pretty easily: Be tough, play to win, salute the flag, shoot a few savages if necessary, and let the womenfolk cook and clean and weep and such. But a boy growing up in the 1970s had to cling to the last few shreds of that simple path wherever he found them while besieged on all sides by uncertainty.
The two most popular television shows of the era, All in the Family and M*A*S*H , prominently featured characters (Archie Bunker and Frank Burns, respectively) whose histrionic embracing of the John Wayne Way was continuously lampooned as rigid, anachronistic, and just plain wrong. Meanwhile, in schoolyards all over the country, especially schoolyards that served hippie-influenced classrooms such as mine, children were encouraged to play something called âNew Games,â which were all, if the photos in the New Games book were any guide, invented by ambiguously gendered giggling longhairs prancing across meadows under the influence of potent hallucinogens. All the New Games valued toothless hand-holding cooperation over competition and had no real rules, only suggestive guidelines and the foundational dictate that there were never to be winners or losers. My free-school class owned the book and also a rainbow-colored parachute that served as the centerpiece for the New Gamesâ most elaborate invention, which proved to have all the drama and enjoyment of folding and unfolding a gigantic multicolored bed sheet. I never took to New Games, but I canât say I didnât love another more powerful contributor to the decadeâs gamboling corrosion of What Was What and Who Was Who: Free to Be You and Me .
The massively popular child-targeting musical television special and accompanying massively popular album got children all over America singing along to catchy, ebullient ditties about girls doing boy things and boys doing girl things. How silly to walk in a well-worn rut! How silly to pretend to be tough or care about being first! How wonderful to be whatever you want to be! Traditional sports made a couple notable appearances, but only as a kind of foil. In one song, a gigantic real-life NFL player who had once been a member of the Los Angeles Ramsâ legendarily menacing âFearsome Foursomeâ defensive line now comforted a boy named Dudley Pippin who had worried that he was âa sissyâ because he broke into sobs. âItâs all right to cry,â crooned the former athlete who had once crushed guys to the turf with bone-shattering tackles. (Adding to the confusion, the hulking singer had the first name of a girl: Rosey.) In another song, âWilliamâs Doll,â a boy admits to his grandmother that he considers baseball his favorite sport but says, in a line that still makes me shudder, âIâd give my bat and ball and glove / to have a doll that I could love.â
Though I liked the album as much as anyone, âWilliamâs Dollâ cut a little close to home, touching the same nerve that sparked my
anger whenever a stranger saw my long, curly hair and thought I was a girl. This happened a few times, especially in the years before I was old enough to play little league baseball and therefore able to wear my team cap everywhere, like an ID badge proving that I was, just like my brother and all my gods, not a little girl but a boy.
Topps 1977 #634: Big League Brothers
From the back of this card: âPaul and Rick both picked up baseballs as soon as they were old enough.â
Â
Ian had started playing little league the year we moved to Vermont, away from our father. He wasnât very good at the beginning. After his little league games in his first year I always asked him the same question:
âDid you get a hit yet?â
The answer, no, was eventually rendered in the form of an I-Am-Going-to-Punch-You glare. By the end of the season Iâd stopped asking. That summer we played catch in the yard of the house in Randolph Center, then, when we moved
The two most popular television shows of the era, All in the Family and M*A*S*H , prominently featured characters (Archie Bunker and Frank Burns, respectively) whose histrionic embracing of the John Wayne Way was continuously lampooned as rigid, anachronistic, and just plain wrong. Meanwhile, in schoolyards all over the country, especially schoolyards that served hippie-influenced classrooms such as mine, children were encouraged to play something called âNew Games,â which were all, if the photos in the New Games book were any guide, invented by ambiguously gendered giggling longhairs prancing across meadows under the influence of potent hallucinogens. All the New Games valued toothless hand-holding cooperation over competition and had no real rules, only suggestive guidelines and the foundational dictate that there were never to be winners or losers. My free-school class owned the book and also a rainbow-colored parachute that served as the centerpiece for the New Gamesâ most elaborate invention, which proved to have all the drama and enjoyment of folding and unfolding a gigantic multicolored bed sheet. I never took to New Games, but I canât say I didnât love another more powerful contributor to the decadeâs gamboling corrosion of What Was What and Who Was Who: Free to Be You and Me .
The massively popular child-targeting musical television special and accompanying massively popular album got children all over America singing along to catchy, ebullient ditties about girls doing boy things and boys doing girl things. How silly to walk in a well-worn rut! How silly to pretend to be tough or care about being first! How wonderful to be whatever you want to be! Traditional sports made a couple notable appearances, but only as a kind of foil. In one song, a gigantic real-life NFL player who had once been a member of the Los Angeles Ramsâ legendarily menacing âFearsome Foursomeâ defensive line now comforted a boy named Dudley Pippin who had worried that he was âa sissyâ because he broke into sobs. âItâs all right to cry,â crooned the former athlete who had once crushed guys to the turf with bone-shattering tackles. (Adding to the confusion, the hulking singer had the first name of a girl: Rosey.) In another song, âWilliamâs Doll,â a boy admits to his grandmother that he considers baseball his favorite sport but says, in a line that still makes me shudder, âIâd give my bat and ball and glove / to have a doll that I could love.â
Though I liked the album as much as anyone, âWilliamâs Dollâ cut a little close to home, touching the same nerve that sparked my
anger whenever a stranger saw my long, curly hair and thought I was a girl. This happened a few times, especially in the years before I was old enough to play little league baseball and therefore able to wear my team cap everywhere, like an ID badge proving that I was, just like my brother and all my gods, not a little girl but a boy.
Topps 1977 #634: Big League Brothers
From the back of this card: âPaul and Rick both picked up baseballs as soon as they were old enough.â
Â
Ian had started playing little league the year we moved to Vermont, away from our father. He wasnât very good at the beginning. After his little league games in his first year I always asked him the same question:
âDid you get a hit yet?â
The answer, no, was eventually rendered in the form of an I-Am-Going-to-Punch-You glare. By the end of the season Iâd stopped asking. That summer we played catch in the yard of the house in Randolph Center, then, when we moved
Similar Books
