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Some people
have it. Some people don’t. My people, my family, didn’t have
it. I’m talking about the sports gene. We were not athletes
and we were not spectators. Except maybe to watch the Olympic
games every four years. Who could resist the thrill of victory
and the agony of defeat as reported by Jim McKay?
My mother had
obvious reasons to abhor sports. She had fallen on skis and
suffered several ruptured disks in her spine. When I was just a
baby, she had these disks fused in a surgery leaving her with a
zipper-like scar that stretched seven inches along the base of
her backbone. Because of this surgery and the years of recovery
and rehabilitation from it, she never picked me up as a child.
And almost every night of the years spanning my childhood, my
mother sat for hours in a straight back chair with a heating pad
soothing her ‘aching, screaming back.’
Whenever an
opportunity arose for me or my older sister to participate in
sports, my mother always dissuaded us. “You don’t want to play
field hockey,” she said. “That’s a dangerous sport. You might
get hurt. And those injuries will stay with you for the rest of
your life.” Or another excuse, “They’ll gang up on you. It’s
better to be an individual.” My father added, “Don’t be a
caboose. Be the engine.”
The only
sport available to little kids back then, at least in my town
and at least to my gender, was kick ball. Kick ball was a gym
sport. In elementary school, before middle school when our
bodies started to change and the powers that be that segregated
sport were more conducive to proper adolescent development, we
spent most gym periods in activities that were fairly
unstructured and safe. Crab soccer represented a meager attempt
by Mrs. McManus to help us learn the rules of sports. Mrs.
McManus was one of those physical fitness teachers who breathed
the smoke of cigarette addiction every free period in the
faculty lounge and sported a whistle and a knee brace every
class period.
But in the
spring, when it was warm and the fields had dried enough to
support outdoor activities, Mrs. McManus led us outside to play
kick ball. Our field was down a steep hill in the middle of
which was implanted a concrete vault. The boys inevitably
launched themselves off the six foot shelf while the girls
generally scurried around this barrier. Me? I carefully picked
my way down the hill, not wanting to slip in my yellow plastic
loafers and gather grass stains on my new white skort, a
combination of a skirt and shorts that I wore in marching band
parades.
Kickball, I
guess, was one of those combination sports that doesn’t exist in
professional sports but garners ‘the best of both worlds’ as it
is played on a baseball diamond without a bat, and the ball--
usually a large red rubber ball-- is rolled along the ground
from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. The ‘batter’ kicks the
ball with all his or her might, and depending on its trajectory,
he or she runs to first base.
Any good
sports enthusiast can ascertain the progress of this game.
Things like strikes and foul balls are accumulated and with a
collection of outs the innings slowly tick by. In gym class,
with its limited time span of forty-six minutes, a regulation
game never actually occurred. Maybe there was some sort of
intramural league, but I never knew of it. Kick ball was
strictly a gym sport. Little did I know then that it was a
lighter version of America’s past time, baseball.
In the spring
of 1969, I was in the sixth grade at the newly constructed
Littleton Middle School. The year before, while we played
kickball outdoors in the field situated between the high school
and Russell Street Elementary school, workers toiled on
completing the new school. My class would be the first grade to
occupy the school for all three years.
1969 was a year that
Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. A
bunch of people made history at Woodstock. Down on Martha’s
Vineyard, Teddy Kennedy had an accident in Chappaquiddick.
Sesame Street first aired on channel two. And the bombs were
falling in Vietnam. We watched a daily count of the killed on
the evening news. My father prayed each and every night with me
and my sister for the safety of my cousin, Bobby, who was a
marine over there.
It
was a year when I received first-hand education about drugs and
drug abuse. Long before the D.A.R.E. program, our school’s
social studies department took it upon themselves to make
students aware of substance abuse. We watched filmstrips that
showed us what these drugs looked like. While Mr. Crowley
turned a knob on the projector that advanced the slide, a record
player on a turntable spoke to us about the horrors of overdose
and addiction. (Little did we know that just one years later,
in 1970 drugs would take both Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and
one year after that Jim Morrison.) Our teacher prompted class
discussions and during one particular class where the talk went
on extra long, while gazing at a slide showing pills of various
colors, shapes and sizes, the film actually melted. A Salvadore
Dali-esque moment of surrealism as the drugs we were being
warned not to use seemed to dissolve in a psychedelic dream
before our very eyes.
