Professional Baseball Career
Piersall led the Leavenworth High School (Waterbury, Connecticut) basketball team to the 1947 New England championship, scoring 29 points in the final game. Piersall became a professional baseball player at age 18, signing a contract with the Boston Red Sox in 1948. He would reach the majors in 1950, playing in six games as one of the youngest players in Major League Baseball.
In 1952, he earned a more substantial role with the Red Sox, frequently referring to himself as "the Waterbury Wizard," a nickname not well received by teammates.
Read more about this topic: Jimmy Piersall
Famous quotes containing the words professional, baseball and/or career:
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)