Alou by Felipe Alou & Peter Kerasotis

Author:Felipe Alou & Peter Kerasotis [Alou, Felipe & Kerasotis, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781496207937
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2018-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

So Felipe Alou was not unique.

What made that first year in Milwaukee even more difficult is that I suffered my first serious injury. Not serious in that it was career threatening, but serious in that on June 26, 1964, in Milwaukee, I underwent knee surgery for a torn meniscus. As I enter my ninth decade of life, I live with almost constant knee pain. The injury happened when I hit a ball into the right-center field gap. Jim Beauchamp, who was learning how to play first base, got in my way as I was rounding first, and I collided with him. It resulted in poor Beauchamp also needing knee surgery.

As it was, I was struggling the first few months of the season. Mostly, I wasn’t hitting well. Our manager, Bobby Bragan, tried everything—moving me around the batting order, benching me, playing me again, shifting me from center field to first base. But nothing seemed to work. When I injured my knee, I was batting only .253 with 6 home runs. I was miserable, feeling sorry for myself. But as I convalesced, letters arrived, many of them from parishioners whose churches I had spoken at in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some even came from fellow ballplayers, like Al Worthington and Bobby Richardson. I thought often about Mickey Mantle and the chronic knee problems—and surgeries—he dealt with and found myself feeling sorry for him.

It also turned out to not be such a healthy year for my brothers. On June 2 a pitch thrown by Pittsburgh’s Bob Veale struck Matty on his wrist, breaking a bone. And Jesús suffered a spike wound that hampered him much of the season.

The Braves wanted to shut me down for the rest of the season, but I rejected that notion. When the cast came off my leg, it was atrophied. I did my exercises faithfully. I even went to Lake Michigan and ran miles, plodding along in the soft sand. People stared at me, keeping their distance, and I knew why. I was a black man running, so I must have been running from something or someone. Their looks and evasive postures annoyed me more than they angered me, but I didn’t allow them to stop me. I was on a mission.

Barely five weeks later I announced myself ready to play. Again I struggled, getting only 1 hit in my first 17 at-bats. My batting average sank, settling at .231 on September 4. That same day New York Mets second baseman Ron Hunt accidentally spiked my brother Jesús during a rundown. Jesús needed ninety-one stitches on his foot, ankle, and calf, which ended his season. Knowing what he was going through made my own woes less painful. It helped that Bobby Bragan stuck with me, and I will always be thankful to him for that. Six days later, on September 10, I hit my first home run since the surgery. Later in that game I hit a ninth-inning RBI double, scoring Denis Menke, to help us beat the Mets 7–6.

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