My All-Star Mom

My mom raised four girls in Livingston, a stay-at-home mom at a time when all the moms in our neighborhood, and nearly all the moms who we knew, were home.

In a different era my mom may have been a professional … ballplayer.

It’s not that far fetched. Her mom was a daredevil who rode a motorcycle inside a giant globe on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.

My mom could play ball. She learned to play on a lot in Newark, a scrappy blonde who also dreamed of dance classes. When we were growing up, she taught us to catch and hit in our suburban yard on Collinwood Avenue.

From our backyard, we could hear the cheers of the ballplayers coming from the boys-only Little League fields on Meadowbrook Place. It would be years before one of my sisters could play beside the boys, a fight to promote equity in the sports I remember as something my gym teacher – now LHS Principal Pamela Clause McGroarty – would help promote.

My mom helped out with a sports program for 5^th and 6^th grade girls in this town, an after-school league run by the Department of Recreation. She coached our team at the old Roosevelt School and later managed the after-school league.

I began my writing “career” penning sports stories for the weekly newspaper as a 10-year-girl with such fluid prose as:  The Roosevelt girls softball team defeated Collins on Monday afternoon, 6 to 5. Marilyn Joyce scored once in the win. The team is coached by her mother, Dottie Joyce.

So on this Mother's Day, I'm stepping up to the plate for my mom: Thank you for giving me my start in something that I grew up to love to do. I’m a writer because of you.

Now let's play ball.

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