Fear Strikes Out (3 page)

“She’s done nothing wrong, Jimmy. And God isn’t punishing her. Everyone has a cross to bear. Hers is this sickness. She has a fear she can’t express, and it has made her sick.”

I was barely nine years old. I felt that I was neither old enough nor smart enough to understand.

It was two years now since my mom first got sick. During that time, I had never known a moment when I didn’t worry about her. When she was away, I worried how long she’d be gone. When she was home, I worried how long it would be before she would have to go away again. Each day she was with us, I left the house with the gnawing fear that she might not be there when I got back. I was afraid to go to school, and afraid to walk into the house after I got out.

Even at nine, I was a bundle of nerves. The constant apprehension about Mom was only the beginning. I worried about everything. I worried about school and about my playmates liking me and about what we were going to have for dinner and about how my dad would be feeling when I got home. Each June I worried about getting promoted and each September I worried about my new teacher.

The older I got, the more I worried. When I was in the sixth grade, I made the Sacred Heart baseball team. I was the youngest boy on the club, but I was the best fielder in school, and Bobby Ray, the coach, put me in center field. I couldn’t wait to play every day, and if something came up to prevent our practicing or having a game, I was bitterly disappointed. One day, we couldn’t practice because we didn’t have a ball.

“We won’t let this happen again,” said Bobby. “From now on, each boy will contribute a dime and that will give us enough to buy a ball.”

The kids went home for money, and we chipped in enough for a ball. But after that, I took it upon myself to make sure we had one. I was the one who always collected the money and bought the ball because I was afraid nobody else would do it, and then we wouldn’t be able to play. I was always worried about not being able to have a game. If the weather was threatening when I got up in the morning, I fretted all through school, worrying about rain. If a sudden storm came up while we were playing, I huddled in a corner and prayed that it would stop.

I got to be a long-distance worrier as well as a short-term worrier. I worried just as much about what might happen in ten years as I did about what might happen in two hours. Outside of the everlasting worry about my mom, my biggest concern was whether or not I’d ever be big enough or good enough to play major-league baseball. My father had put the idea in my head, but it became the one burning ambition of my life. I was just as anxious to make it as he was to see me do it.

His praise meant more than anything else to me. The first time he ever saw me play in a game, I rushed over to him after it was over and said, a little breathlessly, “Dad, did I do all right?”

“I think you did fine, son,” he answered in his gruff voice. “You made mistakes, but you’ll always make mistakes. Even big leaguers do that. Nobody ever plays the game perfectly.”

That was enough for me. My dad was satisfied that I had done all right. As we walked home together, I was proud and happy. His standards were strict, and I had measured up to them. Nothing was more important to me than that.

B
ACK WHEN
I
WAS
about seven, the milkman on our route had said to me one morning, “How would you like to give me a hand delivering milk? I’ll pay you thirty cents a day. All you have to do is work an hour and a half every morning before school.”

I asked my father that evening if it would be all right.

“We get along,” he said. “You don’t have to work. You’re too young. Besides, I want you free to play baseball.”

“Please, Dad,” I said. “It will only be in the morning. I’ll give you the money and you can save it for me.”

“Well—all right. I’ll put it aside for your school clothes.”

That was my first job. I got up at six-fifteen in the morning and met the milkman in front of the house half an hour later. I worked until quarter past eight, delivering milk in the neighborhood, then went to school. The thirty cents I got every day looked like a lot of money to me. I gave it to my dad at night, and he put it away for me.

Later in the year, I had a chance to get a Saturday job delivering groceries for a market down the street. When I asked my dad about it, he said, “You can take it, but be sure to tell them you can work all day only during the winter. Come spring, you’re going to play baseball in the afternoon.”

“Can I work mornings in the spring?”

“That’s all right. But not afternoons.”

I worked in the market for several years. When I was about ten, Jimmy Phelan, manager of the meat department, said, “Jimmy, we’re going to need help around Thanksgiving time. How would you like to learn to clean turkeys? I’ll give you a nickel for every one you do.”

