We were working on a story on Larry King for the Sun-Sentinel’s now departed Sunshine, the Sunday magazine. After his TV show King crossed the Potomac into Arlington and did a two-hour radio show that ran until after midnight. It was mostly about sports. During one of the commercial breaks he asked where we went to school. We barely got the word “La Salle” out when he said, “I can see Tom Gola in the Garden now. La Salle had sleeves on their uniforms. What a ball player.”
They are telling stories like that today – at least those who remember college ball from the 1950s – in the memory of Tom Gola who died Sunday after a long illness. John Wooden, the great UCLA coach, called him the greatest all-round player he ever saw. Wilt Chamberlain once said he wasn’t Philadelphia’s best basketball player; Tom Gola was.
The man put La Salle on the map. Gola led La Salle to an NIT championship, at the time more important than the NCAA tournament. Two years later his team won the NCAA, the first championship game televised, and the following year La Salle was runner-up to San Francisco, which had Bill Russell and K.C. Jones. Gola was an All-American four straight years. He still holds the NCAA record for rebounds. As a student sports writer at La Salle, we advanced his height every year, whether he grew or not. We maxed him out at 6 feet, 8 iches. In fact, he was slightly under 6 feet, 6 inches, and that got him in the Army when the height limit was exactly that. Gola just seemed like a giant on the court, and his true height makes his rebounding feat all the more remarkable.
It was his speed that created the illusion. He was flat out fast – Philadelphia 440 champion in high school (Wilt Chamberlain was the same a few years later), and won the state 880. His hands were just as quick. Think Larry Bird when it comes to passing.
Some of us had the chance to see Tom Gola play in both high school at La Salle High, La Salle College and in the NBA - also as a La Salle coach for a team that went 23-1, but was not eligible for post-season play. He was an emergency coach, when the previous coach got us in NCAA trouble. Gola had a day job and just showed up for practice. He had a wonderful team that included Larry Cannon and Ken Durrett. Asked about his success, Gola said: "I had the horses. All I did was hand them the ball.
Larry Cannon, who lives in Florida, met with our La Salle alumni board a few years ago. Asked about Gola as a coach, Larry said: "He knew not to over coach us."
In 1957, just after Gola graduated, our ROTC camp was in Oklahoma. We were with fellows from all over - Stanford, the Big 10 schools, Auburn, NC state, VMI, Princeton - and they all seemed impressed that we had gone to La Salle. None of them knew our campus at the time was barely more than a large square block, and that our enrollment was fewer than 2,000. It is hard to imagine anyone who did more for any school than Tom Gola did for La Salle. Maybe John Harvard or Cornelius Vanderbilt, or Knute Rockne - but none of them could go to their left, and rebound.
There was a good piece on Philly.com about how Tom Gola revived basketball in New York after the point shaving scandals of the early 50s. They hurt the NY college programs, among the country's best at the time. Then came Gola, who played in the Garden and was a great hit with NY fans and the press.
It is often forgotten, but there was another all-round player in the Gola college era. Maurice Stokes at St. Francis did not get as much attention, but he was in the same class as Gola, and was a great pro for three seasons before a head injury ended his career. Ironically, it was the kind of injury Tom Gola suffered much later in life. Stokes died in 1970.
In his later years, Tom Gola vacationed in Palm Beach. He loved golf, and few pros at our country clubs would not recall him.
Another little story. At La Salle we had an English prof, who was a nerd’s nerd. In his senior year, when Tom Gola was player of the year, Gola stood up to answer a question in Dr. App’s class. Dr. App was from Lawrence Welk territory, where people sounded foreign born.
“Vista Gola,” Dr. App said. “You’re such a big vellla. You should be on zee basketball team.”
We were on the way up to Notre Dame to see a game. This was maybe 20 years ago. She was reading a book and something came up about football.
“Is a punt a kick?” she said. We answered politely.
“And is the second half as long as the first half?”
“Actually, in most sports it is longer. In football they have all kinds of time-outs and substitutions and stuff. Lots of incomplete passes. Players run out of bounds. Fake injuries. Anything to stop the clock. Basketball’s the same.”
