Mom’s the Word
If it’s Wednesday, it must be soccer.
If it’s Saturday, it might be a mad scramble from one youngster’s soccer game in the morning to another’s basketball game at noon, a cousin’s birthday party after that and a speaking engagement at night.
“Nice move, Drew!” Ann Meyers Drysdale shouts as her 9-year-old daughter breaks free and sprints down the right sideline toward the goal at a Huntington Beach park, slender legs churning, short hair flying.
It’s soccer season for Darren too, and the 12-year-old is on the verge of officiating his sister’s game, then another official arrives.
The oldest boy, D.J.--short for Don Jr.--is 14 and has a keen mind for baseball but is playing organized basketball for the first time and might try football this fall, when he will be a freshman at Huntington Beach High.
His mother, at 5 feet 9, suddenly finds herself looking up at him.
“He just passed me. He’s 5-10,” she says.
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They were the original Hall of Fame couple, Ann Meyers and Don Drysdale.
She might be the only soccer mom in existence who actually earned the Basketball Hall of Fame sweatshirt she wears, breaking ground as the first woman to earn an athletic scholarship to UCLA and as a member of the first U.S. women’s Olympic team in 1976. Later, she became the first to try out with an NBA team, the Indiana Pacers.
Drysdale, enshrined at Cooperstown for his career as a dominating Dodger pitcher alongside Sandy Koufax, was a broadcaster when he met Meyers at a made-for-TV “Superstars” competition in 1979.
Their life together ended too soon, only seven years after they were married, when Drysdale died of a heart attack at 56 in 1993 during a trip to Montreal with the Dodgers.
The boys were 5 and 3, and Drew was a babe in arms, only 4 months old.
Now they are sprouting upward, an active and affectionate brood, seemingly always dangling off their mom by an arm or a leg when they’re together.
You get the idea when you phone the Drysdale house and get the answering machine.
“You’ve reached Annie, D.J., Darren and Drew, and we’re out playin’ ball, but we’ll get back to you.”
Drysdale’s presence is everywhere in the family’s Huntington Beach home, from pictures with the children to one with Ronald Reagan to baseball memorabilia.
“Don was great with the kids when they were little,” said Meyers Drysdale, 47. “It was different because he was older. His daughter was grown from his first marriage. To have these little ones around, he was excited.
“I go and talk to the announcers or managers or people involved with the game, they say that’s all Don talked about, was the family. His eyes would just light up when he saw them. So I miss that.”
They all miss him, but his grin beams into the house from behind many frames.
“They see their dad every day,” Meyers Drysdale said.
“We tell stories, but sometimes it’s frustrating for Darren because he can’t remember. Drew was just born. She kind of feels left out, like, ‘How come I wasn’t in the pictures?’”
Ann’s life is a busy swirl of the youngsters’ activities and her own full schedule, including her work as a television analyst that takes her away for days at a time during the NCAA tournament in March and the WNBA season during the summer.
“Darren, you said you did your social studies?” she called up the stairs at home the other day.
“Drew, what do we need to do for this project?”
Her family--a brother, Mark, lives a few minutes away--and a longtime baby-sitter help make it work.
“My family’s been real supportive, and I have somebody who comes in and stays when I’m gone and helps tremendously,” she said. “I really couldn’t do those things without that.
“I try to have home-cooked dinners once or twice a week. But it’s hard.”
Her hands are full, but she has seen it done before.
Her mother, Pat, had 11 children, and finished raising them on her own after she and the children’s father divorced.
“She’s our role model, all of us, as parents,” Meyers Drysdale said. “She’s our rock.”
Her mother sees how difficult it can be.
“It’s pretty tough with her schedule, because of working,” said Pat Meyers, who lives in La Habra and sees the children often.
“When she’s home, she spends a lot of time with them, and she makes sure they’re on top of their schoolwork. She gets out and plays ball with them too.”
Except for D.J.
“He won’t play me,” Meyers Drysdale said. “Darren will ask me to play one-on-one. D.J. could probably beat me, except I’d foul him. I wouldn’t let him score.”
Respected for her skill as an insightful and frank analyst on men’s and women’s basketball, Meyers Drysdale works often but has declined some major opportunities.
“I’m very grateful to the people in the business,” she said. “I know I could probably do a lot more games, probably double. But I also know there’s no way I could be the kind of parent I need to be.”
She works at being the kind of parent she and Drysdale talked about being together.
Not the least of that is finding the right place for sports in the lives of children whose endeavors will be watched closely--though probably not as closely as Jaden Agassi the first time he appears on a tennis court.
“Don and I talked about it,” Meyers Drysdale said. “We didn’t expect them to become professional athletes. If they do, great.
“But they’ve got to, No. 1, have fun doing it. And, No. 2, they’ve got to work at it. And if they’re going to work at their game, they’ve got to work at their academics.
“The boys have struggled a few times academically, and they’ve missed some games; they’ve missed some practices. It’s academics first.”
The only other rule seems to be that it’s too early for the sort of specialization that turns the year into one endless basketball season or one long baseball season.
“In our day, you got on your bike and you were gone till dinnertime,” Meyers Drysdale said.
“When you become focused on one sport, what’s that about? Aren’t sports supposed to be fun?”
For now, they seem to be.
D.J. is long-armed and lanky, descended from late-bloomers on both sides. But he seems destined to shoot past the other boys later, like his father, who was 6-6, or his uncle, David Meyers, who is 6-9 and played on two NCAA championship teams for John Wooden at UCLA.
Meyers Drysdale played for the Bruins’ 1978 women’s title team, but she is close to Wooden too, and even calls him “Papa.”
“He’s been very influential in my life, not just basketball,” she said. “He lost [his wife] Nellie and then I lost Don. He was very supportive and right there. I feel like one of his grandkids, even though I didn’t play for him.”
It won’t be long before people turn to look and see if another generation might play in Westwood or even at Dodger Stadium, where the boys became regulars in the dugout in the months after Drysdale died, embraced by Tom Lasorda and Vin Scully, among others.
For now, they just play.
“D.J. hasn’t settled on a sport. None of them have,” his mother said.
“He really knows baseball. He plays every position. When he’s behind the plate, he knows where every ball should be. When he’s at shortstop, he remembers the count.
“Darren played some Little League. It was too boring for him. He wants to run.
“Drew loves to run too. She’s always trying to keep up with her brothers. She played basketball too. Swimming, soccer. I think her favorite thing is climbing trees.”
It’s not only sports.
“Drew’s got singing. D.J.’s got acting,” Meyers Drysdale said. “And I send them to faith-formation school [at church].”
Her mother knows how difficult it has been, but she sees past the usual bumps and disciplinary issues of growing up and watches how well her daughter and the children are doing after losing a husband and father.
“That first year is the toughest,” Pat Meyers said. “A lot of it, you have to go through by yourself. Having children brings it to reality. You have to go on day to day and do the things that have to be done. Somehow, you get through it.”
Somehow, you keep going.
“I’m sure it’s hard on the kids when she goes away,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a little fear because their dad went away and didn’t come back.”
Their mom has always been there.
“She’s amazing in a lot of ways,” Pat Meyers said. “She’s very thoughtful. At Christmastime, I don’t know how many cards she sends out.
“I say, ‘Annie, I think you could cut that in half.’”
Her daughter doesn’t listen.
She can’t have it all anymore, but she can give it all she has.