In the two days before Thanksgiving, I dressed one hundred turkeys and made five dollars. The only trouble was, the paring knife was sharp and not easy to handle. It slipped every so often, and I gave myself some nasty cuts. But I didn’t dare let my father see them, so I used to put on a little gauze and adhesive tape and tell him they were scratches. Fortunately, although some of the cuts were deep, none was very long. I still carry scars on my hands from them.

Dad was always warning me about being careful of hand or arm injuries.

“You have a good, strong throwing arm,” he said. “You can’t afford to have anything happen to it. In baseball, you need good arms as well as good legs. And be careful of your fingers. You can’t have anything happen to them, or it might affect your hitting. Remember, son, you grip a bat with all ten fingers. If anything’s wrong with one of them, it can ruin you.”

Every job I ever had was determined by whether or not it would take time away from baseball. There was a gas station across the street from us, and behind it was a big empty lot where some of the older boys played ball afternoons. I used to go over there all the time to play with them. One day I was offered a job pumping gas a couple of hours Saturday evenings. I was about ten years old then. I worked there Saturday nights for years because it didn’t interfere with baseball. The only Saturdays I missed were when I played basketball in high school and we had Saturday night games. I get lonesome for the gas station whenever I think of Waterbury. It’s now run by a couple of young war veterans, Howie Gilland and Charley Martone. I still go over and help them pump gas for an hour or two whenever I go to Waterbury.

My dad let me take over a paper route when I was in the fifth grade. I paid eleven dollars to the boy who had it before me. It included deliveries in my immediate neighborhood and the rights to sell papers in front of the Sacred Heart Church on Sundays. Since I made good money and there was no time taken away from baseball, it was an ideal job.

On weekday mornings I didn’t have to work as long as I had for the milkman and I made much more money. By eight o’clock I was all through. My Sunday-morning schedule was busy, but worthwhile. I used to get up at quarter of five and go across the street to a little variety store, where my papers were left for me. I’d count them out, leave them there, go to five-thirty Mass, come out at six, pick up my papers, make my deliveries between Masses and be back in front of the church by seven o’clock. I’d be sold out by ten. I could make twelve dollars a Sunday and still have most of the day free for baseball. I sold papers until I started playing high-school basketball. After those Saturday-night games, I couldn’t get up early Sundays. I sold the daily route for fifteen dollars and got twenty-five for the Sunday route and the church location.

Basketball was the only game other than baseball that my father would let me play. It was the big winter sport around Waterbury, so it served as a good outlet while I was waiting for the baseball season to roll around. My closest friend, Bernie Sherwill, a short, dark-haired boy, was a fine basketball player and he wanted me to go out for the high-school team with him. My father gave me permission, and basketball became the secondary sports love of my life.

I decided to go to Leavenworth High, a public school, instead of to a parochial high school. The reason was that it would give me more time for baseball, since the high-school kids got out earlier than the parochial-school kids. The switch from Sacred Heart to Leavenworth was my idea, and my father enthusiastically endorsed it.

Bernie is still the best friend I have. Outside of a few neighbors and family friends he was the only boy my age who knew about my mother. When I realized that she suffered from mental illness, I was careful to hide it from most people, but I told Bernie all about it. I was in the eighth grade by this time, and I was desperately anxious for Bernie to understand me. At that point, I needed a lot of understanding.

I couldn’t stay still longer than a few minutes at a time. I didn’t know how to pace myself. I had to be on the go all the time. It was impossible for me to read a book because that meant being in one place too long. I couldn’t sit through a movie. I was unable to concentrate on anything except when I was actually playing baseball or basketball. I had to have constant action, and my worst hours came when I had nothing to do. I was a perpetual-motion machine, always wound up like a spring and never able to uncoil completely. No matter what I did or how exhausted I became doing it, I had to keep going. I might run dry physically, but my nerves kept pushing me to do more. I drew on every ounce of my reserve every day. All of my blood, my guts, my flesh and my physical and mental capacities were poured indiscriminately into everything. I couldn’t stop the mad merry-go-round of activity. Worse, I couldn’t figure out what it was that kept driving me.