“Why do they do that?” she asked.
“Gives them more time for commercials. Advertisers sell more stuff. Teams raise rates. Players make a few million more.”
The years have passed. Most things age, but not her grasp of the fundamentals of economics. It was late during the recent season of the NFL and a game was on.
“What’s the line of scrimmage?” she asked.
“That’s just the line where they scrimmage. Three hundred pounders line up and butt heads, to make sure they are all punchy by the time they retire.”
“Who’s that yelling all the time?”
“It’s the quarterback. He’s calling signals.”
“What are signals?”
“That’s telling them when the play begins. And they also change the plays all the time.”
“Why?” she asked.
“The quarterback looks over the defense, and sometimes he sees something he doesn’t like, or something he does, so he changes the play. It’s called profiling. If he’s right and throws a touchdown pass, the coach is pleased and he makes a few million more the next year.”
“Is that Peyton Manning you can hear yelling?
“It’s not Winston Churchill. Don’t you recognize his accent?”
“He’s just going hup, yup, dub, tub. How do they know what he means?”
“It’s a secret language. It was invented by the Navajo Indians. All the players have to learn it.”
“Does he keep it up the whole game?” she asked.
“He better not go home. But he only does it when he’s on the field. Notice Tom Brady is not doing it on the sidelines.
The camera was on Tom Brady. He had his helmet off.
“Brady’s good looking,” she said, perceptively.
“You ought to see his girlfriend. Actually, all quarterbacks are good looking. That’s one of the requirements for the job. At the beginning of the season the coach looks over his team and picks the best looking guy and hands him the ball and says, “Sweetie, go play quarterback.’ It’s a tradition. They have to be handsome because they get on magazine covers all the time. Goes way back. Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung, Daryle Lamonica, Craig Morton, Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Dan Marino – and in this century, Troy Aikman, Kurt Warner, Joe Flacco, Steve Young, John Elway – they’re all cute as a bug’s ear.”
“Who are you rooting for?” she asked.
“Nobody really. We don’t have a dog in this fight. I usually go with the best uniforms. In this case San Francisco. I like gold helmets.”
“Is this the championship?”
“ One of them. You asked the same thing last week, and the week before that. But this isn’t the big championship.”
“When will it be over?”
“It’s hard to say. They begin playing in July and they just keep playing until Dan Marino is in assisted living. Or they run out of advertisers. Their goal is to be like the NBA – start next season before the current one ends.”
The game finally ended. Somebody won. But she couldn’t figure out who. She felt sorry for the quarterback who was crying.
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| An overgrown golf course. |
Stage two, some years later. Development is sold out, golf course is not used enough to justify its existence, or the developer just doesn’t want the cost of maintaining it now that it has made its bucks. Developer sells out. New developer comes in, neglects the golf course, and goes to the local authorities to get permission to abandon the course (which it has already done) and replace this community eyesore with hundreds of new homes, invariably with far greater density that the original plan. Just about everything the original buyer paid good money for is gone.
It is naturally disturbing to those who invested for golf course settings and see the value of their homes threatened. So they fight. Right now there is a good one going on in Boca Raton. Mizner Trail Golf Course in Boca Del Mar is going to the Palm Beach County Commission for the fourth time in eight years, trying to get permission to build a bunch of homes on the course. Those opposing the change want a park or something that keeps the land open. The problem, of course, is who pays for it.
This time the developer has some support from members of the community. Forgive the cynicism, but such groups don’t carry much weight here. Obviously, some are sincere people who think anything is a better neighbor than an overgrown tract (like the one pictured above), and a closed club that needs police surveillance to keep out culturally inadequate strangers. Still, there is a suspicion their motives are always genuine, that they are getting something in return for undercutting their neighbors. We saw this recently in Fort Lauderdale when dozens of young people in T-shirts showed up in support of a controversial building in which they had no obvious stake. Usually such Hessians can be traced to ties to the developer, or a construction company that might benefit from a favorable ruling.
