I am writing my sports memoir. It is a chance to reflect on my experience and to help inform future sports enthusiasts continue to play a role, particularly in youth sports. I believe the story also is a microcosm of American society and culture, its moral and spiritual decline and its commercialization. I played sports, followed all sports, collected sports memorabilia and was the instigator and co-founder of a girls’ softball league in 1984 which is still going strong after 40 years. Ironically, for the last almost ten years I have avoided watching professional sports. I have stopped reading the sports page. I no longer even know the names of the teams or the players. Yet it became compelling to write my memoir a little over a year ago after I was honored at the anniversary dinner of the Albany-Berkeley Girls Softball League. This writing encouraged me to not only tell the story of my vision and involvement in the League but to also explain why I was committed to a certain view of healthy competition. To do this I needed to tell my development and history as a player. I needed to reflect upon my training in ethics and commitment to religious values. I needed to relate the day-to-day work with young women, Mothers, Fathers and community leaders at a certain time in American history, given racial, gender and class turmoil. I offer this story so others can update with their experiences of being “soccer parents,” softball and baseball coaches, adult organizers and more importantly for former and future youth players telling their stories.

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It all began on a sidewalk in St. Louis playing “run down.” An old mit, ball of twine wrapped in back tape and two makeshift bases was all that was needed. Little did I realize that it was also in my family’s blood. The Stelmach’s and Herscher’s were sports families. They were not just fans they were participants on the streets, creating leagues, playing “pick up” games and eventually top high school, college and professional athletes. My athletic life played out in the typical way, especially for baseball. I played Little League, Babe Ruth League, High School and College baseball. Throw in a significant High School basketball career and a coach for an All-Star Babe Ruth League team and you start to get the picture.

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I kept score for every TV baseball game I watched when in elementary school. I amassed a 20,000-baseball card collection. I followed the career with ardent interest of my college roommate who played major league baseball. My first wife, a rabid sports fan, and I had two daughters. There were only a few opportunities for young girls to play team sports in the early 1980s. Soccer was just getting started. Berkeley had no girls’ softball league other than a high school team with only a few players with well develop skills. What next? Create a League.

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This led to over 300 young girls playing in the Albany-Berkeley Girls Softball League. Graduates of the League getting sports scholarships. Michael Lewis of Money Ball fame writing a book about the League.

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But this the tip of the iceberg of the memoir. There is the role of adult moral development. The eventual instrumentalization of girls’ softball and youth sports in general. There was Title Nine that mandated gender equality. There was a city that was segregated in racial and class enclaves. Gender justice was being demanded. All of this intertwined with trying to raise a family, finish doctoral work, teaching full-time, loss of a spouse and a new relationship. Yes, all part of a whole.

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As our culture is more and more fragmented into separate spheres, religion, economics, education, entertainment, aesthetics etc. It was not easy seeing how all this is related. My memoir of the League is a metaphor at one level yet at another level it helps to explain the reality and importance of an integrated life.

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It will be exciting and instructive to hear others tell their story and how they managed living in the modern world were so many traditions have vanished; what kind of community was possible and how could we agree?

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Read my memoir here. 

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Read about my "Ethics and Competition” TV panel here.

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