Kid Athletes

by David Stabler

  Copyright © 2015 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in

  Publication Number: 2014956803

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-59474-823-3

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-59474-802-8

  Designed by Andie Reid based on a design by Doogie Horner

  Illustrations by Doogie Horner

  Illustration coloring by Mario Zucca

  Production management by John J. McGurk

  Quirk Books

  215 Church Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19106

  quirkbooks.com

  v3.1

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Babe Ruth, Bad Boy Makes Good

  Jackie Robinson, the Pride of Pepper Street

  Billie Jean King, the Girl Who Ran on Racket Power

  Peyton Manning, Lord of the Dance

  Danica Patrick, the Girl without Fear

  Bobby Orr, Little Kid, Big Heart

  Michael Jordan and His Two Towering Rivals

  Tiger Woods, Kid Superstar

  Yao Ming, Big Kid in a Small World

  Gabrielle Douglas, Grace under Pressure

  Babe Didrikson Zaharias, a Girl for All Seasons

  Bruce Lee, the Kung Fu Kid

  Muhammad Ali and the Case of the Missing Bicycle

  Jesse Kuhaulua, Don’t Mess with Big Daddy

  Julie Krone and the Marvelous Mischievous Pony

  Lionel Messi, Beware of the Flea

  Further Reading

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  * INTRODUCTION *

  ou may have heard their names. You may have seen their highlights. Maybe you’ve even cheered for them from the bleachers. The superstar athletes profiled in this book are world famous for their remarkable achievements. But we bet there’s a lot about them that you don’t know.

  For example, did you know that NFL quarterback Peyton Manning once dared to dance the tango in front of his entire middle school?

  Or that race car driver Danica Patrick got her start pushing the pedals on a go-kart?

  Or that legendary hockey player Bobby Orr grew up picking worms on a farm?

  Long before they became sports champions, these future superstars were just little kids who liked to run, jump, and play like everyone else.

  Some of them learned early on that they had a special talent and then practiced every day to make sure they became the best they could be at their chosen sport.

  Others had to leap over obstacles on the road to fame and fortune. Before they ever defeated an opponent on the playing field, boxing ring, basketball court, or racetrack, they had to figure out how to overcome the special challenges that threatened to hold them back.

  Before vaulting to Olympic gold, gymnast Gabby Douglas first had to learn how to deal with bullies.

  Basketball player Yao Ming grew up thinking that he was too tall to fit through a doorway—let alone make it in the professional basketball leagues of the NBA.

  Lionel Messi had the opposite problem. One day, he would become the world’s biggest soccer star. But as a kid, he was told many times that he was too small to succeed on the team.

  And all these great athletes—no matter where or when they lived—had homework to finish, parents to answer to, and brothers and sisters to deal with. Not to mention the occasional unruly horse.

  In Kid Athletes, we’ll ride along with the superheroes of sports and learn how they began their charge into the record books. Each took a different path to get there. But they all had one thing in common:

  Every one of these amazing athletes started out as a little kid.

  “I was a bad kid,” admitted Babe Ruth in his autobiography. Like many things the loud and boisterous New York Yankees legend said, that was something of an understatement.

  In fact, “Little George,” as he was known before he earned his famous nickname, was officially labeled “incorrigible” by his own parents. He was impossible to control at the age of eight!

  How did little George get so bad? For starters, he learned about misbehaving right under his own roof. On the ground floor of the Ruth family’s apartment was the roughest, toughest saloon in the city of Baltimore. It was run by his father, Big George. The crowd was rowdy, the whiskey was cheap, and the patrons were constantly quarrelsome.

  Little George’s parents worked twenty hours a day. That left George on his own a lot. He almost never went to school. “I was a bum when I was a kid,” he said as an adult. He roamed the streets of the teeming city looking for trouble. More often than not, he found it.

  Little George stole fruit from the stands that lined the sidewalks. He threw eggs and rotten apples at the carriage drivers as they passed. His parents grew more and more frustrated with his rabble-rousing ways.

  No one is sure exactly when, or why, Little George’s parents decided they could no longer care for their son. It’s possible that they had to send him away because of a terrible brawl in the saloon. Gunshots were fired; the police were called. A neighbor told the officers, “A little kid is living in there. That’s no place for a child.” Or perhaps George’s mom just got fed up with her son playing hooky and causing trouble.

  So when Little George was seven, his parents asked a local official to declare him incorrigible and send him to a reformatory. On Friday the thirteenth of June in 1902, Big George dropped off his son at his new home: St. Mary’s Industrial School for Orphans, Delinquent, Incorrigible, and Wayward Boys.

  The school was as grim as its name. Eight hundred orphans, runaways, and unruly boys were packed into six identical gray buildings surrounded by an impenetrable fence. A set of imposing iron gates kept the boys in and everyone else out. Thirty members of a religious order—called Xaverian brothers—were in charge of feeding, clothing, teaching, and disciplining the boys, who ranged in age from seven to twenty-one. Little George was one of the youngest residents.