It is not just defunct golf courses that create controversy for those intent on preserving what they paid for. In order to protect old residential neighborhoods from increasing traffic, cities have been closing off once-busy cut-through streets, greatly increasing the livability (and property values) in the neighborhoods affected. Fort Lauderdale started doing this with downtown neighborhoods in the 1980s. Those neighborhoods were once – we are going back decades now - on the fringes of the downtown, but development on the finger islands, the beach and far to the west have put them in a vise, squeezed on all sides by traffic moving east and west.
Some suggest opening up the closed streets, but what then do you tell those who have moved to those neighborhoods precisely for the combination of tranquility and convenience? Colee Hammock, Beverly Heights and Rio Vista in Fort Lauderdale are good examples of single-family residential sections that have seen a number of old dwellings replaced by some of the city’s most beautiful homes, worth now in the millions. New buyers usually invest in improving their purchases, expecting that their neighborhoods can only improve.
At a recent meeting sponsored by the city to discuss the downtown bottleneck, residents complained that a bad situation will get worse with all the new high-rise construction that is underway, with little thought given to how those thousands of new residents will get around. A golf-course setting in suburban Boca Raton and historic residential neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale may seem to have little in common. But they do.
The big news today is that the college football season is finally over, and the pros will finish up when the ice melts on the Delaware. Also, the search for a new president of FAU is heating up as two prominent politicians have been named among the top ten finalists. Jeff Atwater and George LeMieux are both dedicated public servants, illustrated by the fact they are willing to take a job that pays only $345,000.
The Miami Herald reported that Dick Schmidt, a great FAU supporter, is wary of having a politician in that job, and we always respect his opinion because he used to pal around with our board chairman, and also his late father said we did a good imitation of the late Foy Fleming, whose brother helped get FAU started way back in the 1960s.
Back on topic, keep in mind that Frank Brogan, former and highly respected president of FAU, has been accused of being a politician, but many forget he started as an educator. We know that for a fact because we interviewed him when he was superintendent of schools in Martin County back in the 1990s. He was considered one of the bright young men in the Stuart area, which he proved when he made it up to the majors.
Also remember that by nature college presidents are also politicians, which was proved by Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, Dwight Eisenhower at Columbia and many others. Of the two politicians declaring for this job, only one, Jeff Atwater, spent some time at Notre Dame. And speaking of Notre Dame, don’t forget that its former great president, Father Ted Hesburgh, was such a consummate politician, always traveling for the public good, that he was often compared to God. When president of ND, they used to say “what’s the difference between God and Father Hesburgh?” The answer: "God is everywhere. Father Hesburgh is everywhere but Notre Dame."
Back on topic – $345,000 is minimum wage for a campus job these days, but it is still enough to attract people who want to be dedicated public servants. The job at FAU has unusual challenges, the main one being to keep teachers from saying crazy things, and also deciding what the football uniforms should look like. The great Howard Schnellenberger is said to have designed their first uniforms, with white helmets. He is also widely credited with inventing the famous two-tone “U” which is universally identified with the University of Miami. This despite the fact that the University of Scranton is also known as “the U” – at least in Scranton. Their football coach is paid nothing, mostly because they don’t have a football team.
Anyway, somebody changed the Schnellenberger look at FAU. Recent publicity has shown the football team in dark blue helmets, almost a black and white change from the past, and while not ugly, it is hardly a way to build tradition. Back on topic, it is none of our business, but why do they publicize the salary being offered for a college president, especially at a state-supported school? Whatever happened to competitive bidding? In that spirit, we throw our helmet in the ring for this job. As a great American, and also a taxpayer, we will take this job for a mere $300,000. Admittedly unqualified, we will then find some great young educator who is willing to work for $250,000, and keep the rest as a lobbying fee. For $250,000 you get what you pay for, and you probably won’t get a politician.
It is disturbing is that most reports make it sound as if this population growth is good news. But it is not good news for the Everglades, the general water supply, air pollution, traffic, etc. Making things worse is the fact that recent studies show that rising ocean levels are reducing the amount of land available for these new people. Within a few years the Florida Keys will be a memory, and smugglers will have to go as far as Port Salerno to find dry land.
