Where Girls’ Softball Is a Social Issue

Over in the West Valley, the big story is girls’ softball and the literally uneven playing fields.

No doubt about it, teams like Girl Power, Hard Candy and the Totally Dangerettes play on lumpy diamonds while their brothers play hardball on well-manicured fields. Parents got mad and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit demanding that girls have equal access to these public facilities.

“You have to recognize,” says one coach, “that girls can get a scholarship in softball just like a young man in baseball.” And girls can dream of winning gold medals for Team USA.

Now let’s go across town to Pacoima’s gopher-infested Sunnyslope Field, where Herman Cox, Eric Miles and Terry Hill are constructing a modest scoreboard, putting a little sweat equity into the neighborhood they’ve always called home. As in other youth leagues, some girls play hardball with the boys. But only this year has Sunnyslope launched a girls’ softball program.

Cox, the 28-year-old president of the Pacoima Youth Athletic Assn., hasn’t given much thought to softball scholarships or future Olympians.

“Maybe if they get involved in sports,” he says, “that will cut down on teen pregnancy.”

*

To visit Sunnyslope and its three modest ball fields and to meet Cox, Miles and Hill would lend a certain perspective to the ACLU’s latest attempt to advance the cause of justice in America. The inequities between boys and girls in sports may yet be humbled by the gap between haves and have-nots.

But Cox doesn’t want to give the wrong impression. Sunnyslope, he says, is not located in a poor neighborhood. “There’s a difference between low-income and poor,” he says.

Point of pride taken. But what is a social occasion in more affluent communities may have higher stakes in a low-income minority community. “It’s more of a social issue out here,” Cox says.

The difference between social events and social issues is not only the difference between worrying about lost scholarships and about lost childhoods. The young all-stars of Northridge, Woodland Hills and Encino routinely vie, often bitterly, for a crack at the Little League World Series. Meanwhile, kids the same age across town may be falling victim to deadly rivalries of gang life.

This is something Herman Cox and his friends know from experience--both from their own misspent days and their friends’.

Anaheim Angels outfielder Garret Anderson grew up playing baseball at Sunnyslope. But there are many others, Cox says, who squandered athletic talent.

“Once we had an opportunity to get in a gang, we went for the gang instead of doing something positive,” Cox says. And many guys who didn’t become hard-core gang members, he said, “were ditching school, going to the beach, just goofing off and spending their time on something not useful.”

Such as getting girls pregnant. Some teenage fathers, Cox says, would wind up quitting school to take jobs to help support their new families.

Now that Herman Cox, Terry Hill and Eric Miles each have two children themselves--including sons Herman Jr., Terry Jr. and Eric Jr.--they say they better understand just how important a nice ball field can be, for everybody’s kids.

Just as my father put in long days sprucing up my Little League, these men have toiled weekends improving Sunnyslope. I dropped by on Friday, the day before more than 150 volunteers were expected to gather to finish grooming the fields and painting the bleachers, backstops, dugouts and snack stands. New drinking fountains have been added in recent weeks. Restrooms and a parking lot are planned. The Volunteer Center Assistance League of Southern California helped organize the Saturday event, and Ball Park Franks has contributed $10,000 toward the upgrades.

But, as in other youth sports leagues, the heart and soul of the effort come from the parents.

“It gives you the greatest feeling in the world,” Cox says, “to do something positive for the kids and know you’re part of it.”

That means doing something for the girls too.

Sunnyslope’s fledgling softball program has about 20 girls, but because they range in age from 7 to 17, there aren’t enough to field a team in an existing league. That is a goal for the future, Cox says.

For now, coaches are schooling the girls in fundamentals, preparing them for the big Mother’s Day game. The opponents? Their moms.

It should be a lot of fun. But it’s more than fun and games.

Cox knows of girls “starting to get pregnant at 12, 13, 14. . . . There’s a lot of unwed mothers here.”

Sometimes, he evicts boys from Sunnyslope’s field so the girls can practice. “You want to get the girls’ minds on something straight and positive,” he explains. “Not on boys.”

And so just as this father worries about 7-year-old Herman Jr., he worries no less about 5-year-old Analissa. He wants her to have a level playing field too, in every sense of the phrase.