Since Dad was the only one old enough to be drinking legally, he said the beers were his.
“Let me talk to you,” DeGroot said, pulling Dad off to the side.
DeGroot’s face quickly turned a bright shade of red.
“How could you do this?” he asked Dad.
“I thought I was buying beers for guys from the Air Force,” Dad said.
“If we don’t win this thing . . .” DeGroot started to say.
“Don’t worry, Coach,” Dad interrupted. “We’ll win it!”
And with that, Dad says, Santa Monica City College absolutely annihilated everybody on the way to winning the 1964 USVBA national college championship. Being a member of that championship team was Dad’s entrée to big-time volleyball. Al Scates, the UCLA coach, offered Dad a scholarship. “If you get your grades up and graduate from Santa Monica, I’ll give you a scholarship to UCLA,” Scates told him, adding that Dad would have eighteen months to accomplish this.
“I want to play football at UCLA,” Dad said.
“You’re coming to play volleyball,” Scates said.
So Dad turned Scates down. Looking back, Dad says this is one of the many dumb mistakes he has made in his life. Finally, he’d found himself as a volleyball player, and yet he thought he wanted to do something else. What was he thinking?
Because Dad had been named a 1964 USVBA College All-American and was playing for the Hollywood YMCA’s Comets, he was one of twenty-four people chosen to try out for the 1964 Olympics. The Trials were composed of players from the top five teams—Hollywood YMCA Stars, Long Beach Century Club, Hollywood YMCA Comets, Stockton YMCA, and Honolulu YMCA—plus an all-star team from the USVBA national collegiate championships. The participants played a round-robin series of matches to permit the U.S. Olympic volleyball committee to select twelve players plus six alternates. As it turned out, Dad was named the first alternate on the 1964 U.S. Olympic team, which finished ninth in Tokyo.
After the Olympics, Dad moved back up to San Francisco and became a “contributing member” of the Olympic Club, playing on the club’s rugby and volleyball teams from 1965 to 1968. Sports turned out to be the most stable element of his life. In March 1966, he married his first wife, Linda Stutsman, then just seventeen. They’d met when she’d worked at Hot Dog on a Stick, a food shack at Muscle Beach. Five months after their marriage, Linda gave birth to a son, Brack, but their union didn’t last, and they divorced in November 1967.
When the marriage fell apart, Dad moved back to Southern California. He played volleyball for the Westside Jewish Community Center team in West Los Angeles. His Westside Jewish Community Center B team ended up third at USVBA nationals in 1968. Westside’s A team finished first. Dad, a member of the B team, was selected as one of twenty-four men to try out for the 1968 U.S. Olympic team.
Dad quit his job in the composing room at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to chase his Olympic dream. The selection process was extensive. There was a ten-day camp at California State University–Northridge, as well as a four-week camp in Lake Tahoe, California. Known for having quite a temper, Dad made a fatal mistake during tryouts. He got into a disagreement with two-time Olympian Mike Bright and punched him. Dad says Mike was worried about his wife, Patti, making the 1968 U.S. Olympic women’s indoor volleyball team because she wasn’t having great practices. So, Dad says, Mike was sulking and not playing hard.
“Come on, Mike, pick it up!” Dad hollered.
“We’re already on the team!” Mike shot back. “Screw these guys!”
“What did you say?” Dad replied, then popped him.
In an instant, Dad says, he went from a solid member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic team to last on the list.
Dad also got caught up in behind-the-scenes politics. Head coach Jim Coleman told Dad that he wanted his close friend Jim Vineyard to make the team. In addition, Coleman told him that because he had shown no social skills or discipline, he was more than likely not going to be chosen for the team. However, Coleman was going to let the eleven members of the Olympic team choose the twelfth player. It came down to Dad and Coleman’s friend Vineyard, and the players chose Dad. Afterward, Dad recalls, Coleman shook hands with everybody but Dad.
“You’re on the team, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to play,” Coleman told Dad.
The U.S. opened with a match against the Soviet Union, the world’s best team, and as instructed by Coleman, Dad worked out, alone, in a side room for two hours. The U.S. went on to post what is still considered one of the greatest Olympic upsets in U.S. volleyball history, a 3–2 victory over the Soviets, the eventual gold medalists.
Throughout the Games, Dad says, Coleman continually told him to practice by himself. “Just because you made the team, doesn’t mean I have to play you,” Coleman said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. went on to lose to Czechoslovakia, 3–1, then beat Brazil, 3–0. After that, it was a downward spiral. The U.S. lost to Bulgaria, 3–2, Poland, 3–0, East Germany, 3–0, and Japan, 3–0. Eventually, the U.S. scored two victories, defeating Mexico, 3–1, and Belgium, 3–0, to finish seventh.
