Fear Strikes Out Read Online Free Page A

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