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Softball players, coaches, teachers, runners, walkers, trainers: one influence just led to another.

Article Excerpt
"One thing led to another." How often have we heard that? And how true it is of my life in many ways -- especially as it relates to physical activities.

I was lucky in the 1930s to live near Detroit, Michigan, when the Tigers baseball team was red hot. Among my childhood heroes were Schoolboy Rowe, Charlie Gehringer (the almost silent second baseman) and Mickey Cochrane, catcher and manager. I saw only one game in person, but the radio served me nicely. In the fall, when the World Series was on, I'd run all the way home from school, slam into the house and yell, "Mama, who's ahead?" My mother was not a baseball fan, but she always had the game on so she could bring me up-to-date.

Then late afternoon or early evening, I'd walk across the road to a vacant lot where young men in their teens and early 20s played pickup softball games. A friend and I, both about 10 or 11, would stand around watching, longing to play but too shy to ask. After a time, a young man at bat would yell, "Barb, do you want to run the bases for...

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