ORANGE COUNTY HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES : A Patchwork of Pursuits : Softball: Topley’s enthusiasm, determination have helped her excel on international level.
It all started, Shirley Topley says, with a good, strong stick as a bat and a dried-out piece of cow dung.
Bare bones equipment, indeed, but enough to play ball on the isolated family farm in Alberta, Canada, where Topley developed a love for sports more than a half-century ago.
At “Topley Stadium,” a lap around the cornstalks was a home run. The sole fan support came from the family cow. And when the “ball” finally crumbled, the game was over.
But never for long--not if you were Shirley Topley.
If life were a quilt, Topley’s would be a fabulous patchwork of athletic pursuits stitched together by grit, determination and a boundless enthusiasm. Although it was in softball that she gained the most fame, she also competed on an international level in basketball and field hockey, and dabbled in competitive soccer, track and field, racquetball and bowling.
At 57, the Anaheim resident is still going strong, walking an hour each morning to keep fit, pitching batting practice to the Cal Poly Pomona softball team that she helps coach, and staying actively involved with softball at the national and international levels.
Topley, who will be inducted into the Orange County Hall of Fame Oct. 29, was head coach of the United States softball team that won the gold medal this year at the Pan American Games in Cuba. Her Orange County Majestics, an Amateur Softball Assn. team that she helped found in 1982, is a perennial power and won the ASA national title in 1987.
Topley says she is thrilled to see softball at its current peak of international popularity, and would give anything to be among the coaches when the sport makes its Olympic debut at Atlanta in 1996. But, she adds, she would not trade her playing days for nowadays.
“People ask, ‘Would you give up what you had for how it is now with the scholarships, the Olympics and all that?’ ” Topley says.
“I tell them, no, not at all. My experiences were all . . . just so wonderful.”
Topley was born in Hondo, a tiny town about 90 miles north of Edmonton, Alberta. It was there her parents set up their homestead, after a long horse-and-wagon ride from Saskatchewan.
Although the family lived on a farm, Topley’s father wasn’t much for farming. Instead, he would walk the railroad tracks from town to town, looking for work. Sometimes, Topley says, he’d be gone six months and return with $10.
For diversion, the Topleys turned to sports. Curling, a game played on ice with heavy weights and brooms, was a family favorite. Every year, relatives would gather for a curling tournament. First prize was a huge trophy--made of empty tin cans.
The family moved to Vancouver, where Topley played every sport she could, either organized at school or pickup games at the playground across the street from her house. At 12, she earned her first victory plaque, enduring a lengthy elimination process. The sport? Yo-yo.
“She knew all the going yo-yo tricks at the time,” her sister said.
But it was her basketball tricks that really got her athletic career going. Topley played on the Canadian national basketball team for 10 years. She played in two Pan-Am Games, including in 1959 in Chicago, where she also could have competed in the javelin. But the events were scheduled for the same day, and Topley was forced to choose. (She chose basketball.)
Most of the time, though, Topley competed in a variety of sports, in a variety of places.
She toured Australia with the Canadian field hockey team for nearly four months. In 1958-59, she toured the United States and Central and South America with the Harlem Globetrotters, as a member of the “Hollywood Queens.”
“Wherever we’d go, we’d play the local men’s team,” Topley said. “We beat most of them, too.”
Her softball career began in Vancouver in the late 1950s. A first baseman, Topley hit for power and was an able pitcher when needed. In 1961, Topley’s Vancouver team traveled to Portland, Ore., for what was then considered the world championship tournament (now the ASA nationals). Topley played well enough to be named to the All-American team, an honor she would attain 11 times in her career.
Months after the tournament, she received in the mail a letter addressed simply: “Shirley Topley, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.” It was from the Orange Lionettes. They wanted Topley on their team, and she accepted.
Moving from Vancouver to Southern California, Topley said, was complete culture shock. But softball helped her make the transition. With a strong community following, the Lionette games drew thousands of fans to Hart Park in Orange. And although they were in no way favored going into the 1962 nationals, the Lionettes won, a moment Topley remembers as the most exciting of her career.
The next year, Topley helped the Raybestos Brakettes of Stratford, Conn., win the nationals. She then returned to the Lionettes for national titles in 1965, 1969 and 1970. Her nine-year totals with the Lionettes included a .298 batting average and a .987 fielding percentage.
Carol Spanks, Topley’s longtime teammate and work mate as head coach at Cal Poly Pomona, says Topley was “tireless, very intense, very durable.”
Spanks says once, when Topley was replacing the catcher, a tipped ball went foul, smashing a knuckle on Topley’s hand. Everyone knew Topley was in tremendous pain, but she went on playing. Another time, while at first base and with the sun directly in her eyes, a ball hit Topley square in the mouth.
“It was the same thing. She just took a minute and got back into it,” says Spanks, who will be Topley’s presenter at the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame awards night. “We couldn’t believe it.”
Equally impressive was the fact that Topley worked more than 40 hours a week as a manager of a printing shop. Further, from 1967 to 1975, she coached and played for the Lionettes. She also coached the Lionette farm team, the Cubettes.
In one regional tournament, the Lionettes and Cubettes were in the same bracket and were forced to play each other. Topley chose to coach the younger team, rather than play for the Lionettes. That, Spanks says, is typical of Topley’s ever-giving personality.
But there were times when Topley wouldn’t bend.
In 1976, the Lionettes went pro, joining a newly formed women’s professional league as the Santa Ana Lionettes. Topley was named general manager and coach of the team, for which she also played.
She got out after the first year.
Since then, Topley has devoted most of her athletic energy to coaching. As an assistant coach at Cal Poly, she has helped Spanks lead the team--a Division II program that plays a Division I schedule--to national prominence.
Topley has donated her time--and approximately 300 of her own trophies--to the Special Olympics. She plays “Santa” at her mother’s nursing home in Canada. A few years back, Spanks says, she spent countless hours with a neighbor who had Alzheimer’s disease.
Perhaps that is why Topley didn’t seem fazed by the yearlong task she took upon herself two years ago: finding as many former area softball players she could for a multi-decade reunion of teams from as far back as the 1930s.
She said she just got the idea and went to work. After a year of researching through library microfilm rooms--and a couple of hundred telephone calls--her dream came true. More than 200 former players showed up for a weekend reunion last October in Pomona. The biggest hit of the reunion was an old-timers game at Cal Poly.
Vera Miller, 78, pitched, as did 67-year-old Bertha Ragan Tickey, two of the premier pitchers of all time. Dot Wilkinson, 70, caught. Batters in their 50s, 60s and 70s swung at pitches as they never swung before.
“It was so incredible,” Topley said. “They slid and everything! And the ladies that weren’t able to play sat in the stands and did the wave! We were supposed to only play for an hour, we had all these other activities planned, but once they got started they wanted to play all day . . .”
As she recounts the story, Topley’s eyes light up. The reunion, she says, was worth all the work--just like all the other wonderful moments in her career.
“I’ve had nothing but great memories,” she said. “I’ve traveled the world, made great friends, and I’ve been able to give back to the sport. I mean, really. What more could you ask for?”
Hall of Fame Banquet Facts
WHAT: 11th Orange County Hall of Fame Banquet.
WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 29.
WHERE: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim.
HIGHLIGHTS: Tickets, $100 each or $1,000 for a table of 10, can be secured by calling (714) 935-0199. The affair (cocktails at 6 p.m, dinner at 7) will include the induction of Homer Beatty, Bill Cook, Bobby Knoop, Pat McInally, Alex Omalev, Bruce Penhall, Dwight Stones, Bertha Ragan Tickey and Shirley Topley .