Fear of Flying Jackie Jensen was a very good baseball player. He was so good that from 1954 to 1959, the Boston Red Sox™ slugger had more runs batted in than anyone else in the American League™, including the great Mickey Mantle, and his own teammate Ted Williams. Major League Baseball™ thought he was so good, they named him the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1958. But in 1961, Jensen up and quit the game at the age of 32. He wasn’t injured. He wasn’t burned out on baseball. Jackie was simply afraid of flying. When he started playing professional baseball, teams still traveled by train. Eventually, as the clubs switched to airplane travel, Jackie was forced to either cope with flying or find other ways to get from city to city. He once drove over 800 miles from Boston to Detroit to avoid flying. Desperate, Jensen retained a psychiatrist. and even tried hypnosis to conquer his fear. But nothing worked. Jackie Jensen left baseball with 1,463 hits, 929 RBI’s and a slugging average of .460, his career grounded early by the fear of flying. ©1999 Middlefork Press << BACK TO EXCERPTS