  When he learned that he would have to stay there for the next thirteen years, Little George burst into tears. He would miss being able to do whatever he wanted. But he had no choice. In those days, reform school was considered the only way to make a bad boy good again. His father left him in the hands of the brothers and hoped for the best.

  Little George was shown to a stark room in a dormitory that housed two hundred other students. All the boys wore a uniform of jackets and ties. Each one was issued a small blackboard and a pencil to record schoolwork. Students used their jacket sleeves to wipe the slates clean at the end of the day.

  George quickly learned the school routine. Every day, a bell woke everyone up at 6 a.m. sharp. Talking was forbidden during meals, which consisted mostly of soup and bread. On Sundays the boys might get one or two hot dogs or slices of baloney. Bedtime was at 8 p.m. A night watchman kept an eye on the boys until morning. Sometimes, if the watchman was sick and unable to work, one of the boys was asked to fill in. In return, the boy was given an extra-large breakfast the next morning. Each boy was also given a job. George’s job was to stitch collars onto shirts.

  He worked five and a half days a week and had Sundays off. Most students spent their free day playing baseball in the schoolyard. Despite his nickname, Little George was already a big, strapping kid, and he enjoyed the recreation part of the reform school routine most of all.

  Although he wasn’t happy with all the rules and restrictions, Little George got along well with his classmates at St. Mary’s. Sometimes he used the money he earned to buy candy for the boys who couldn’t afford it. He even tried to help some of the smaller kids
. One day, a boy named Loads Clark confessed that he had accidentally broken a window in a school building. So George offered to take the blame.

  Little George earned the respect of his reform-school classmates, but still he was often lonely and sad. Visiting Day was the worst. On one such occasion when his friend Lou “Fats” Leisman found him sitting all alone, George told him unhappily, “I guess I am too big and ugly for anyone to come to see me.”

  Eventually, one of the Xaverian brothers noticed how unhappy Little George was, and he decided to help. Brother Matthias was prefect of discipline at St. Mary’s. His job was to dole out punishment and work to help the most incorrigible kids at school—and no one was more incorrigible than Little George.

  Everyone at St. Mary’s was in awe of Brother Matthias. Standing six foot six inches tall and weighing nearly three hundred pounds, the stern disciplinarian looked like a giant. Rumor had it that he needed an extra-long bed to sleep in, and that he hung his bedroom door on the outside of the door jamb to give himself more room to pass through. The boys had a special nickname for him:

  Despite his imposing size, Brother Matthias was a mild-mannered man who seldom raised his voice. He didn’t have to. One day, when a fight broke out in the schoolyard, Matthias rushed out to the site of the problem. As soon as the squabbling kids saw “The Boss,” a hush fell over them and they quickly dispersed.

  When he wasn’t keeping the peace, Brother Matthias liked to teach a master class in his favorite subject: baseball. On Sunday evenings after supper, he would gather the boys in the schoolyard and put on an exhibition of batting prowess the likes of which none of them had ever seen. With his special fungo bat in one hand and a hardball in the other, Brother Matthias would swat a series of high-arcing moonshots.

  Among the boys clambering to retrieve the balls was Little George, who saw in the burly brother a perfect role model for what he could do if he set his mind to it.

  One day, Matthias invited George to throw around a ball for a while. Soon they were playing catch every day. Almost without realizing it, George began to imitate Brother Matthias’s walk as well as his epic swing.

  When George improved, Matthias invited him to join the school’s baseball team. Little George was thrilled. “What position will I play?”

  When George tried on the catcher’s mitt, he noticed a slight problem. He was left-handed, and the mitt was made for a righty. But George didn’t let that stop him. With a bit of practice, he developed a knack for catching the ball with his left hand, flipping it into the air while discarding the mitt, and then plucking the ball out of the air in time to throw it. Tricks like that, along with his powerful swing, made him one of the team’s standout players.

  Brother Matthias didn’t just teach Little George about baseball. He also kept him from falling back into his old bad habits. Once when he caught George laughing at the team’s pitcher for having a tough game, he decided to teach his charge a lesson.

  Signaling to the umpire for a timeout, Matthias handed the ball to George, who had never pitched before. Little George wasn’t laughing anymore. But he concentrated on the task and allowed no hits for the rest of the game. He became one of the team’s best pitchers—and learned about compassion and sportsmanship as well.

  George had a new sense of belonging, but he still didn’t like reform school. He once ran away from St. Mary’s and spent three days on the lam before authorities tracked him down. On his return, Brother Matthias issued the worst punishment possible: no baseball.

  After standing alone outside the schoolyard, George was filled with remorse. With the lesson learned, Brother Matthias welcomed George back to the team and allowed him to play again.

  George’s teammates were happy to have him back, but they knew he wouldn’t be with them for long. With each passing year, George was growing bigger and stronger and outperforming his opponents. He clouted more than sixty home runs in a single season. When he first started playing baseball at age nine, George was pitted against twelve-year-olds. By the time he was sixteen, he was matched with players as old as twenty. Newspapers began to publish stories about the reform-school kid with the amazing home-run swing.

