talked just to pass the time of day.

He pulled me aside one day and said, “You handle ground balls well, and you’ve got a fine arm. Why don’t you fool around in the infield a little before games?”

If I had known Murphy better, I would have realized that there was a method in his madness. But the suggestion made no particular impression on me. Some outfielders tried to improve their handling of ground balls by working with the infielders during practice, and I thought that was why Murphy wanted me to do it. So, every day, after I had chased fly balls in the outfield for a while, I moved into the infield, where grounders came hot off the bat. Anyone who could field one in the infield would certainly have little trouble scooping one up in the outfield, where most ground balls, their speed spent, roll much more slowly.

I was grateful to Murphy for making the suggestion, for I had never thought of working with the infielders. After a while, I found that it wasn’t too hard getting grounders and hard bouncing balls, and I rather enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have wanted it as a steady diet, of course, but I knew the experience would help me in my outfield play.

The Barons finished second in the Southern Association standing, but then we won the league playoffs, which put us into the Dixie Series. This is a sort of Southern World Series, with the winner of the Southern Association playoffs meeting the winner of the Texas League playoffs, which were won by the Houston Buffs that year.

We beat the Buffs, four games out of six, and I was the star of the series. I made several spectacular plays and piled up an impressive .476 batting average, which was even more important to me, since I was expected to field well anyhow. I led both teams in batting for the series. When it was over, I was sitting on top of the world.