Jimmy Piersall, an outfielder who was one of the most eccentric and volatile players in baseball history, whose struggles with mental illness were depicted in the book and film Fear Strikes Out, died Saturday at a care facility in Wheaton, Illinois. He was 87.
His death was announced by the Boston Red Sox, the team he played for in the 1950s. He had Parkinson’s disease.
During his 17-year baseball career, Piersall made two all-star teams and won two Gold Gloves as the top defensive center fielder in the American League. But he was better known for his comical and sometimes disturbing antics.
He argued with umpires, fought opposing players, climbed a flagpole during a game, once ran around the bases backward after hitting a home run, and burst into tears in the dugout.
In 1952, at the start of a promising career with the Red Sox, he spanked a teammate’s 4-year-old son in the clubhouse, had a fistfight with the New York Yankees’ Billy Martin and even mimicked the awkward gait of his teammate and mentor, Dom DiMaggio.
One time, when told he wasn’t going to be in the lineup, Piersall began sobbing. He was considered such a disruptive force that the Red Sox demoted him and ultimately sent him away for treatment. He spent almost two months in psychiatric hospitals, where he received electroshock therapy and was sometimes restrained in a straitjacket.
After returning to action in 1953, he had fewer episodes of erratic behavior and blossomed into an excellent outfielder, playing alongside Hall of Famer Ted Williams. In 1956, Piersall led the league with 40 doubles and drove in a career-high 87 runs, and he was universally considered one of the finest defensive outfielders of his era.
“Even when you see him do it, you think your eyes have been performing tricks on you,” New York Times sports columnist Arthur Daley wrote in 1954. “The youngster is incredible. He scales fences, swings on bullpen gates and teeters on low walls. But he always makes the catch.”
In 1955, Piersall published an autobiography, Fear Strikes Out, written with sportswriter Al Hirshberg. The book, which was a bestseller, was a rare admission of vulnerability by an athlete and brought Piersall sympathy, if not always understanding. It showed how he had been driven from childhood by a demanding father who relentlessly pushed him toward a career in baseball.
Tab Hunter starred in a 1955 television movie based on the book, and in 1957 Anthony Perkins portrayed Piersall in a well-received feature film. His father was played by Karl Malden.
Piersall sometimes criticized the movie, saying that one of its most harrowing scenes, in which his character goes into a frenzy and climbs the backstop, never happened.
(“If I had thought of it,” he later said, “I would have done it.”)
The film made Piersall one of the best-known players in baseball and led to appearances on the quiz show What’s My Line? and other programs, and to lucrative business deals.
“Probably the best thing that happened to me was going nuts,” he wrote in a second memoir, The Truth Hurts (1985). “It brought people out to the ballpark to get a look at me.”
After the 1958 season, Piersall was traded to the Cleveland Indians and in 1961 finished third in the American League with a .322 batting average. But his fiery temper never went away, and that year he was fined for charging the mound after being hit by a pitch from Detroit’s Jim Bunning, who died May 26.
Piersall played for the Washington Senators’ new expansion franchise in 1962 before being traded in 1963 to the hapless New York Mets. He hit only one home run as a Met, but it was his most memorable – the 100th of his career. To mark the occasion, he ran the bases in the correct order but was backpedaling the entire way.
A headline in the New York Times the next day read: “ymmiJ llasreiP of the Mets (Who Else?) Makes Backward Run After Hitting 100th Homer.”
James Anthony Piersall was born Nov. 14, 1929, in Waterbury, Conn. His father was a house painter with thwarted athletic dreams. His mother was often institutionalized because of mental illness.
In high school, Piersall led his high school to a New England basketball championship in 1947 by scoring 29 of his team’s 51 points. He was recruited by many colleges but signed a baseball contract with the Red Sox.
Before retiring from baseball in 1967, Piersall spent his final four seasons with the Los Angeles (later California) Angels and occasionally appeared as a guest star on TV sitcoms and variety shows.
After baseball, he bounced from one job to another: He was the general manager of a minor-league football team in Roanoke, managed a minor-league baseball team in South Carolina, worked in sales for the Oakland A’s and was an outfield coach for the Texas Rangers.
From 1977 to 1981, Piersall teamed with Harry Caray as an acerbic announcing team for the Chicago White Sox. He once criticized the wife of the team’s owner, Bill Veeck, saying, “She ought to stay in the kitchen where she belongs” – which led to a press-box fight with Veeck’s son.
Piersall later became a roving minor-league outfield coach for the Chicago Cubs and was the host of a long-running sports radio talk show in Chicago.
His first marriage, to the former Mary Teevan, ended in divorce, as did a short-lived second marriage.
Survivors include his wife of 35 years, the former Jan Weber Jones; nine children from his first marriage; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Piersall’s final season with the Red Sox was in 1958, when he hit only .237. During a game that year with the New York Yankees, Piersall came to the plate after the Yankee pitcher had brushed back two consecutive hitters. He warned catcher Yogi Berra, “Yogi, I want you to know something. If you knock me down, I’m going to get up and hit you across the head with this baseball bat. And remember, I’m the guy who can plead temporary insanity and get by with it.”
Berra replied, “Jim, we haven’t knocked down a .230 hitter all year.”