Here's Piersall celebrating his 100th home run by running the bases (in proper order) backwards.
Posted on 01/20/2007 3:43:00 PM PST by Thebaddog
In 1952, a major league baseball player did calisthenics and hula dances in the outfield and mocked pitchers when he got on base. When the team sent him to the minors, he climbed into the stands to lead cheers for himself, ran around wearing only an athletic supporter and sprayed home plate with a water pistol when an umpire called him out.
The player was Jimmy Piersall. His book, entitled “Fear Strikes Out,” helped to expose the realities of mental illness, a condition that had previously been a source of whispers and embarrassment. Interestingly, it was in Chicago that Piersall, then a member of the Boston Red Sox, first went public.
Born in Connecticut in 1929, Piersall excelled in baseball, football and basketball in high school. But his problems had already begun. He was incredibly high-strung and suffered from headaches.
The Red Sox took note of the high school phenom and signed him to a minor league contract in 1948. By 1952, his solid hitting and acrobatic play in the outfield made him a prime candidate for the major leagues.
However, the Red Sox originally chose to play Piersall at shortshop, something that upset him. As the season progressed, he acted more and more bizarrely.
Today, such behavior would probably quickly be diagnosed as pathological. But at the time, mental illness was very much in the closet. Families quietly sent sick relatives to large institutions where conditions were often terrible.
Finally, in July 1952, Piersall agreed to go to a private sanitarium. From there he was sent to Westborough State Hospital in Massachusetts.
After he was discharged as “recovered” two months later, Piersall pieced together what had happened. He had been diagnosed as having manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder, in which periods of excitability and high energy alternate with profound sadness. He had received both psychotherapy and electro-shock treatment, the latter of which had caused memory loss.
The Red Sox and their fans waited anxiously to see whether Piersall would play baseball again. And he did, rejoining the team as an outfielder in 1953.
Journalists covered Piersall’s story cautiously, pursuing few details. But in 1954, a Chicago man named Don Slovin, who ran a group called “Fight Against Fears,” convinced Piersall to tell his story on a local television show hosted by newspaper columnist Irv Kupcinet.
The response was dramatic. Piersall received letters from hundreds of Chicago residents with mental illness, one of whom thanked him for being “a source of inspiration to anyone who has gone through an experience similar to yours.”
This episode led to a two-part series in the Saturday Evening Post, entitled “They Called Me Crazy—And I Was!” and the subsequent publication of “Fear Strikes Out” in 1955, both of which brought Piersall’s story to the broad public. In these writings, coauthored with sportswriter Al Hirshberg, Piersall was quite frank, even discussing his shock therapy, which was commonly seen as barbaric.
With the release of a movie version of “Fear Strikes Out” in 1957, Piersall’s story achieved even more attention. Critics liked the film, admiring it for its honest portrayal of mental illness as a real disease that deserved treatment. Piersall also approved, although he chided Anthony Perkins, the actor who played him, for “throwing like a girl.”
Piersall did well until 1959, when he was traded to the Cleveland Indians. Unhappy with his new manager, he began to behave as he had in 1952, fighting with umpires and spraying bug repellant in the outfield.
Piersall insisted that his illness was not relapsing. The fans, who loved his antics during slow games, largely agreed. Perhaps his teammate Vic Power summarized the situation best. “He said he wasn’t crazy anymore,” Power said, “but he still was sick.”
After his retirement in 1967, Piersall became active in the Chicago baseball scene, hosting a sports talk show and broadcasting White Sox games on radio. Despite taking lithium, a pill that effectively treats manic depression, he continued to have emotional outbursts and fights with colleagues.
Ironically, over time, Piersall, who is now 77, has increasingly obscured aspects of his disease and treatment. For example, he has analogized mental illness to breaking a limb, an easily fixable medical problem. And he has stressed the role of self-help in curing psychological distress: “You can cure it, or you can lick it, if you want to.” Given the chronic, waxing and waning nature of most mental illnesses, these statements are misleading. And Piersall has developed a dim view of mental health professionals. Psychologists, he has said, “talk too much” and “do nothing.”
Still, Jimmy Piersall’s main legacy should be as someone who went public with his mental illness long before such revelations became fashionable. In so doing, he paved the way for athletes and others to deal with a serious medical problem openly and without shame.
I remember Piersall when I was a kid in Cleveland in 1960; we though he was great. But the movie sucked. He was also entertaining as hell when he teamed up with Harry Caray to broadcast White Sox games in the 70s.
An occasional problem they have comes from the shame they feel from having to be on medication. They want to be like the "normal" people. So, several times during their lives, they go off their meds, and end up back in the ward for a few months, until they are regulated again.
One should count one's blessings, if they don't have such a need.
I remember listening to games on the radio back in the days when he was playing. He was a great player. I'm amazed that he is still alive. I hadn't heard or thought of him for years.
Piersall once openly implied that baseball wives were no better than whores. It made national news.
Skip Caray commented "Sometimes I think Fear actually lined a double off the wall."
Piersall yells out “Hey Pinnochio!” to Martin as he sits on the bench. Martin says put up or shut up and tells Piersall to meet him under the stands. Piersall shows up and pipes off another lame insult... Martin responds with two punches to the head that deck Piersall and spatter his shirt with blood.
Bill Dickey pulls Martin away and Casey Stengel arrives to say... “Good... as long as he hits the other teams guy, it's fine with me.”
My mom decided she didn't need her blood pressure medicine and a friend's daughter decided she didn't need to take care with her diet due to diabetes.
It seems to be a feeling of wanting to be more in control of one's life that leads to the abandonment of medication.
Sadly.
No more embarrassing than an aging hippie going out in public in flowered spandex!
77 years old. God bless him.
A superficial and manneristic preoccupation with religion, philosophy, and other abstract themes
... seem to inhabit a fun world. Who's to say who's the loony tune?
Here's Piersall celebrating his 100th home run by running the bases (in proper order) backwards.
He sounds like quite an entertainer. Eccentricity isn't always bad.
My mother was a "helper" for those who can't quite take care of themselves, for a few years. One of her clients was on 15 different prescriptions for various ailments. She had been a partier, lots of drinking and smoking in her heyday.
My mother asked her how she could keep track of all that, and when to take them.
"I can't."
So, for her, it was a guessing game on when to take all these various drugs. Bad recipe.
I wonder if he is on the air somewhere?
...from what I can tell is that he was fired/let go in January 2006 by WSCR and then was hired by 1000 WMVP-AM in February. He was doing weekends. I have no clue if he's still working there.
That image on your bio page is unfreaking believable. You must be doing the Internet thing after dark.
...and the winter :o). BTW, it's in the northeastern section of Yellowstone Park.
Embarrassing? A man in Aloha kit wearing high black socks and brogans. Yeeeeeeech!
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