In
an effort to bring this new fangled drug education (or should I
say anti-drug education) to the forefront, the social studies
department organized a school wide contest. Students were
invited to make posters warning against drug abuse. One winner
from each grade would receive a prize and also there would be
one grand prize winner.
I
was a good student. While it was extremely difficult to adjust
to my changing adolescent body, it seemed a good escape to throw
myself into a pursuit of academic excellence. In the third term
of my sixth grade, I was the only student to receive first
honors. All A’s! A feat never to be repeated again. My
singular achievement garnered me praise from upper
classmen—people I looked up to like the perfectly coiffed
Cameron Smith. Cammy Smith. Whatever happened to you? Went to
a private prep academy, I’m sure. And after that? Who knows?
My
mother, while hating sports, loved art. But her art was fairly
literal. She painted pictures that were photographic in their
realistic details. During the day, she was a commercial
artist. In fact, she was the one who painted all the room
numbers on the new doors of the new Middle School. Many days
and evenings, she spent carefully pouncing a pattern onto the
door and hand lettering words like Large Group Instruction and
Principal. And Girl’s Locker Room.
A
poster contest was a competitive activity that I could excel at
with my mother’s blessing. Somewhere I found a piece of white
poster board. Next, I decided on the content of the poster. A
young man, with longish hair wearing turtle neck and a wide
lapelled suit, was surrounded by that myriad of drugs that our
class had witnessed liquefying on the projector screen. Uppers,
downers, barbiturates, hallucinogens, marijuana and lysergic
acid diethylamide (aka LSD) were depicted surrounding this young
dude’s body. A simple title, “Don’t do drugs.” I can still
picture the subject’s face. He was everyman. He was every
young man. He was what me and my classmates were destined to
become, but he, unlike us, was older and more at risk to dabble
in this newfound activity. But was it really new? Or was it
simply new because of increasing awareness and the promulgation
through the media, the same news reporters who talked to us
about Vietnam and the Olympics, of its inherent dangers.
Truthfully, it didn’t matter to me. I was just a kid drawing a
picture.
With
no apparent regularity, our new school’s intercom system
announced various topics to the school. One day, in the spring
of 1969, the winners of the drug abuse poster contest were
broadcast to the school. “And for the sixth grade, the winner
is Bernadette Morey.” Me? I won? Oh gosh golly. But what did
I win? What? What did he say? Tickets to see the Red Sox? Oh
no. Would my parent even let me go? Would I know anyone? What
would I wear?
Tony Conigliaro, Rico
Petrocelli, and Carl Yastrzemski were Red Sox players that
year. Even a little girl who knew nothing about sports new the
name Yaz. If you lived and breathed in Massachusetts, you knew
his name. I was going to get to see this guy play baseball.
Was I excited? Not really. Was I anxious. Extremely.
I was going to meet the other
contest winners, one seventh grader and two eighth graders, and
drive into Boston along with my teacher, Mr. Crowley, and his
wife. Wait. Wife? Teachers had lives outside of school? This
was a new concept for me. I mean, I knew they didn’t actually
live at the school and that they probably knew other people
besides us kids and the other teachers, but how social could
they be? I mean, married? Not Mr. Crowley. He wasn’t much to
look at. Acne scarred face. Wore short sleeved, button down
shirts and tailored pants. Nothing outstanding about this
fellow. He had no flair like Mr. Kawasowicz, but then again at
least he seemed to possess some semblance of a soul, unlike Mr.
K. But I digress.
My dad dropped me off at the
parking lot of the high school. This meeting place was closer
than the Middle School lot which was on the back side of a long
loop. This meeting place added to the tension of the day
because it too was unknown territory. The other students were
there as was my teacher and his wife. Still seems strange to
admit, but there she was—in the flesh. This was just the first
of many awkward moments for almost immediately I realized that I
was overdressed. I mean, I looked pretty cool, but I was not
dressed like the others. They were wearing T shirts and jeans.
Even Mr. Crowley. Me? I was wearing that cute white skort from
fifth grade and snappy yellow plastic loafers. (Strangely
enough, my feet were size nine when I was in the third grade and
stayed that size until I had my two kids.) The yellow shoes
matched my brightly flowered mod blouse. Why didn’t anyone tell
me I was overdressed for a baseball game? Probably because my
parents didn’t know. They had never been to a game. They had
never watched a game. I felt like an alien. An overdressed,
uncomfortable, anxious alien about to journey into an unknown
land—Fenway Park.
