Dr. Taylor recounted her moving story in a lecture that we now share with you.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight The Saturday Evening Post

“I’ve been going to the same barber shop for fourteen years,” he said harshly, as I sat down. “I went to it for the last time today. I took off my coat and necktie the way I always do, and then I noticed there were three women sitting there in the waiting chairs and looking at me as if I’d committed a crime. Mad at me for taking off my coat and collar in a place where they had no right to be themselves! I thought probably they were them to solicit for a charity or something; but just then old George called ‘Next!’ And my soul, if one of those women didn’t get right up and march to the chair and sit down in it !

“That wasn’t the worst of it. The person that had just got out of the chair was wearing boots and breeches, but it wasn’t a man. It was a girl—one that had been a nice-looking girl, too, until she sat down in that chair and had three feet of beautiful thick brown hair out off. She was my own daughter, Julie, nineteen years old. I didn’t my a word to her—not then; I just looked at her. Then I told old George I guessed his shop was getting to be too co-educational for me and I put on my things and went out. I’ll never set foot in the place again!”

“Where will you get your hair cut, judge?”

“I guess we’d better learn to cut our own hair, we men,” he mid bitterly. “There really isn’t any place left nowadays where we can go to get by ourselves. Coming home from Washington the other day, I was in the Pullman smoker—what they call the club car — and I’ll eat my shirt if four women didn’t come in there and light cigarettes and sit down to play bridge!

Never turned a hair—didn’t have any hair long enough to turn, for that matter. They won’t let us keep a club car, or any kind of club, to ourselves nowadays;

they got to have anyway half of it.

“I said when we let ‘em into the polling booth they’d never be contented with that, and I was right. Remember all the fuss they made about their right to vote? Well, they’ve proved they didn’t care about that at all, because more than half the very women that made the fuss don’t bother to vote, now they know they can. They just wanted to show as we couldn’t have anything On earth to ourselves. They haven’t left as one single refuge.

“It used to be a man could at least go hang around a livery stable when he felt lonesome for his kind; but now there aren’t any more livery stable. He can’t go to a saloon; there aren’t any more saloons. [Written in 1929, nearly a decade into Prohibition] Once he could go sit in a hotel lobby, because that was a he place; nowadays hotel lobbies are full of women sitting there all day. When I studied law there weren’t three women in all the offices downtown; now you can’t find an office without a bob-haired stenographer in it, and there are dozens of women got their own offices—every kind of offices.

“That’s another thing I’ve been having it out with Julie about. She’s not only cut off her hair; she wants to go into business as soon as she finds out what kind she’d enjoy most. She’s like the rest—the one thing that gives her the horrors is the idea of staying home.

“What’s become of the old home life in this country anyhow? Everybody seems to have to be going somewhere every minute. There’s the car in the garage: it’ll take us anywhere—let’s go! ‘Let’s go’ is the unceasing national cry.

“I understand there’s a great deal of what they’ve now invented a horrible new word for—’necking’ — while they’re on the road between parties and movies and end-of-the-night breakfasts. But it’s always, ‘Let’s go—let’s go anywhere except home!”

He paused for a moment, while his bushy gray eyebrows were contorted in a frown of distressed perplexity: then he looked at me almost with pathos and speaking slowly, asked a question evidently sincere: “Does it ever seem to you, nowadays, that maybe we’re all—all of us, young people and old people both—that maybe we’re all crazy?”

Read the full story, “The World Does Move,” from July 7, 1928 [PDF].

How America Is Falling To Pieces Around Us: 1928 Version The Saturday Evening Post

He knew that, at his age, his career was in the ‘now or never’ stage, and it seemed this season was the one that would make it ‘now.’ Through May, Cerv was leading the American League in home runs and RBIs while batting .344 with the Kansas City Athletics’ (now in Oakland).

Then, fate struck.

On May 17, Cerv was rounding the bases trying to score against the Detroit Tigers. As he rounded third, he knew the throw was going to beat him to home plate. There are only a few things a baseball player can do in that situation. One is try to slide below or jump over the tag by the catcher. Unfortunately, at 6 feet and 220 pounds, agility was not Cerv’s forte. This left him one option—lower his shoulder and run head-on into the catcher to jar the ball loose.

Base runners make this decision to this day. It is a scary situation: the catcher is standing still, concentrating on trying to catch a ball often thrown from all the way across the field, while an opposing player is running at him full speed, with every intention of knocking the ball — and the daylight — out of him. (This is why the catcher is typically the stoutest and strongest player on the team.)

In Cerv’s case, it did not work out. Not only was he tagged out, but the collision left him with a broken jaw.

Bob Cerv (right) fractured his jaw in this home plate collision with Detriot Tigers catcher Wilson.

Doctors said he would be out for six weeks, but Cerv was having none of it. He was back three days later. After six weeks playing with his jaw wired shut, Cerv was still batting .310 and leading the American League in home runs and RBIs.

The Saturday Evening Post covered this story in 1958, and we recently caught up with Cerv, for a follow up interview.

Not surprisingly, he is still going strong. “I may be 85, but I still have a pretty strong brain,” Cerv says.

He recalls that season like yesterday, especially eating with his jaw wired shut: “That was my best season. I hit 38 home runs, finished third in hitting; RBIs and runs, and beat out Ted Williams to start in the All-Star Game. I remember when I first had to eat after I broke my jaw. We got a ½ pound of steak, green beans, and potatoes, threw it all in a blender, and I had dinner through a straw.”

Although he was with the Kansas City A’s in ’58, he spent the beginning and end of his career with the Yankees, playing with all-time greats like Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Yogi Berra, to name a few. He still stays in touch with the ones that are still around. “I just saw Yogi recently,” says Cerv. “Our birthdays are only a week apart. I was born on May 5, and he was born May 12.”

Cerv was Roger Maris’ roommate when he hit home run number 61. Cerv and Maris often roomed together, because the Yankees’ manager didn’t understand Maris’ personality and wanted Cerv, the seasoned veteran, to help him figure it out. “Roger asked me ‘Why are you my roommate now?’ when I first roomed with him,” recalls Cerv. “I told him, ‘To tell the truth, the skipper wants to know what makes you tick.’ We were best buds after that.”

Free at last: Cerv could open his mouth, but sore jaws forced him to forgo the sirloin steak he craved.

Cerv also recalls playing with another Yankee legend, Billy Martin. “He was a ballplayer. A little hotheaded, though. He didn’t take any crap.” Many New York fans know this is true. Although Martin played with the Yankees on several World Series teams, he is best remembered as the fiery manager who got in umpires’ faces, got angry with veteran players (especially Reggie Jackson), and won games.

Although his playing days are long over, Cerv still reminisces about his time in the big leagues and compares his experience to players today. “When I signed, it was for $5,000.” Obviously, a little less than what players are making now. “Pitching was the name of the game back then. There were only eight teams in the National League and eight in the American, so teams stockpiled the very best pitchers,” he said. “That was also before they lowered the pitching mound. If you got a hittable pitch across the middle and fouled it off, you screwed up.”

After baseball, Cerv became a family man. He has 10 children, all of whom went through college, 32 grandkids and 10 great-grandchildren (with one on the way). He currently resides in a quiet condo in Nebraska.

Read Bob Cerv’s original 1958 article, “I Played Without Eating” [PDF].

A True Tough Guy The Saturday Evening Post