She Plays Hardball With Politicians, but Softball Is for Fun

Mention Shirley Grindle’s name to certain Orange County politicians, lobbyists or developers and their lips may curl into a sneer. They see her as a self-righteous busybody and, most likely, not a very good sport. After all, more than anyone around here in the last 30 years, she’s responsible for limiting the amount of influence-peddling that goes on in the back rooms of power.

She led the TINCUP (Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics) drive in 1978 that prohibited supervisors from voting on certain projects if they had received money above a certain amount from the project’s sponsors. In 1993, she persuaded supervisors to approve a ban on virtually all gifts to a wide range of county officials.

She’ll kick butt and take names. Her latest plan is an Ethics Commission to do what she says Orange County public officials won’t do when it comes to campaign finance violations.

When not on that circuit, she’s putting in the mileage on her other abiding interest: the environment. On the agenda these days is open-space and multi-use trails along Santiago Creek.

Serious stuff from a serious-minded woman of 70.

So if I had to pick someone to have me laughing out loud, it wouldn’t be the estimable Ms. Grindle, so committed she still keeps voluminous files on campaign contributors to local political candidates.

But here she is, sitting in her living room in Orange and talking about her latest venture -- senior women’s softball. That ball got rolling after years of watching her granddaughter, now a teenager, playing organized softball. Then, a few weeks ago, Grindle saw a story in the Orange County Register about a senior women’s league in Westminster.

She made a phone call to the league. She thought there’d be tryouts. They told her if she had 20 bucks, she was on the team.

“They asked me what position I wanted to play,” she says, and she told them, “Hell, I haven’t played in 55 years. So, they stuck me out in right field. Thank God, nobody hit a ball to me.”

She was such a good teen athlete that the boys at her Long Beach junior high let her play on their baseball team. She hasn’t played since, she says.

I ask her to describe how it felt, at 70, to play right field. “As an observer of my granddaughter’s games, when you’re on the sidelines, you see the whole picture. When you’re out in the field, you really don’t see the whole picture. It’s really a strange feeling. I suddenly found myself not aware of what was happening. For instance, when someone hits the ball and runs to first base, you don’t know what the hell happened. You don’t always know where the ball is and what’s going on.”

Then, there’s fielding your position. “If someone hits a ball toward you and it’s more than 10 feet away, forget it,” she says.

And then there’s hitting. She had never played slo-pitch softball, where the ball is lobbed and must be at least six feet high in its arc.

“When I got up to bat, I thought, ‘My God, I’ve got to hit this thing coming?’ I knew how to stand, and I hit the ball. I couldn’t believe it. I hit a nice grounder. I just stood there watching it. I forgot to run. But I finally did and made it to first base. The next week, I thought, ‘I can’t watch where the ball goes.’ So I hit the ball and took off running and ripped the muscle in my left leg.”

Somehow or other during the game, she also did something to a forearm muscle. It wasn’t pleasant, but it helped to remember her team’s name: No Whining Allowed.

I have to ask: Is it worth it? “I wanted something to do,” she says. “I sat there watching all my granddaughter’s games, wishing I could be out there playing, and here’s the opportunity. I still think I’m 45. I’m finding out I’m not.”

Anyone who knows Grindle knows she’s not the type to want to embarrass herself. “I’m so competitive,” she says. “Whatever I do, I want to be one of the best. I finally came to realize this is my Waterloo. I am not going to be one of the best softball players. I have to face that. Maybe 40 years ago, but not at 70.”

The team has eight games left. Will she continue? “If I don’t kill myself,” she says, laughing. “If I don’t end up in the hospital.”

If only campaign finance were this funny.

You could quit, I suggest. “What keeps me going is the hope I can do better,” she says. “That’s the competitor in me. I’m very disappointed with my performance and I’m determined to do better. The only way to do better is to keep playing.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.