Angry and frustrated, Dad challenged Coleman’s decision to play Wink Davenport in the Bulgaria match. After that loss, he went to Coleman’s room to ask to be sent home. In the heat of the discussion, Dad closed his fist and said, “Jim, when I open this, what do you see?”
“Nothing,” Coleman replied.
“That’s exactly what you know about volleyball,” Dad snapped.
Soon after, Dad started throwing Coleman’s clothes out the window of his room in the Olympic Village. As Coleman was watching his clothes trickle to the ground, Dad grabbed him by the waist and dangled his head and arms over the side of the building.
“I ought to throw your ass out of here!” Dad said.
At that moment, U.S. Olympic men’s basketball coach Hank Iba and assistant U.S. Olympic men’s volleyball coach John Lowell burst into the room.
“If you ever want to play volleyball again, Butch, you can’t do this!” Lowell said.
Dad shouted some expletives and yanked Coleman back into the room.
“Pack your bag, you’re leaving!” Coleman said. “You’re off the team.”
“I was never on the team,” Dad said. “I quit my job seven weeks ago, and I could’ve stayed home.”
Lowell tried to defuse the situation.
“Butch, leave the room,” Lowell said. “I want to talk to Jim.”
Lowell came to Dad’s room later that evening.
“You’re still on the team,” he told Dad. “I want you to suit up tomorrow.”
Looking back, Dad says he doesn’t condone his actions, but explains that he was despondent over the behind-the-scenes politics of the 1968 U.S. Olympic team. Dad hadn’t wanted his Olympic experience to be in vain. He’d just wanted to play volleyball.
The next day, in a losing match against Poland, the U.S. already had burned through its time-outs when Bright threw up his hands and walked off the court. Dad was the only person left on the bench who legally could enter the game without the U.S. forfeiting. Coleman refused to talk to him, so Lowell sent him in. On the first play, Dad open-hand dinked the ball, and Edward Skorek, the best hitter in the world, spiked his dink, shattering the little finger on Dad’s right hand.
“If I don’t look at it, it won’t hurt,” Dad told himself.
Because the U.S. was out of substitutions, Dad asked the team manager to throw him some adhesive tape, so he could stabilize the floppy finger. He pulled his finger back into place as best he could, taped it up, served, and finished out the game.
Dad wound up playing in all four remaining matches, and he played well. After the final match, back at the Olympic Village, Coleman went room to room, shaking the players’ hands and thanking them for their efforts. All except for Dad. Although he was still upset about his blowup with Coleman, Dad felt satisfied with his performance and most of the rest of his Olympic experience.
Now, Dad realizes th
at, as a young man, he wasn’t mature enough to handle his emotions. His blowups at the 1968 Olympics represented many of his greatest shortcomings. If he’d been able to recognize this before getting to Mexico City, he says, perhaps he would’ve been a better person and athlete. If he’d been able to take a more level-headed approach to challenging situations, perhaps he would’ve been a better husband, father, teammate, student, and friend.
Sadly, Dad is still haunted by a lot of regrets from his Mexico City Olympics experience, his two failed marriages to Linda (he remarried her in 1969, she gave birth to another son, Scott, and they divorced in 1970), and his lack of participation as a father to their two children. If he could go back in time, if he could undo his mistakes, he certainly would. In a split second. However, there’s no way he can take any of it back, Dad says, so he just makes sure he’s a better person today than he was yesterday.
Several years after the 1968 Olympics, Dad was given an opportunity to resolve some of the hard feelings with Coleman. They ran into each other at a Santa Monica restaurant. Figuring Coleman might be resistant to speaking with him, Dad put his foot behind Coleman’s chair, so he couldn’t pull it back. Then Dad took a deep breath and cleared his throat.
“Jim, I want to apologize for what I did in 1968,” Dad said, looking Coleman in the eye. “I was immature, and I’m sorry.”
Dad can’t remember if Coleman responded, but he does recall Coleman shook his hand, albeit lightly. And with that, Dad walked out of the restaurant, still feeling uneasy about the 1968 Olympics. But he understood it was time to move on.
3
MUSCLE BEACH
My parents’ beach volleyball journey began in Santa Monica, on Muscle Beach, a world-renowned spot with a handful of courts just south of the Santa Monica Pier. Originally, it was called “The Playground.” Through the years, Muscle Beach was noted for all sorts of activities, including exhibitions of strength and agility by bodybuilders, gymnastics and acrobatics competitions, adagio training, and bathing beauty contests.
Jack LaLanne, the godfather of fitness, helped put Muscle Beach on the map. He trained there, as did other famous musclemen, including Vic Tanny, a pioneer in the creation of the modern health club; Joe Gold, the founder of Gold’s Gym and World Gym; and California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Muscle Beach attracted all sorts of interesting people, not the least of whom was my father.