Of course, there will be islands here and there in Broward County, in places such as Pine Island Ridge (which has prepared itself by choosing the right name) and the coastal ridge that bounces up and down the Gold Coast. People lucky enough to inhabit that ridge are already cornering the market on sea planes.
All is not lost for 2014, however. Balancing this dire report comes the welcome news that serious efforts are being made to control the population, at least enough that we won’t be threatening Texas for No. 2 for a few more years. Two wise legislators have proposed that Florida’s speed limit be raised to 75 miles per hour. This means that people who now drive 85 miles an hour on I-95 will feel free to gun it up to 95 or 100. It also means we will have a lot more accidents, causing maddening traffic jams on our roads. This is good because such congestion breeds road rage, and people will shoot each other at a higher rate. The death rate from accidents will be enhanced by the shootings.
We think legislators would be wise to consider other methods of creating chaos on the roads. Do away with red lights, which would end the fury over red light cameras. Also eliminate stop signs and speed bumps. Throw out these archaic laws against drunk driving, or driving cross-eyed from abuse of banned substances. Make it legal for drivers to shoot people who get in their way. The epidemic of hit and run incidents could be curtailed if people did not think they were going to jail for being whacked, or afraid of being deported.
As we prepare for the challenges and uncertainties of a new year, it is time for thoughtful legislators to forget petty politics, cross party lines and unite for the good of our great country. These ideas for population control may not be the whole answer, but you gotta start someplace.
We live now by polls. We are reading polls about elections that are a year way, and about polls on candidates who are not even candidates, and may never be. It might be a wise idea to have everybody who is interested get together every so often and stand in a line to circle the name of the person they would like to have as president of the United States or school board member, or head of the National Polling League. Just do it one time, and we would not need weekly polls.
We once thought the late humorist Art Buchwald lacerated polls forever when, during the Vietnam War, he commented on a poll among Americans on the subject of bombing Hanoi. Some people favored bombing Hanoi, some were against it, and some had no opinion. It was silly, Buchwald wrote, to ask Americans about bombing somebody else. Why not poll the people actually being bombed in Hanoi? So he did. The results were that 40 percent of the people in Hanoi enjoyed being bombed, 35 percent disliked being bombed and 25 percent had no opinion. Those numbers may be a bit off because Buchwald is gone and can’t be polled on the subject.
So it is with Christmas. On the eve of that international holiday (or holy day), some people object to an international holiday for just one religion, or rather one religion that has hundreds of sects, thanks to malcontents such as Martin Luther and Henry VIII. Others object to the people who object to Christmas, especially when they oppose religious symbols in public places, or insist on using the term “holiday tree.”
We haven’t seen this week’s poll on the subject, so we will make up our own numbers. One hundred percent of people are in favor of Christmas presents, if they are on the receiving end. Of those, 65 percent don’t mind them being called Christmas presents, 20 percent prefer holiday presents and 15 percent have no opinion.
With that, have a merry and sober Christmas holiday.
The recent revelation that the missing Coral Springs man, Robert Levinson, was on a CIA mission when he disappeared in Iran, comes as a surprise to everyone except those who knew him. His reputation at the FBI was that of an excellent agent with unusually valuable contacts. But he was also something of an adventurer. Insiders did not believe he was a private eye chasing cigarette change on an island off Iran.
Some people, however, may be surprised that Levinson was not working directly for the CIA, but rather a rogue group of analysts within the agency that had no authority to send him off doing whatever he was doing. Others would not be surprised at all. They would not even be surprised if the “rogue” story itself is bogus, to conceal involvement of those higher up in the agency. Several people involved were fired, so the CIA can say it canned those whack jobs, let the case rest.
If one wonders about the cynicism here, note that this comes close to the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, which over the years has been increasingly linked to the CIA. Almost from the time the Warren Commission Report appeared, cynics suspected a government conspiracy, followed by a second conspiracy to cover it up. Among them was Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker. He, and others in Washington, had been shocked to learn that the CIA, in theory an intelligence gathering agency, had made itself an action arm of the government, facilitating the overthrow of governments, and causing people to be murdered. Without authority.