  Brother Matthias knew it was time for George to move on, so he arranged for tryouts with local semiprofessional teams. In 1914, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, Jack Dunn, visited St Mary’s. Brother Matthias told him all about George’s hitting and pitching prowess. Dunn was so impressed that he offered the nineteen-year-old a contract on the spot.

  A few weeks later, Jack Dunn returned to St. Mary’s to pick up his new rookie. Brother Matthias escorted George to the iron gate and said goodbye. George shook his hand and thanked Matthias for all he had done for him. “You’ll make it, George,” Brother Matthias said. And with that, George loaded his suitcase into Dunn’s red car and left for North Carolina, where he joined the Orioles at their spring training camp.

  That was the beginning of Babe Ruth’s rise to fame. But it was not the end of his friendship with Brother Matthias. In 1919, a fire destroyed most of St. Mary’s Industrial School.

  Little George, now the Major League Baseball star known as Babe Ruth, volunteered to raise money to help the school. He invited St. Mary’s band to travel with his team, the New York Yankees, on their final road trip of the 1920 season. Temporarily renamed “Babe Ruth’s Boys Band,” they played concerts before ballgames and afterward collected donations from fans. With Babe’s help, Brother Matthias and the Xaverian brothers were able to rebuild most of the buildings lost in the fire.

  Years later, Babe Ruth’s wife, Claire, explained why her husband had gone out of his way to help the man who had taken him under his wing.

  “When Babe Ruth was twenty-three, the world loved him,” she said. “When he was thirteen, only Brother Matthias loved him.”

  Long before he completed the journey to the big leagues, Jackie Robinson made his own personal journey—cross-country from Cairo, Georgia, where he was born, to a new home in Pasadena, California.

  The family had to move because when Jackie was just six months old, his father left for Texas to visit a brother. He did not return, and Jackie never saw him again. Jackie’s mother, Mallie, was left to raise her five children alone. She moved the family to Pasadena to be closer to her brother and found work as a maid.

  Mallie couldn’t afford to pay someone to look after little Jackie during the day. So, every morning, his older sister Willa Mae took him to her kindergarten. Before the school bell rang, she’d sit him in the sandbox and kept an eye on him from her desk near the window until class was dismissed.

  After a year, Jackie was old enough to go to school on his own. He began playing sports and quickly gained a reputation as one of the best athletes in town. Other kids would offer to share their lunches if Jackie agreed to play on their team.

  Eventually, Jackie’s mother moved the family out of their cramped apartment and into a house on Pepper Street. The Robinsons were the first black family on the street at a time when African Americans were subjected to discrimination because of the color of their skin. They were forbidden from using the town swimming pool except one day a week. They had to sit in the back of the local movie theater. Many grocery stores refused to sell fruits and vegetables to anyone who wasn’t white.

  Jackie’s new neighbors didn’t make things easy for his family. Some even signed a petition to force the Robinsons to move out.

  Jackie grew so angry about the discrimination that he formed his own gang—it was made up of kids from African American, Mexican American, and Japanese American families. They called themselves the Pepper Street Gang.

  The gang members took out their frustrations on the residents of Pasadena. They threw dirt bombs at passing cars, chased rabbits across the football field at the Rose Bowl, and stole fruit off sidewalk carts. They became a nuisance.

  When they were really bored, the gang would lurk along the outskirts of the local country club and swipe stray balls hit by the golfers. When the coa
st was clear, the boys would gather all the balls and try to sell them back to the golfers.

  The boys in the Pepper Street Gang looked up to Jackie because he was quick enough to dash out onto the fairway, grab a ball, and dart behind the bushes before anyone could catch him. And he was small enough to hide inside a storm drain to escape an angry golfer trying to track him down.

  At last, one of Jackie’s intended victims caught on to the swindle. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said when Jackie offered to sell him back his own golf ball. “Let’s finish out the hole together. If I win, you give me back my ball. If you win, you get to keep the ball and I’ll give you an extra dollar.” The man handed Jackie a putter, and he accepted the man’s challenge. Jackie ended up winning the hole and, with it, the wager.

  Some of the Pepper Street Gang’s antics were harmless, but other times they found themselves in serious trouble. The Pasadena police started following Jackie and his gang. Fortunately, the cops weren’t the only ones keeping a close eye on Jackie. One day, the town’s new pastor, a 25-year-old minister named Karl Downs, dropped by the gang’s hangout and asked to see him. Jackie was standing in the middle of the crowd, but he was too timid to step forward.

  “Tell Jackie I want to see him at junior church,” the reverend told the boys. And then he left.

  Jackie went to the church and met Reverend Downs. To his surprise, the reverend didn’t ask him to break up the gang. Instead, he proposed putting the boys to work building a new youth center for the church. He also invited Jackie and his friends to his house and let them have full access to his refrigerator.