Fear Strikes Out by Jim Piersall, Hirshberg Read Free Book Online Page A

home, and let me know tomorrow.”
    Twenty thousand dollars! Wait’ll Dad heard about this! We’d be on Easy Street.
    But my dad was not impressed.
    “To begin with,” he pointed out, “you’d be a bonus player. After a year you’d rot on the Braves bench. In the second place, I want you to play with the Red Sox, not the Braves. And in the third place, you’re still too young for professional baseball. I want you to work and play semi-pro baseball on the side this summer.”
    Within the next week, I got offers from the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Tigers and Yankee scouts mentioned bonuses, but named no figures. The Dodgers offered me a two-thousand-dollar advance against a three-year bonus contract at four thousand dollars a year, which would not have made me a bonus player. We didn’t want to do anything until we heard from the Red Sox.
    The Red Sox scout was a thin, slight man in his late thirties named Neil Mahoney. Both Dad and I had met him, and we both liked him immensely. He had jet-black hair, black eyebrows, sharp intense eyes and a sort of bittersweet smile. He talked in an even, low voice and, unlike the other scouts, he made no attempt to put any pressure on us.
    He came in one day and started discussing the Red Sox.
    “We’ve got a fine organization,” he pointed out. “Our farm system is one of the best in baseball. You’ll learn a lot on your way up, Jimmy.”
    “How long would it take him to reach the big leagues?” Dad asked.
    “Usually about four years, depending on the boy. Of course, you can’t foresee anything in this business, but if everything goes all right, it shouldn’t take Jimmy any longer. And by the time he reaches the Red Sox, they’ll be looking for outfielders. We’ve got two of the best in the world, Ted Williams and Dominic DiMaggio, but they’re not going to last forever.”
    “Williams, DiMaggio—and Piersall,” I said, slowly. “Holy cow! What an outfield!”
    “I’ve heard worse,” Mahoney nodded.
    “We’ve had some pretty good offers,” my father said. “What will the Red Sox do for us?”
    “Three years at four thousand dollars a year. We’ll give you two thousand dollars of it when you sign.”
    It was the identical terms the Dodgers had offered. I wanted to accept on the spot. But Dad said, “Jimmy isn’t going to sign with anyone now.”
    “All right,” said Neil, standing up to go. “But when he’s ready, will you let me know?”
    My father agreed. After Mahoney left, I said, “What do we do now?”
    “I talked to Bill Tracy yesterday, and he can get a job for you. Go and see him.”
    Bill’s brother Frank was assistant general manager of Factory H at the International Silver Company plant in nearby Meriden. He had an ideal job lined up for me. I would load freight cars during working hours and play ball for the company team, the Insilcos, several nights a week, for which I’d get extra money. On top of that there were other independent semi-pro teams around, and I could play for one of them when it didn’t conflict with Insilco games.
    We called Neil Mahoney and he came back to see us. My dad told him about the job. “Will the Red Sox let Jim sign a contract now, but not go into the organization until next spring?” he asked. “In that way, he could take this job now.”
    “That can be arranged all right,” Mahoney agreed.
    “And what about my dad?” I said, on an impulse. “I’d like to have him get a physical checkup.”
    “Tell you what we’ll do,” Neil said. “We’ll send your father to the Lahey Clinic in Boston for a thorough checkup and pay all the bills. How would that be?”
    That was the clincher. I signed with the Red Sox.
    I went to work at Meriden a few days later, and I think it was then that I first really understood how utterly dependent on me my parents were. They were both incapacitated—my dad would never recover completely and I had no way of knowing how long Mom