Pitching batting practice regularly also helped Shepard solve his control problems. "I would pitch to good hitters, and I'd throw the ball right down the middle. They didn't get a hit every time. They didn't hit it out of the park. And so it gave me confidence in not being afraid to throw the ball over."

One day in Boston, fans who arrived at the park early to see batting practice saw something they would never forget.

"I had been doing some running in the outfield in Yankee Stadium in the series before Boston, and I heard a little crack [in the artifical leg]," Shepard recalls. "But the leg still felt solid, and we moved on to Boston. I was pitching batting practice that day, and after a few pitches, I came down on it and it cracked a little bit."

Shepard just kept pitching. "I made another pitch, and the leg turned sideways. So I straightened it up and threw another pitch, and by now the leg is almost at a 90-degree angle. So I straightened it up again and made another pitch, and this time the foot broke completely off inside my sock."

The fans in Fenway Park saw Shepard's foot, still in its sock and shoe, dangling loose as the batting-practice pitcher went into his next windup, brought his leg up, kicked back toward center field to get his momentum, and began his pivot toward the hitter -- only to have the shoe and the foot fly off and head toward center field.

"I just turned around casually and made another pitch," Shepard says, "and the players were lying around on the ground laughing. But think of the fans! They didn't know I had an artificial foot." Catcher Rick Ferrell also remembered the incident. "The crowd gasped," he said. "They thought it was his real foot."

Another of Shepard's memories from that summer concerns the occasional Griffith Stadium appearances of Washington's biggest baseball legend, Walter Johnson, who had managed Ed Wineapple (see Chapter 1) in 1929.

"A wonderful man. Gentle as they come," Shepard reports. "He came out there to the ballpark, and of course, everybody's in awe of him. He just threw a few on the sidelines in his street clothes, and Bluege, the manager, said, 'I bet he could still fire them if he had to.'

"Walter Johnson never swore and his catcher, Muddy Ruel, never swore," Shepard says. "And Joe Judge, who used to play first base with them, told me they'd be out on the mound in a tight situation, and Walter would say, 'well goodness gracious, Muddy, I don't know what to do!' And Muddy would say, 'Well, dadgummit, Walter!'"

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