PC Spirit
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Passing Along the PC Spirit
His story inspires. His upbeat personality encourages. Leland "Lou" Brissie brings both to Raise the Torch for Presbyterian College.
The subject of Ira Berkow's book The Corporal Was a Pitcher, which recounts Brissie's amazing comeback from a devastating World War II injury to Major League Baseball All-Star is pitching again for the Blue Hose.
Part of the effort to help raise $1.5 million for a baseball stadium that will house PC's emerging Division I program, Brissie spent but three semesters in Clinton. He entered in 1941, but left early to serve his country, enlisting in the Army after a freshman year in which he took the mound seven times.
He took more than five victories with him.
"It was the emphasis on the PC Spirit," Brissie said. "It instilled the ability to continue with your best effort. Everyone seemed to have the attitude 'We're going to get it done'. That’s implanted in you."
He coupled that with the positive lessons his dad taught.
"Every day's a good day, but some are better than others," Brissie said of one of his father's favorite expressions.
Both proved invaluable.
An infantry squad leader in G Company, 351st Infantry Regiment, 88th Infantry Division, Fifth Army, the 20-year-old was blown out of the back of a canvas-covered truck by a German mortar round on Dec. 7, 1944. For the next eight hours, he lay wounded on the frigid Italian countryside, shredded by 21 mortar fragments, a left leg broken below the knee and ankle, two feet fractured, shrapnel in each hand and shoulder and a concussion. Eight others in his squad didn't survive the blast.
In the months that followed, Brissie, wracked with pain and battling infection, argued to keep a left leg that, as Berkow writes, was a "sea of splintered bone fragments swimming in metal shrapnel." Surgeons saw the determination in the young pitcher. Rather than amputate, they repaired a left tibia that had no solid bone more than 4 inches in length and stitched together the muscles and tendons around it. In his three months in Italian hospitals, Brissie underwent 30 blood transfusions and 12 operations.
Struggling just to stand let alone walk, he remained hopeful of a baseball career. He wasn't alone. Letters from a future Hall of Famer helped.
Philadelphia Athletics owner and manager Connie Mack -- who steered the young lefthander toward PC where Chick Galloway, a former player, coached -- had written encouraging letters during Brissie’s convalescence . In them, Mack wrote the Athletics would honor their pre-injury promise to Brissie. He'd get the opportunity to try out for the team.
"My share of the load was to get ready," Brissie said. "But it kept me going to know I had the opportunity. Hope without opportunity becomes hopelessness."
Brissie seized the opportunity. Fighting through constant pain, frequent infection and pitching with a brace, he soon reached the Majors. And excelled -- an opening day starter for the Athletics in 1948, an All-Star in 1949. He would pitch a 14-inning thriller in Yankee Stadium, square off against the future Hall of Famer Satchel Paige and even draw the concern of Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who lined a single off his brace.
All the while, Brissie remained conscious of others. He knew those who came back from the war without such opportunity watched how he handled what most considered a handicap. He hoped his effort to succeed might inspire those who returned wounded.
"I thought just by showing I could do it, I could help them," he said.
That continues. The 86-year-old Brissie still carries wounds from Italy. He's been on crutches since 1985. He's deaf in one ear and has a 30% loss in the other. He still has a mortar fragment in his left index finger from the round that tossed him onto the Italian countryside. He deals daily with the pain. None of that prevents him from sharing his time with veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He hopes his story provide them inspiration.
"I try to tell them that they can do more than they think they can," he said.
Such attitude he's now applying to the PC Baseball Campaign where memory of his brief stay still resonates. He fondly rattles off former teammates: Herb Rollins, Ben Gray and Tom Clyde. Vern Church. Sharing first base with Wilmont Shealy; Gene Pallet "One of the funniest guys I was ever around." And Coach Galloway "who could go from humorous to absolutely serious in one sentence."
"Old soldiers, old sailors and athletes are probably all the same," Brissie said.
"I may not see you for 25 years and we'll get together and one of us will say 'Do you remember the day' and no matter how long we're apart, we go right back to that moment. We haven't lost a day. It's great to be a part of something like that."
He's continuing that legacy by passing along the PC Spirit he only got three semesters to feel.
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For more information or to make a donation, please contact Alan R. Smith
Mark R. McCallum played shortstop and pitched for the club that helped bring baseball back to PC. The former knuckleballer is author of the supernatural thriller Taking Three and served as web editor for Ken Burns' The War. McCallum currently edits the homepage for homedepot.com and still plays baseball during the week.
For more information:
Alan Smith
Director of Athletic Gifts
arsmith@presby.edu
864-833-8462