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12. Finding My Place A Sports Odyssey SUSan Cahn “Community, like the sacred, is an idea that becomes reality because we believe in it, not vice versa.”1 —Mary Catherine Bateson When I was a young girl, I spent many hours by myself. At school I was socially adept enough to avoid complete outcast status—those unfortunates we called “queers.” A smart girl and good athlete, I managed to remain interesting to the popular girls, but never became part of their cliques. My tomboy persona simply didn’t fit in with the girl culture at my school and there were no alternative girl playmates in my neighborhood. In the absence of friends, I experienced intense bouts of loneliness and sadness. Yet even as my tomboyish love of sports contributed to my isolation, it also helped solve it. Sport provided me solace and joy—even a kind of magic, because I could simultaneously be by myself and not alone. When I pitched tennis balls against the front steps, imagining I was facing down major league batters, I was both myself—the me that felt most authentic—and someone else, my favorite baseball star in a fantasy of cheering teammates and fans. My imaginary observers noticed what I wanted real people to see: my athleticism and competitive zeal, not my queer gender nonconformity. In this mental gender geography, a girl like me could occupy space in professional ballparks during a pre–Title IX era, the late 1960s and early 1970s, years when it was taboo even to inquire about playing Little League. But I was never fully alone; I played sports with the boys in my neighborhood . When I think of the relationship between community and sports, this is what first comes to mind, although in retrospect my experience falls short of most definitions of community. The boys I played with year after Finding My Place 183 year made up for the absence of the kind of idealized community promised by post–World War II suburban life and a Catholic parish near Chicago. I felt like I belonged to my family, but to no other entity. Our group—nine boys and me, spanning a six-year age range—played sports year-round on our front lawns and in back alleys. These boys were not my friends, but they were my playmates and, most important, they enabled my survival. We didn’t talk gender; we talked sports. And I had talent, which upped my value. When playing, I wasn’t a girl or a boy, just Sue the shortstop or halfback . But I also knew I wasn’t truly one of the boys. During bad weather or long weekends, they played with toy soldiers or watched monster movies. None of this interested me, nor was I invited to participate in their malebonding rituals. Together, the physical space of one suburban block, tolerance bred by familiarity, and my supple imagination got me through elementary school and into high school, when my neighborhood crew scattered in different directions. I played three years of high school basketball but can’t say that this provided me with a real community. By my early teens I had become too wary to take risks, too shy to explore social possibilities. I missed out on friendships because of my reluctance to become a multisport athlete and risk being known as a “girl jock,” an epithet with lesbian overtones that may have hit too close to home. Not until college would I experience a genuine sense of community. By 1976, much had changed. I had finished high school, met my first girlfriend, and headed west to California, where I announced to the world (but not my parents) that I too was “gay and proud.” At the University of California, Santa Cruz, I became a women’s studies major and joined the small Gay and Lesbian Student organization, pouring myself into the newly available world of feminist and lesbian studies. I finally met people like myself, or at least with similar interests, and began to make my first sustained friendships with women. Sports entered the picture haphazardly. I joined the school’s basketball team, where the physical exertion, mental pleasure, and emotional release felt like coming home. But few teammates shared my lesbian or feminist identity. My luck changed a year later when a friend steered me toward “a dyke softball team” in town. Anticipation mixed with apprehension, because I hadn’t played softball in years. Moreover, I was about to enter...

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