Bernie Sanders.

Too Legit to Quit.

(Never forget.)

But here you are in the ninth
Two men out and three men on
Nowhere to look but inside
Where we all respond to
Pressure...

~Billy Joel.
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Did I ever mention that back in the 1970s I was the first girl to integrate the Thornton Youth Baseball League?

It happened quite innocently: my younger brother Myles got a flyer in school looking for boys and girls to join the T-ball league, and my mother called in to sign us up. I was too old to play t-ball; kids my age played Little League, they told her. (There was no softball for girls then. Just the 16-inch game played by adults in bar leagues.)

Coming after The Bad News Bears, and the real-life lawsuits, they simply made me an Oriole, where I played in orange and black with some of my classmates, against the Cardinals, Hawks, and ... damned if I can remember the other team's name. The Blue Jays, or was that just t-ball? (Myles was a Blue Jay.) No, it was the Eagles, I think. (I loved my uniform.)

I could definitely compete in the classroom, it was well proven, so it never occured to me that I could not play with the boys. My father was an immigrant, who thought sports were just games, so he never told me baseball was just for boys. (My Dad always let us alone in that manner; he never taught us the traditional American stereotypes, likely because he wasn't brought up that way himself. Actions meant more than looks to him.)

I was NOT the best player that first year*, but I learned to hit, could field a fly, and had the brains to eventually work my way up to shortshop. (You got to be paying attention and know where to be when, in that position.) I learned to lay down a bunt to sacrifice, how to slide, how to draw a walk, and I was fast on the basepaths. Still am.

In coming years, more girls played: Kelly Dennison, whose brother Mike was just a year younger than me and whose father coached, I remember really shined out there.

Hillary, and all the women who came up before Title IX, never learned to compete with men and boys on the same playing field, I think. Hence the emphasis on her sex.

Except, the game is not played that way in real life. The final score matters, and it helps if you can win your teammates' trust.

That's what baseball taught me.
Also, never be afraid of the ball.
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* I did win the red 10-speed bike** on display in the local barber shop, that first year, for hustling the most Raffle Tickets to the annual Little League fundraiser banquet. Again, my mother played a key role.

I'll never forget my first sale: convincing our local librarian to buy a ticket for a dollar, which I was pitching as a ticket for the dinner-dance banquet. I made the sale, but my mother, listening, taught me outside to sell them as raffle tickets for the money prizes, not as admission tickets to the baseball banquet. (I doubt that librarian went.)

After hitting up all the homes in our subdivision, I sold to outsiders in neighboring towns, door-to-door and sitting outside a grocery store while my older sister took guitar lessons nearby for an hour weekly. I learned to pitch to people outside town who might want to take a dollar chance, and were happy to fill out the ticket and give a kid the buck. I sold so many tickets, in fact, they ran out of pre-printed tickets to sell!

Charlie Hustle was always my favorite player.
For his play alone, he really deserves to be in the Hall.

** The bike, in turn, led to the afternoon paper route delivering for The Hammond Times. I hated the collecting (what do you do when the people inside just will not open the door, and you have to go back again and again?***), but I loved delivering daily, and being the first one up in the town on Sunday mornings: You could ride the yellow line down the middle of Chicago Road (the busiest street in town) with no fear of cars****, coming home with an empty bag...

*** You convince them it is okay to pay with a check when there's no cash on hand, and for a full month at a time too, when they finally do come to the door. That's what you do. (My Mom advised me there too!)

**** Or anything, or anyone, else. I still remember reading of Johnny Gosch though, but of course, "things like that never happen here."