His position on a Senate intelligence committee gave him grounds for suspicion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. intelligence figure. In 1976 he hired Gaeton Fonzi, at the time a partner in Gold Coast magazine, to try to prove it. As we reported recently, Fonzi, working in Florida with the anti-Castro Cuban community, found a link between Oswald and a high-ranking CIA officer. The same CIA man, Fonzi learned, was also connected to assassinations of foreign political leaders, and the coup in Chile that resulted in thousands of deaths of political dissidents. He also worked with Fonzi’s main source in attempts to kill Castro, attempts which the CIA said at the time it knew nothing about.
Other researchers jumped on Fonzi’s discovery, and over the years, bolstered by gradually declassified documents, and testimony of witnesses long silent in fear, what once seemed unthinkable has become believable. If the CIA did not orchestrate a presidential murder, it did everything it could to cover it up, including lying repeatedly to Congress and its authorized investigators such as Fonzi. Would the CIA lie? Did it lie for years about Robert Levinson, until his distraught family forced the truth into the open?
The word “rogue” was used 40 years ago to describe the group, all CIA types whose names have been widely published (now that they are all dead), who were suspected in the JFK murder. John McCone, the man at the head of the CIA at the time, told Robert Kennedy himself that the CIA was not involved. The truth is he was appointed by the Kennedys to replace Allen Dulles, who the Kennedys distrusted, and McCone surely didn’t know. He would be the last to know. He was only the boss, and a boss the rogues could not trust. But not so Allen Dulles. He helped launch the CIA and ran it for eight years. He had to know what it was doing. He wound effectively running the Warren Commission and pinning the blame on an alleged lone nut, ignoring any evidence to the contrary. He thus protected the “rogue” element in his own agency. That’s just being loyal, covering for people who had no authority to murder a president.
At least in the Levinson case, people got fired. In the Kennedy case, they got promoted.
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| Woody Woodbury's Korean war aircraft |
It was the fall of 1970, and we were staying at the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel and looking for ways to enliven the magazine we had just bought. It was called Pictorial Life at the time. Some people still call it Pictorial. There was a very funny guy named Blackie Nelson working the Rum House at the hotel. After listening to him for about 60 straight nights, we got the bright idea that it might be fun to do a story on local entertainers, by enlivening what was a stodgy magazine at the time. It turned out there was a group called The Punchinellos working the beach, and somebody mentioned that we should check out Woody Woodbury, who was working next door to the Galt at the Beach Club. Woody was very funny. The story worked.
Forward 43 years. By now our magazine was long established as Gold Coast and Woody Woodbury was featured last month at the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society's Thanksgiving Dinner. He donated a piano to the society and sat down and played and joked to mark the occasion. He was as funny as ever. Woody was born in 1924. Do the math. It was fitting that a historic entertainer should work the room at the historic New River Inn - built in 1905. By then, Henry Flagler's FEC Railway had reached Fort Lauderdale.
Woody has been working regularly all those years and has made our pages a number of times, most memorably in 1999 when we did a piece called “Memories of War.” Among the adventures described was Woody’s time as a Marine Corps pilot in Korea. He actually joined up during the late stages of World War II but did not get overseas. But five years later came Korea. Woody was among hundreds of World War II vets who joined the reserve and were called to active duty, and this time he saw more action than he ever needed – about 106 missions (he’s not exactly sure) flying land-based Grumman F9F Panther jets on mostly low-level ground attack missions. Think of William Holden in "The Bridges at Toko-Ri."
The character Holden played resembled the history of one of Woodbury’s flying mates in Korea, baseball legend Ted Williams. Like Harry Brubaker (Holden’s character) Williams had an important career interrupted, and resented it, but did his duty nonetheless.
“I met Ted at El Toro during World War II, but I didn’t run with him as I did in Korea,” Woodbury said today. “We wound up going duck hunting in Korea. I was the gun bearer and drove the jeep."
Woodbury also drove a F9F Panther on the mission when Williams’ plane was hit and he brought it home, on fire, for a harrowing wheels up landing. Woodbury had parked his plane off the runway and was nearby when Williams finally skidded to a halt and was out of the smoking ship faster than he swung a bat.
