The Southpaw

The Untold Saga of Jimmy Piersall

While researching my latest story for 108 Magazine, which appears in the Summer 2007 issue (available on many Borders and Barnes & Noble newsstands and also via subscription), I was surprised by what I learned by talking to his rookie year roommate (and best friend at the time), Ted Lepcio, and others who knew him during that fateful season, when he was institutionalized.

Piersall is most remembered for his mental illness, but less remembered for his subsequent recovery and long, productive major league career. His years in the majors were stormy, for sure, but what emerges is something less "sensational" than the character depicted by Tony Perkins in the 1957 biopic, Fear Strikes Out. The subtler version -- the one I think I managed to pull off, is, I think, more interesting.

Fortunately, my good friends at 108 posted the entire article online in PDF format; it's the first item in the online Table of Contents.

There you'll also find excerpts from many other fine articles and short stories in the issue.

Agnew Resigns. Mets up 2-0.

On Oct. 10, 1973, the Mets and Reds were playing the fifth and deciding game of the NLCS. On that same afternoon, another momentous event occurred: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned. Justice Potter Stewart decided that this news couldn't wait for a break in the court's proceedings, so he slipped a note to Justice Harry Blackmun. The note, below, was discovered in the National Archives.

According to an article by Skip Card in the March/April 2005 issue of the New York State Bar Journal, this note wasn't unusual: Stewart, a Reds fan, had been getting half-inning updates throughout the playoffs. An earlier note, detailing the top of the first, was even more detailed, reports Card:

Rose grounded to 2nd.
Morgan walked.
Driessen singled and Morgan took 3rd.
Driessen took 2nd on WP.
Perez struck out swinging.
Bench walked intentionally.
Griffey flied to center w/ bases loaded.
NO SCORE.

No telling how Stewart reacted to the final result: Mets 7, Reds 2, Mets win the NLCS. But he probably poured himself a stiff one -- and stopped passing notes during the A's-Mets World Series.

Perfect, Once Removed: An excerpt and interview with author Phillip Hoose

Perfect, Once Removed is a wonderful little gem of a baseball memoir. Phillip Hoose, Don Larsen's second cousin, recalls what it was like to be a third grader -- a new arrival in Speedway, Indiana who loved baseball but struggled with the basics of the game. A boy who seized on his blood relationship with a New York Yankee to gain a sense of belonging, who thrilled that his cousin took notice of him and invited him and his family to see the Yankees play in Chicago and to meet the Yankees.

That Hoose's first baseball memories coincided with Larsen's tremendous feat, the perfect game in the 1956 World Series, make them that much stronger, and more meaningful. Though Perfect, Once Removed has many universal themes relating to baseball, and childhood, and the feeling of being an outsider, that specific connection to Larsen makes the book more than just a paean to the game. It's also history, experienced from a unique viewpoint.

I spoke to Hoose by phone earlier this week. An excerpt from the book follows the interview.

Jeff Merron: What inspired you to write this book. Was it the 50th anniversary of your cousin's perfect game?

Phillip Hoose: Part of it was the 50th anniversary, because I saw it as a chance to shine a bigger, brighter light on Larsen’s game, which I think is the greatest pitching performance in the history of baseball. And it didn’t seem to me that the Yankees were really doing much with it. Certainly the 40th anniversary had not occasioned a lot of fanfare, and I wanted to help make the case.

Another thing was that this was my 50th year in baseball as well. I never stopped playing either baseball or softball. So I wanted to write a valentine to baseball. It was a combination of those things.

JM: The connection to Don that you have is crucial, but that experience, your childhood experience of struggling to just field grounders and popups and become a decent player really struck a chord with me.

Hoose: Even great natural baseball players worry about those ground balls and those popups. The ball's hard and comes at you very fast. It’s a game where being big and strong are assets, but more than football and basketball you can overcome size deficiencies through work and discipline.

