Softball players, coaches, teachers, runners, walkers, trainers: one influence just led to another - Column

Melpomene Journal, Spring-Summer, 2002 by Barbara Andersen

"One thing led to another." How often have we heard that? And how true it is of my life in many ways -- especially as it relates to physical activities.

I was lucky in the 1930s to live near Detroit, Michigan, when the Tigers baseball team was red hot. Among my childhood heroes were Schoolboy Rowe, Charlie Gehringer (the almost silent second baseman) and Mickey Cochrane, catcher and manager. I saw only one game in person, but the radio served me nicely. In the fall, when the World Series was on, I'd run all the way home from school, slam into the house and yell, "Mama, who's ahead?" My mother was not a baseball fan, but she always had the game on so she could bring me up-to-date.

Then late afternoon or early evening, I'd walk across the road to a vacant lot where young men in their teens and early 20s played pickup softball games. A friend and I, both about 10 or 11, would stand around watching, longing to play but too shy to ask. After a time, a young man at bat would yell, "Barb, do you want to run the bases for me?" Did I ever! Then it would be back to the sidelines until someone else volunteered to let me take his turn at bat. I was told how to stand, how to hold the bat and how to swing. I couldn't have been happier had I been instructed by the Tigers themselves. Over time, I was allowed to play the outfield (right field at first, of course) and then other positions -- always with plenty of help.

Those young men were also my heroes. They had no older adults telling them "Let the little kids play;" they had no ulterior motives; they had nothing to gain. They were simply kind and decent fellows whom I remember with affection and gratitude.

Following my dream

This experience then led to another -- one of the most important experiences of my early teens. The Charles Mott Foundation sponsored community education and recreation with city softball leagues, not only for boys and men but also for girls and women. The team I joined had a sponsor, uniforms and a home field -- with lights no less. I wanted to be a catcher, but they had a catcher so I became a third baseman (my first lesson in what "team" meant). I had caring, demanding coaches from whom I learned self-discipline, the importance of how you played the game, and winning without bragging and losing without complaining.

Because softball was so important to me, somehow my parents managed to buy me a glove, the result, I'm sure, of giving up something else. They seldom missed a game. Even as a child, I recognized their satisfaction in helping me to follow my dream.

In my 30s and 40s, I walked, worked in the yard, biked, shoveled snow and, in general, remained active but not in any organized fashion. Then, for my 50th birthday, I gave myself a membership at a very small, women-only exercise club called Spa Petite. We were a motley crew -- some young exercise enthusiasts, some middle-aged and fairly active, like me, and some who were not what you'd call athletic -- all delightful women who just wanted a place to enjoy themselves and move around a bit. I stayed with them for 10 happy years.

Nothing to lose but my dignity

In my mid-50, one unlikely thing led to another. I was on leave from Augsburg College from September through January to survey student writing at the college. By early January I was stuffed full of student papers, interviews with students and faculty, and writing reports. I decided that my lunch hour could be more profitably spent in one of the life-time sports classes than in eating. The only course offered at that time was running. Track was the only sport I hadn't participated in in high school, but I figured I had nothing to lose but my dignity -- of which I have little.

Although she never blanched, I'm sure Joyce Pfaff (the teacher) did a double take when she observed one grey head among 30 or so college students. That winter was cold, snowy and icy, but Joyce gave no one a break -- not even a 55-year-old woman in J. C. Penney tennis shoes. I didn't know you ran in special shoes. Besides, I was raised in the Depression so I was not about to buy any equipment before I knew whether I liked the sport.

But like it I did. Joyce was partly responsible for that. She encouraged and challenged and never condescended -- though she did hint that more appropriate shoes might be in order.

After five years of running, I was asked by one of my colleagues in the English Department to run a couples race with him. I suspect he couldn't find anyone else. I had no idea that people my age ran races. I demurred, but John Gidmark persisted. So I ran my first race, a 10K, at the age of 60. Over the next 12 years, I became a part of a community of runners. What a lovely welcome I received into that community, especially from older runners -- Betty Heleen, Marylou Carlson, Edith Greene, and Mae Horns -- wonderful runners, wonderful women.

If wishes were fishes

Then in 1997 my running days were over, too much arthritis -- the disease of choice in my family. Do I wish I could still run? Oh yeah. (In fact, occasionally I dream I am running -- and my body still knows the feeling.) But as my mother used to say, "If wishes were fishes, we'd have some to fry."