Sarley: How late White Sox broadcaster found peace in fishing

You all know that I love my baseball, so let me sneak in one last baseball story while the season is still with us.

It was 2005. I had heard that Jimmy Piersall, former major leaguer and then-current broadcaster was a huge fishermen. He was doing a call-in interview from his home in Arizona on the Score radio station. I called the producer and asked him to give Piersall a message that I’d like to talk to him about doing a fishing interview with me.

I didn’t expect a call back, but 20 minutes later my phone rang. It was Piersall, and he was ecstatic about doing a fishing interview. I told him I’d like to do it in person after he got back to Chicago. He told me that he was a resident of Wheaton, which happened to be where I lived, as well.

Within minutes Piersall had talked me into going over to his townhouse whenever it snowed and knocking the drifts off the roof over his front door. I had never met the guy and here I was doing chores for him.

Piersall was born in 1929 and excelled in athletics as a youth. He signed with the Boston Red Sox after high school.

He quickly ascended through the minor leagues and earned his shot with the big club in 1952. He was slated to open the season as the starting center fielder, flanked by Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio.

The plan went awry when someone in management figured that with Piersall’s speed and magic glove, that he could be converted to shortstop. The pressure of the new position manifested itself in a panic disorder.

Piersall’s 1952 season was dotted with bizarre antics and odd incidents. He had a mental breakdown. He fought with the fans. He fought with his own teammates. He fought with opponents. He’d go through wild and crazy routines pantomiming the gestures of some of the umpires and even mocking the moves of some of his Red Sox teammates.

In August 1952, Piersall woke up in a Massachusetts hospital room, totally unaware of any of his actions over the previous seven months. When his wife showed him a scrapbook of what had transpired during the season, he was astonished that he had done any of the things that were chronicled by the press.

Piersall came back the next year and went on to an illustrious career crowned by multiple Gold Glove awards and hitting over 100 home runs. Of course, the unconventional Piersall is often remembered celebrating the accomplishment of that hundredth homer by running the bases backward. At least, now Piersall knew what he was doing.

He continued to undergo drug therapy and counseling. He says he still felt like “a walking time bomb” until being medicated with Lithium, a mood-altering drug in 1975.

Piersall retired from ball and moved into coaching and broadcasting, but he found peace in fishing. Piersall spent 200 days a year casting into ponds. In Phoenix he loved chasing rainbow trout; in lllinois Piersall chased carp. He tried fishing for billfish in Mexico but wasn’t impressed.

“It was too much darned work. I had a big sailfish on for 45 minutes. All the time the captain was shouting orders at me. I told him to shut up and that was the end of my deep-sea fishing career,” he said.

“I take my fishing seriously. I’ve got tons of logbooks telling me about every single day I’ve spent fishing. This is what you need to do to be a success, both in fishing and baseball.”

In Illinois, Piersall hauled out his carp gear.

“The thing I like about carp is that they catch you, you don’t catch them. I love the way that they battle. Pound for pound, they give you the best fight of any fish you catch,” he said.

My afternoon with Piersall was memorable. We talked fishing and baseball for eight hours. We remained friends until his passing in 2017. I’ll never forget the afternoons we spent chatting while Piersall tried to catch carp in our local ponds.

Piersall is the author of the most memorable quote I ever heard: “I truly believe that fishing has been a bigger help to me than all of the lithium that I’ve taken in the last 25 years. I’ve always been hyper and tense and ready to explode, but fishing has given me a way to relax. There’s no rush involved in fishing. There’s a lot of concentration and you need to learn how to have patience. I love fishing and love what fishing has done for me.”

Aren’t those some powerful words?

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.