We piled into Mr. Crowley’s
Falcon. Three in the back seat. Three in the front. I was the
smallest so I got to sit between Mr. Crowley and Mrs. Crowley.
Did she have a first name? Didn’t matter to me. She was my
teacher’s wife. Not really human. It was hot and already I was
uncomfortable. How long would this last? I guess I could
endure an hour of so. That wouldn’t be too bad.
It took an hour just to get
into the city. And then it seemed another hour to park, walk to
the stadium and find our seats. The good news was that it was
helmet day. Every child that entered the park that day received
a full size plastic helmet. A replica of the batter’s helmet
that the players actually wore. For some reason, this souvenir
made the whole day bearable. In fact, that helmet stayed on my
desk all through high school and into my years at college. I
wonder what finally happened to it.
Fenway Park was noisy, crowded,
dirty, sticky, loud and hot. Fenway Park was nothing more to me
than a silly annoyance. Why had I even entered that contest?
Why did I try to win? Why did I accept the prize? When I was
in third grade, my teacher announced an essay contest. I was
good at writing. I liked to write. But the prize was four
weeks at summer camp. What if I actually won? I didn’t want to
go to camp. I’d have to meet new people. I didn’t want to meet
new people. I might have to play sports. I didn’t want to play
sports. I purposely wrote a bad essay to insure that I didn’t
win.
In Sunday school, two years in
a row, I was chosen to place a Nativity character in the crèche
during the annual children’s Christmas Mass. The third year, I
asked my mother to tell the nun that I didn’t want to
participate. Give the job to someone else. Didn’t matter that
I was the best catechism student; I was sick of the spotlight.
Why hadn’t I realized that this
win, this privilege, would also be a voyage into the unknown
world of strangers and new experiences? I endured nine innings
of the excruciatingly slow game of baseball. From my
perspective, I saw the backs of many heads. I saw the brilliant
green of the field with its carefully mowed lines and its sand
and painted diamond. I heard the crowd cheer with excitement
and boo with disappointment as Conigliaro, Petrocelli and Yaz
took their turns at the plate. Did the Sox win that day? I
have no idea. Did it make me a fan? Not at all.
After almost an eternity, I was
home again. I slipped off the yellow plastic loafers and
stepped out of the white, now slightly grayed, skort and vowed
to never overdress again.
Years later, I met my future
husband in the kitchen of my sorority. During those first
months of dating and courtship, I discovered that he was a Red
Sox fan. We went to a few games, traveling down the Mass Pike
to Fenway. This was a trip that he was used to. His mom was a
true Red Sox fan. When she was a girl, she dreamed of playing
for the Sox. At the time, long before women’s liberation, she
saw no reason why a quality player couldn’t take her turn at bat
alongside the legends of the game. She passed this drive to
her three sons, the youngest of which—my boyfriend—would spend
his summers playing the game with his neighborhood gang,
breaking the occasional window with a foul ball and skinning the
occasional knee.
But even he didn’t pursue
organized ball after clashing with his first coach. His
personal favorite way to enjoy the game was by playing
Stratomatic Baseball, a board game of strategy, chance and skill
that simulated the excitement of the real game. (Today’s
youngsters probably enjoy some virtual equivalent.)
If I am going to watch a game,
I prefer that tranquility and grace of golf. There’s something
so peaceful about the hushed commentary and the careful poise of
a putt juxtaposed with the explosive swing of a tee shot.
My children apparently didn’t
inherit the sport gene either. Although when my daughter was in
kindergarten, she did play a fierce game of Tee ball. I still
remember her cold stare in her team picture. Hers was not a
crew that you would want to reckon with.
Now my son is preparing for a
career in teaching high school English and my daughter dreams of
being a playwright. My mother-in-law did live to see her team
win the World Series in 2004. She died before her beloved
Johnny Damon cut his hair and traded his soul, I mean
allegiance, to the Yankees.
Maybe the sports gene, like
baldness, skips a generation. Maybe my grandchildren will
possess that competitiveness that escaped me. At least I’ve
learned one thing. Unless it’s the Kentucky Derby, when going
to watch a game, jeans and a T shirt are the best attire. And a
team shirt is probably the safest bet. At least you look like
you fit in.
©
Bernadette Stockwell, June 2008
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