The Williams conversation at dinner last month prompted Woodbury to drop off a copy of Ted Williams At War written a few years ago by Bill Nowlin. If it were Woodbury’s favorite reading at the time, no wonder. He’s mentioned about 6,000 times (actually only on 16 pages) and not without reason. His talent made him well known on a base that included, besides Ted Williams, John Glenn, New York Yankees player Jerry Coleman, LLoyd Merriman of Cincinnati Reds and other future Marine Corps notables.
“I played the piano all the time,” he recalls, “and they would ask me to do shows at the O Club. At night there’s nothing to do. We did parodies on Marine songs, like ‘I wanted wings until I got wings, and I don’t want wings anymore.’"
His reputation spread to the Air Force when it and the Marines shared a base. Air Force brass asked him do shows.
“I never got paid for those shows, but one day an Air Force colonel asked me if he could do anything for me. I said, 'you sure can. Let me fly an F-86 Sabre Jet.' So they checked me out in a Sabre Jet.”
It was an interesting, if somewhat perilous way to advance a great career.
On Sept. 21, 1979 a gunman in Miami fired four shots from a .45 caliber pistol at Antonio Veciana. He almost missed. Veciana’s only wound was from a richocheted fragment that struck him in the head without serious injury. The attack came at a time when Veciana, a former CIA operative and highly respected man in the Cuban anti-Castro community, was cooperating with a House committee that had reopened the investigation of the death of President Kennedy. In the process Veciania had identified his long-time CIA contact as a man he had seen in Dallas with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the murder of President Kennedy. It was dramatic stuff in Washington. Veciana’s revelation could destroy the Warren Commission’s depiction of Oswald as a lone nut.
Until Veciana told the Oswald connection story to Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House committee who was working directly for Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker, he had never mentioned it except to his family. He had not even brought it up in many subsequent meetings with his CIA contact, hoping the contact would forget that Veciana ever saw him with Oswald. Veciana had two good reasons for silence. One was his personal safety. Anybody who would kill a president would not hesitate to do the same to anybody blowing the lid on government involvement in a presidential murder. But as important, in 1963 Veciana had already spent three years with deep involvement, beginning in Cuba, with very dangerous work - plots to kill Castro. It would not help his cause to be ensnared in the assassination investigation.
When Veciana met Fonzi in early 1976, he had experienced a falling out with his CIA contact. Not initially knowing that Fonzi was investigating the assassination, he casually mentioned the Oswald sighting. He thought it might be helpful to his situation. Fonzi was stunned. It took some time for Fonzi to establish Veciana’s credibility – which he found impeccable – and to learn the real name of the CIA man who Veciana had known only as “Maurice Bishop.” The breakthrough came when Sen. Schweiker himself recognized a police sketch (above) made from Veciana’s recollection. He said it resembled David Atlee Phillips, a CIA man who had testified before his committee.
It is always hard to tell what anybody in the CIA does, but after checking Phillips’ CIA career against Veciana’s detailed narrative of their work together, Fonzi concluded that Maurice Bishop had to be David Atlee Phillips. By then Phillips was very big at the agency – the retired chief of western hemisphere operations.
Fonzi arranged for a surprise encounter between Veciana and Phillips at a Washington luncheon for retired CIA officers. Phillips, obviously shaken, not only denied knowing Veciana, but said he never ever heard his name. Fonzi knew that was inconceivable. Fonzi had learned that Phillips had worked with anti-Castro Cubans in Florida for 15 years. He would have to know the founder and leader of Alpha 66, one of the most active anti-Castro organizations. In fact, the CIA had helped start that organization.
Privately, Veciana told Fonzi the man he met that day was indeed Phillips. But he declined to go public with that statement, for basically the same reasons he had kept his secret for years. He still hoped to resume work with the CIA in efforts to overthrow Castro. The second reason, as he was soon to learn, was that he was running an enormous personal risk.
Gaeton Fonzi’s book, The Last Investigation, which first appeared in Gold Coast magazine as two long articles in 1980, told the story of Veciana (and likely Oswald’s) CIA handler. The CIA, of course, denied that it ever had an agent using the name Maurice Bishop. Other researchers have since found sources that confirmed that David Atlee Phillips used the name Maurice Bishop, and was likely part of a conspiracy to kill a president, and then pin the blame on a lone assassin. Yet Veciana over the last 35 years refused to publicly confirm the identification.
