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This is a NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of astronaut James A. McDivitt, interviewed by Doug Ward at Elk Lake, Michigan, on 29 June 1999. McDivitt talks about flying F-86s in Korea, test pilot work at Edwards, and his first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He also covers turning down Dyna-soar, joining NASA in 1962 and learning to be an Apollo Program Manager. He describes the Change Board and says decisions were not second-guessed.
“Mission Control”9 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-88 I’d played softball. And we had a couple of guys who’d played baseball. Well, anyway, Al [Alan L.] Bean then had a operation on his gall bladder or something. So, we only had eight guys. And so, we got one of the support engineers to fill in for us; and we went out and practiced once, I think at the Harris County Boys Home. I don’t know if you know where that is. They had a baseball field out there that looked like a pasture. It had rocks all over it. And so, we went out there and practiced one day; and Al [Alfred M.] Worden was going for a grounder and he bumps off a clump of dirt, hit him in the chin, and it knocked him out! That’s how—you know, to get knocked out as a pilot, it’s really bad news. Al’s not going to fly anymore, so I can tell the story. So, Al got knocked out. “Holy hell! You know, we’ve got to be careful about this. We’d better not practice much.” So, we threw the ball around a little bit; and we didn’t have anybody to pitch to us to hit or anything. So, that was our baseball team. And I went over to see the Vice President of Manufacturing one day at lunchtime, and his secretary says, “Oh, he’s out practicing with the team.” “Oh, really?” She said, “Yeah, they practice every day from twelve to one.” I said, “When do they eat?” “Well, they eat around it.” You know, so I said, “Where are they?” “Well, they’re out at the Rockwell—at the North American sports field.” They had a field. So, I go over there. He’s got about 200 guys out there running around! He’s got all these ex-Major League pitchers and stuff like that! And so, I said, “Man, this isn’t fair!” “Why, yeah, it is fair.” So, anyway, we had this baseball game scheduled at one of the junior colleges. We got a big stadium, had a couple of umpires in black suits and the inflated things. And North American gave us all sweatshirts. Now today we’d go to jail if we took a sweatshirt. But we had a sweatshirt that said, “Spacecraft-103 Flight Crew” or whatever it was. And then they had sweatshirts a little different color. And we went out there and we played a—I think we
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