Baseball stops at the end of every play – you have a pause, and it’s more a set piece, and you can practice motions and events over and over and over. I’ve taken tens of thousands of ground balls and fly balls in my life, just practicing these things, to the point where they've become part of my muscle memory. So often what happens in a play is determined in the first fraction of a second – it depends on how quickly you recognize what’s going on, how quickly your muscles remember having seen the same pattern before.

JM: You had that one connection – Don is your first cousin once removed – and to me it seems that having some kind of connection makes a huge difference in a fan’s experience of the game. I’m thinking about the kids who come down on the field before the game and get to have their picture taken with a player, or getting to run the bases after a minor league game.

Hoose: I think you’re right. I attended a fair number of baseball games in Cuba, and played with the kids down there. In the Cuban National League, kids run the bases after the game. They think that the best players in the world are the local team’s players. They know them. They get to watch them lift weights between games of a doubleheader. They roll out these barbell sets on wheels and they actually work out, lifting weights between games.

My special connection through having a relative on the New York Yankees meant a huge amount to me. That he would take any interest in me at all, and of course when I actually got to meet the New York Yankees it was just so inspiring to me. And of course later on, when lightning struck with this immortal game, it had coattails for me, too, in my school. I got a popularity bump. People were willing to teach me how to play ball and to hang out with me in a way that they had not been before.

I didn’t have to do anything. He becomes world famous, and I get a little bump. Fine with me! I’ll take it.

JM: After 1956 you saw less of Don.

Hoose: I probably saw him four times after that, before I went to visit him last year for this book. I think we went to see him a couple more times in Chicago when he was with the Yankees. I remember we saw him play in Indianapolis. He got sent down to Triple A, and he was in Indianapolis to play the Indians. It was terrible – there weren’t many people there, and there were some really abrasive, abusive hecklers.

I remember we were sitting in front of them and my dad was getting madder and madder. They were just saying all kinds of garbage. I also remember we went to Cincinnati, when he was with the Giants, and it was a great game. I’ll never forget it. Mays hit two homers to left field. Low, hooking line drives that just clanged against the seats. And then they nursed a slim lead into the ninth inning and Don came out. He was basically their closer, (He pitched in the ’62 Series and actually won a game.) He must have thrown five or six pitches and he retired each batter on long fly balls – warning track fly balls to each field. And that was it.

We waited for him outside the players’ entrance and Mays got into a cab. I had an autograph book and I went running after the cab and I actually got in the cab with him. I was half-in, half-out, and he was startled. He scribbled his name in my autograph book and he kind of tossed it out to me, in the street.

I told Don about this last year and he said, before I told him the whole story,  “I’ll bet it was the worst looking signature you’ve ever seen.” I said, “Yes!” He said Mays’ signatures were always a mess.

JM: How did Don respond when he found out you were writing this book?

Hoose: At first he didn’t respond much at all. He’s probably seen a number of projects come his way over the years. But I think the main thing was when I asked if I could visit. I didn’t know if he would see me or not. He said yes, but then when I tried to nail him down on a date I thought he would slip off the hook, but he didn’t. I think this book really became a reality for him when it came out.

He’s been wonderful. He’s been to two events with me where he’s signed the book. He didn’t have to. He signed hundreds and hundreds of them. He read it, he liked it. He’s been great.

He did two signings, one in the Bronx and one in New Jersey,  and there may be more. He’s been tremendously generous. He’s just a great guy.

JM: What did he think of your story? The book is really about you.

Hoose: He didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, how much that meant to me. He remembered us going to Chicago to meet him and the players. It was something that he did for several of us in that family – he’d either leave tickets or send tickets to us. Sometimes he’d invite people to the Del Prado hotel, where the Yankees stayed.

We just got lucky in that the game got rained out. I was distraught, I thought the whole visit was blown, we weren’t going to get to see the Yankees play and so forth. But my dad called him and he agreed to meet us at the hotel. We spent the whole day with the Yankees. God, it was a great day. These gods were all around us.

JM: How much has Don kept up with his Yankee teammates?

