Fear Strikes Out by Jim Piersall, Hirshberg Page B

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