Remembering Jimmy Piersall

His 40 game run for the 1963 Mets was short, and among the five major league teams he played for, clearly the least productive.
Just weeks after this story was published in the New York World Telegram and Sun, Jimmy was released. You've been reminded of the incident where he ran the bases facing backward after his 100th career home run. I believe the line attributed to Casey Stengel when Piersall was let go was "there's only room for one clown on this franchise."
That obscures what he really accomplished as a player, as a broadcaster and a mental health advocate.
And timing has a lot to do with it -- being born in 1954, I never saw him with the Red Sox and only recall his reputation as a former star when he came to the Mets. And if you check his stats, he didn't show much with the Amazin's -- hitting under .200. So, like a lot of other ex-somethings, he was appeared to be just another old guy (this is from the perspective of a nine-year old kid) whose tank was empty by the time he came to the Polo Grounds.
Yet, he was revived when the Angels picked him up -- batting over .300 the rest of '63 and all of 1964 -- where he gave Gene Autry's club a useful part-time presence for several years.
A decade later, he reinvented himself as a broadcaster and later a minor league coach -- and his hometown Red Sox later honored him.
So, here's a final round of "peanuts and cracker jack" for a player this New York native never got the time or opportunity to appreciate.