Hoose: He’s close with Hank Bauer, and with Yogi because fantasy camps and autograph card shows bring them together. But you have to remember that a lot of those people have passed on. Don is gong to have a charity event in New York on Nov. 4, and I was asking him who’s going to be invited,  and in addition to everyone who’s pitched a perfect game, he’s gong to invite all the living members of the Yankees and Dodgers who played in his perfect game. There aren’t all that many.

JM: Have you had any response from the Yankees to your book?

Hoose: None whatsoever.

JM: Have you tried?

Hoose: Yes. My publisher has tried several times and not gotten anywhere. It’s been disappointing. They didn’t get behind the 50th anniversary of Don’s perfect game either. It strikes me – if I were the Yankees, and my employee had pitched the greatest game in the history of baseball against a lineup of immortals under such pressure, the fifth game of the 1956 World Series – I’d just think you’d have one heck of a party to celebrate something like that. But they didn’t.

Excerpt after the jump.

Balls Out: Dock Ellis...How to throw a no-hitter on acid

Great profile by Keven McAlester in the Dallas Observer ... Baseball has shunned Dock Ellis, McAlester concludes, in spite of itself. "Ellis' one-time problems, which prevented him from being a truly great player, have since revealed him to be something more like a great person. And baseball, like the rest of us, could use a few more of those."

The lead:

Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he'd flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid. Ellis would frequently drop acid on off days and weekends; he had a room in his basement christened "The Dungeon," in which he'd lock himself and listen to Jimi Hendrix or Iron Butterfly "for days."

One nice thing about Ellis is that he talks about his acidic no-hitter candidly. There must be some self-interest at work -- the acidic no-hitter seals Ellis's place among the game's great characters. But he talked about it through the "just say no" Reagan days, when discussion of drugs being a part of life (or, sacré bleu being pleasurable) was almost seen as an act of treason. And he discussed it in outlets like High Times magazine and Lysergic World.

Dock to Lysergic World, 1993:

I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

Dock Ellis and his hair curlers

There's a lot to love about Dock Ellis -- read Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball and you'll know what I'm talking about. (Written by Donald Hall, our current Poet Laureate, with Ellis, it's one of the best baseball memoirs of all time.) One of the things I like most about Ellis is that he was a true flake, not in the Bill Lee "look at how big a flake I am" style, but he's just Dock being Dock.

And part of Dock being Dock was wearing hair curlers on the field before a 1973 game. For this, Ellis got a warning from Pirate Manager Bill Virdon. "Ellis had contended that the curlers were necessary tohis Afro coiffure and that the anti-curler order smacked of racism," reported the Associated Press. "Nonetheless, he confirmed Monday that he would sidestep controversy and abide by the management order. 'I just don'w want to have to deal with it,' Ellis said with a shrug." Ellis donated the curlers to The Baseball Reliquary, which has more on the story (with photos).

Syd Thrift, RIP

As I've written earlier, one of the more ambitious pieces I wrote for ESPN.com was a profile of Leo Mazzone. One of the many baseball men I had the pleasure of speak to was Syd Thrift, who, I discovered from my research, had released Mazzone as a pitcher early in 1976 and then offered him a job managing Corpus Christi in the Class A Lone Star League. It was Mazzone's first job as a manager or coach (he did pitch five games for Corpus Christi in 1976, but only because thought it would help the team win the championship, which it did).

My interview with Thrift, in June 2005, was one I wished had gone on for hours. He'd spent more than a half-century in baseball, and if hadn't done it all, he'd come pretty damn close.

Thrift died Monday night. He was 77.

Because much of my interview ended up on the cutting room floor, including some interesting bits, in honor of Syd, I thought I'd post a lengthier excerpt. I hope you'll find it interesting.

The Curious Case of Sidd Finch

The Mets will clinch. They will. But maybe they can use some help. Is it time for Sidd Finch to come out of retirement? SI.com has been kind enough to post the original George Plimpton story from the April 1, 1985 issue.

An all-time classic that was expanded into a very good book.