Looking Back to the '60s: Little League and Other Fun

Hey batter, hey batter ... swing!  That was the mantra when we'd watch my brothers playing Little League baseball. The pitcher would eye home plate, wind up, and burn the ball into the web of the catcher’s mitt. The batter would swing and in 1/10 of a second, he’d cast his fate to the wind.

Home runs made heroes, but strikeouts sent you back to the dugout with your head hung low, like a sad hound dog.

We'd shout, chew, jeer and cheer, as the games were enhances by the aroma of grilling hot dogs, sizzling burgers, and sugar-packed Bazooka Bubble Gum, with that fun, puny comic strip inside.

We were there with all the other families in Studio City who came to watch their sons play. Girls weren’t allowed to join the boys back then.  Otherwise, I’m sure my twin sister, Teresa, and I would have gladly tried out, donned our cleats and hit the outfield in the gum-chewing style of  Rosie in “ A League of Their Own.”

My brothers’ athletic prowess provided so much inspiration for our own sports adventures, and at Carpenter Avenue Elementary the sports were plentiful!

Recess marked the time when we broke out of the prison of the classroom to play games like dodgeball, kickball, sockball, handball, volleyball and other non-ball activities like hopscotch and the jungle gym. I wasn’t very good at balance sports, so I stuck to the ball games with my jock pals, most of whom were guys.

There were a few other tomboys like Teresa and me, including Diana Sharpe, with whom I’ve reconnected via Facebook.  If you excelled in sports, you were automatically included into the fraternity of boys and became a pal for life.

Hormones hadn’t kicked in, so the boys usually preferred it if you could kick a ball over the fence, as opposed to whether you wore designer duds.

Summer brought another set of sports, including roller skating, with those weird metal keys you used tighten your skates. Our coach, Jo Hollis, would crank up a 45 on her record player, and we’d glide to “Great Balls of Fire” and other groovy tunes that were popular at the time.

If we were really lucky, we’d have a Kool-Aid and watermelon break, where we’d relax under the awning, spit the pits, and slurp to our satisfaction before we’d hit the pavement again and roll to another tune.

Summer also brought field trips to Santa Monica, where we’d pile into one of those daisy-colored buses, with a signed or forged trip slip from one of our parents. Rambling up Sepulveda Boulevard, we’d sing camp songs, fly paper airplanes or holler until we got to the beach where we would body surf, make sand castles, and enjoy the simple pleasures of a summer day.