Until now. On Nov. 22, the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Veciana sent a message to Marie Fonzi, Gaeton Fonzi’s widow. It was short and as loud as the crack of a high-powered rifle.
History redeemed.
We were in the fifth grade, about 11 years old, and we wanted to start a baseball team. We called ourselves the Shamrocks because most of the guys were from Irish stock. Cooney, Ryan, Lunney, Duffy, McGill, Mahoney, Breslin, etc. One of our pitchers had a distinctly German name. We called him “Nazi.” The team existed for about five years, with some turnover in personnel, as some players moved away or gave up sports for girls. Eventually we had one black player. Freddy also happened to be our best.
To finance this enterprise, we went around our nearest shopping district and asked for contributions. We called on a few dozen merchants. Hardly anybody said no. Dr. Wasserman, a Jewish dentist who had many patients among our families, was helpful. Our biggest sponsor, oddly enough, was Buzz Coleman, a bar, so we put his name on our gray uniforms with green caps and trim. We had enough money left over to buy bats and catcher’s stuff. This team was organized, coached (if you call it that) and managed by kids. There were no adults involved.
The team captain, also the manager, was Miles Mahoney. He was our toughest guy, which is why he was captain. Catcher, of course. Most of his front teeth were gone, and his knees were a mess before he started high school. He once caught a game without a face mask. Another time he got upset at our pitcher for not obeying his signals. He walked out to the mound and punched him. Our league was not without petty violence, but it always boy vs. boy.
“Our parents never even came to the games,” recalled Tommy Boyo (his email name). “We didn’t want them there.”
It wasn’t as if we were unsupervised. The recreation center had a highly likable director and a few high school or college fellows helping out as umpires. But they pretty much let us run our own show.
We recall this ancient history to show how far the world has deteriorated since those days when a Lionel train was every lad’s Christmas dream. Today parents not only feel a moral obligation to attend games, but even grandparents are expected to bring folding chairs to every event, beginning about the time the kids learn to walk. The kids think you don’t like them otherwise.
And so it comes to pass, or kick, or skate, that the Sun-Sentinel over the weekend had a major feature on the violence caused by adults at youth games. It gave some pretty bad examples of grown-ups going crazy – attacking officials, other parents, sometimes even the kids. An organizer of youth soccer leagues said the article was restrained.
“It happens all the time,” he said. “It’s much worse than they described.”
Now when we aren’t obsessed with solving presidential murders, the absurd over-emphasis on youth sports had been something of a career-long crusade. Our first full-time job was with a suburban Philadelphia paper. Having come out of the city, where Little League did not exist, we could not believe that suburban teams were not run as the Shamrocks, without parental involvement. To our amazement, the paper devoted almost as much space to Little League as it did to high school, and even college teams in the area.
We started at 6 a.m. (afternoon paper) and the first job was to collect all the reports from Little League press agents, which had been dropped off the night before. Our paper served much of a large county, with more than 40 municipalities, and some towns had two or three Little Leagues. As in any PR endeavor, the competence of the reports varied widely. Some were quite well done, with full names and correct spellings, and maybe even the scores correct. Others were a joke, barely recognizable as the English language. Naturally the best reports tended to get the most coverage, which led to letters to the editor claiming our paper was biased toward certain leagues and teams.
It got so bad that we soon began satirizing the whole mad system, suggesting that pregnant women with athletic spouses should have their potential offspring drafted by Little Leagues with territorial rights. But even then we don’t remember many, if any, incidents of parents clobbering each other with bats or threatening to emasculate umpires. But that probably happens today.
Fortunately, we soon were promoted up from the toy department, and a few years later went on to magazine work, where we specialize only in violence against presidents, and ponder constitutional law. We therefore propose an amendment prohibiting anyone older than 13 from showing up, or aiding or abetting in any way, youth sports. And that includes mothers, some of whom barely make the cut these days.
