The importance of sports in children's lives

Sports were always important when I was growing up during the Great Depression. No one had much money and sports participation didn't cost much. The Albany California Bay Area YMCA was housed in a building on the corner of the block on which I lived. It had a great gym. I went there often and learned to tumble. I became quite good at it and joined the Tumbling Team.

Another member of my team was Zoe Ann Olsen. Zoe Ann and I became good friends. She had a job! She delivered the Albany Times once a week. Because our families couldn't afford bicycles, I helped Zoe Ann fold the papers, pack them into her red wagon, and walk her delivery route up Solano Avenue and along the Key Route Blvd. to Marin Avenue area.

Every weekend, either Zoe Ann's dad or my dad would drive us the long distance to the closest swimming pools: The Hayward Plunge or the Richmond Natatorium. I would splash around in the water, just goofing off, because I hated getting water up my nose. Zoe Ann, on the other hand, would swim laps and do belly flops off the diving boards. But Zoe Ann kept at it and became a good diver. Eventually, she became a U.S. National Diving Champion and went on to win a gold Medal in High Diving at the Olympics. After our graduation from High School, Zoe Ann married Jackie Jensen, the star quarterback at the University of California at Berkeley, who later went into Baseball for the New York Yankees, until crippling arthritis ended his career.

Speaking of Baseball, my father played short stop for the Ford Motor Company's Richmond baseball team. He was friends with several Oakland Acorns team members, who were part of the then Coast League coached by Casey Stengle, who went on to coach the Yankees. The team eventually became the Oakland As. One player I remember in particular, mostly because of his unusual name, Cotton Pippen, use to give us free tickets so we could go to the ball games, which were held at the Acorn's park in Emeryville. That was the same year that Vic Bergeron opened up a tiny restaurant-bar on San Pablo Avenue on the border between Emeryville and Oakland called "Trader Vics" where the ballplayers liked to hang out.

My dad was a door fitter in Ford's Richmond plant and maintained that job on a part-time basis through the Great Depression, which meant we were better off than some in our neighborhood. My dad also was a good bodyman. I used to listen to him pounding and smoothing out the fender dents on cars in our driveway, another way of making a few dollars. That's how I learned from my father the trick of drilling a tiny hole into the middle of a car fender dent; inserting a tiny crochet hook into the hole, and gently pulling the dented fender out to a smooth surface.

I also remember the hard decision my dad had to make when World War II started: whether to stay with Ford Motor Company or take a job at the Alameda Naval Air Station. He became a Planner and Estimator for the Station in Alameda, (the City in which I lived in until I moved to Albuquerque) until he retired. The Station finally was closed four years in the 1970s.

When I was first married, I lived around the corner from Billy Martin's Albany house, a white stucco home with the brightest blue front door and trim you ever saw. Every evening at 6 o'clock, the entire neighborhood plugged their ears to lessen the assault of Mrs. Martin's raspy voice screeching at the top of her lungs, "Billy! Dinner's ready." Billy's street was always blocked by kids playing baseball and car drivers soon learned to avoid that street in the afternoons after school. Billy, of course, went on to play baseball for the New York Yankees and even coaching the team. I think Billy was one of the most frequently fired coaches in baseball history. His disputes with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner are legend. Billy had a terrible temper as a teenager and never outgrew it, probably because people excused it due to his huge baseball talent---and because he began to drink heavily with some of his famous Yankee pals.

I've often wondered how so many great athletes happen to come from my immediate area at that time. For example, my cousin Margaret was on the American's Fencing Team that went to the Olympics the last time they were held in Australia. I went to dinner and the theater with three members of that team several times each year until I moved Albuquerque.

For myself, my sports activities ended when I was 36. I had always participated in team sports, instilling that same love of sports in my children. I was a member of a woman's Volleyball team. We won several championships. They tell me I had the deadliest serve in the league. I used to toss the ball and hit it from the side straight on, like a speeding bullet, just clearing the net. Hardly anyone could return my serve. I had to stand well-back from the rear court line because my serve was so fast it could go right out through an open gym door into the back parking lot if I got too close to the line. And because my serve was so low, just clearing the net, everyone tried to return the serve (it was hard to avoid the ball, it was either hit it or duck), so it hardly ever went out of bounds. It was not unusual, when I was in really good form, for me to serve almost an entire game without giving up the serve. It used to really piss-off the other side. My teammates loved winning, except they got bored just standing there with so few serves being returned. Well, that all ended one evening when I just took a step toward the volleyball net and tore the cartilage in my right knee from end to end. The injury was very bad and it was during the days before scope surgery used today. Eventually the knee was replaced. But that knee injury ended my sports activities and dramatically changed my life, leading to my later disability.

Even today, I cannot watch the women's volleyball teams at the Olympics without straining in my chair before the television, with involuntary lifting movements of my arms The body still trying in futility to slam a killer ball as when I was at the net. Oh, well, sigh!

However, I had some consolation. My children took to sports the same way I had. My son excelled in every sport he tried. He and my daughter became swimming champions, participating in the Greater Bay Area swim leagues. My daughter's breast stoke speed helped her relay teams to lots of first place medals and ribbons.

I've been so saddened at the reduction of after school sports and other activities, such as music and the arts, for youngsters in recent years. I hope this trend is finally being reversed as people and governments realize the importance of such activities to the positive mental and physical development and good citizenship of our youth. We can't all be Olympians, or even local champions, but we all can participate for our own well being.