“Take it easy, Jim,” Bernie said. “There’s plenty of time.”

“I know. But I have to get things done,” I answered.

“Why?”

“I just do, that’s all.”

“So you’ll have more time to loaf?” he asked.

“No. So I can get to the next thing I have to do.”

“Relax. Nothing’s that important.”

But
everything
was that important. Bernie didn’t agree with me and he didn’t know what made me tick, but he
did
understand that I couldn’t help myself. More than once, he had to defend me when the other kids objected to the way I talked and acted.

No matter what I was doing, I couldn’t keep from yelling instructions to the other guys. During baseball games, especially, I was always shrieking at the top of my lungs, telling everyone else what to do. I not only worried about myself, but I worried about the whole team. I played center field, and I tried to run everything from out there. I yelled to the other fielders where to play opposing hitters, and I yelled to the pitcher what to throw, and I yelled to the umpire what to call. When we were at bat, I yelled to our own hitters, and when I was up myself, I yelled to the base runners, if any, or the coaches.

When I played basketball, I yelled instructions from the minute the game started until the minute it ended. In huddles, when there was time out, I was always the one who did the talking. During the football season I yelled from the sidelines. My father flatly refused to let me play football, which I loved, but I held the first-down stakes during the games, and that brought me close to the action. I yelled as much from there as I did from my positions in the other sports.

Every night I came home hoarse and exhausted. From my sophomore year in high school on, I couldn’t even unwind at night. I had to replay every move of every game, whether I had taken part in it or not. I did it over and over. It took hours for me to fall asleep, but when I succeeded, I slept soundly enough. Every morning I bounced out of bed, eager to get back on the merry-go-round. No matter how much of myself I had squeezed out one day, I always seemed to have a rich new supply to squeeze out the next.

One morning when I was about fifteen years old, I woke up with a terrific headache. It was the day after a tough basketball game which had left me in a turmoil. I had tossed and turned most of the night and had slept only a few hours. I felt as if a steel band was drawn tightly across my forehead, which throbbed with pain. I climbed out of bed and bathed my face in ice-cold water. That gave me some relief. The pains were no longer intense, and after a while they nearly subsided altogether. But every day after that I woke up with a headache, and it stayed with me in some form or other almost all the time. Sometimes the pain was acute, as it had been that first morning. Most of the time, I was aware only of a dull ache that occasionally throbbed a little.

At first I thought I had a sinus condition, but then I noticed the headaches were worse after I had been yelling a lot. I began telling myself to quiet down, and I would start a day determined to let nature take its course in the afternoon’s game, but that did no good. I had to keep taking charge of everything. The headaches persisted, and after a while I came to accept them as part of my daily existence. They annoyed me and I wished they would go away, but I didn’t do anything about them. I simply suffered them in silence, and sometimes I almost managed to ignore them.

I rarely mentioned them to anyone. But one morning I couldn’t get up, and when my dad came into my room to see what was wrong, I said, “I’ve got a sinus headache.”

“Does it bother you so much that you can’t get up?” he asked.

“It’s pretty bad, Dad.”

“O.K. Stay home from school. I’ll get you some aspirin before I leave to go to work. Better stay in bed. You’ll be all right tomorrow.”

I stayed in bed, but I wasn’t much better the next morning. I didn’t tell my father that. I managed to struggle out of bed and go to school, and he thought I had fully recovered. I didn’t dare tell him the headaches occurred so often, because I was afraid he would make me go to see a doctor. Then I might have to rest, or, at least, stay away from sports for a while, and I couldn’t stand that.

I wished I could take the games more in stride. Every game, whether it was basketball or baseball, seemed to mean everything to me. When a close decision went against us, I rushed to the official who called it and argued for long minutes with him, even though I realized as often as not that I was the one who was wrong. When we won I felt good, but I was desolate when we lost. Invariably, after a losing game, I slept worse and woke up with a more severe headache than usual.