In the years leading up to the 1968 Olympics, Dad had spent more and more time playing beach volleyball, as a way of improving his skills, speed, strength, and overall fitness. As time went on, he grew into one of the best coed beach players in Southern California. In the Santa Monica beach volleyball culture, all you had to do was play in, and win, the right tournaments, and everybody who was anybody knew who you were, all the way to Hollywood.
Dad’s second-favorite sandy stomping ground was Sorrento Beach, the handful of courts north of the Santa Monica Pier along Palisades Beach Road on Santa Monica’s “Gold Coast.” Those who lived along Beach Road were fabulously wealthy. In the early days, it was home to four of the five men who created Hollywood—Irving Thalberg and his wife, Oscar-winning actress Norma Shearer; oilman J. Paul Getty; comedian Harold Lloyd; and leading man Douglas Fairbanks and his wife, silent-screen star Mary Pickford. The locals dubbed the stretch “Rolls Royce Row.” It was such a desirable spot that, in 1928, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst commissioned Julia Morgan, architect of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, to build a beachfront estate for his mistress, actress Marion Davies. Morgan created a three-story, 118-room Georgian mansion, with thirty-four bedrooms and fifty-five bathrooms. The estate also had three guest houses, two swimming pools, tennis courts, and dog kennels.
And don’t get the idea that, over the years, the rest of the neighbors were slouches. That glitzy Who’s Who included actress Mae West; Academy Award–winning producer, writer, actor, and studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck; movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn; Warner Bros. founder Harry Warner; hotel mogul Barron Hilton; and actor Peter Lawford and then-wife Patricia Kennedy, sister to President John F. Kennedy. When President Kennedy visited Los Angeles, he officially checked into the Hilton in Beverly Hills, but he spent a lot of time on Sorrento Beach. So, during that era, the Gold Coast went by another nickname: “the Western Branch of the White House.”
Dad was drawn to the Gold Coast’s glamour and excitement. He liked rubbing shoulders with the “in crowd.” He still tells stories about seeing men who were “guests” of West, filing in and out of her house. When he noticed security guards in suits and sunglasses patrolling Lawford’s house, he figured Jack or Bobby Kennedy was on the premises. He recalls playing beach volleyball with actors Doug McClure, Tony Dow, and Tom Selleck, and Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Jim Palmer. Why, in the early 1960s, the Santa Monica beach volleyball scene was so much the rage that JFK and Marilyn Monroe turned up as spectators at games, and the Beatles participated in a local tournament, then gave a concert at Sorrento Beach.
Dad embraced the Santa Monica beach culture, and everything that went with it. After all his years of searching, trying to find himself, he finally hit on a place where he felt as if he belonged. He appreciated the fact that he could spend his days shirtless, wearing nothing more than shorts and flip-flops. And he especially got a kick out of all the colorful beach bums, folks who ran the gamut, as he likes to say, “from Yale to jail.”
Dad still remembers the first time he laid eyes on the woman who later would become my mother. Or should I say, laid eyes on her beautiful legs? It was April 19, 1970. He was in his car, driving through Palos Verdes, on his way to 1968 U.S. Olympic teammate Wink Davenport’s wedding reception, when a tan, blonde, athletic Southern California girl ran across the street. He just couldn’t help himself.
“If I had her legs, I could jump over volleyball nets,” he exclaimed.
Naturally, his wife at the time, Linda, wasn’t pleased by his comment.
Several months later, Dad saw those gorgeous legs again. He was playing volleyball at Muscle Beach, and the other side of his court opened up. So he checked the sign-up sheet, then yelled to the next two people in line to play, “Okay, B. and D.! It’s your turn!” Up sprang Barbara (B.) Grubb and her friend Darlene (D.) Roberts. Instantly, Dad recognized Barbara’s legs.
“Do you play?” Dad asked the two young women.
“Not really,” Darlene said, shrugging her shoulders.
Ever the coach, Dad was happy to teach them the game. He says what impressed him the most about Barbara—other than her legs—was her reflexes. She wasn’t quick, but she could do things with one hand that a lot of players had a hard time doing with two. Also, she was equally talented moving to her right or to her left.
There was a reason she was so athletically gifted. She and her two older siblings, Betty Ann and Edward, were part of a talented Southern California tennis family. In 1968, Betty Ann, then eighteen, was ranked first in the nation in the 18-and-under age group by the U.S. Tennis Association, while Mom, then seventeen, was ranked fifteenth. Edward, at the time, was playing tennis for UCLA, where one of his teammates was Arthur Ashe.
In 1969 and 1970, Betty Ann went to Wimbledon, playing singles, doubles (with Stephanie Grant both years), and mixed doubles (Tom Karp, ’69; Stephen Warboys, ’70). In ’70, Mom went along on the trip. She always told the story that they’d left Wimbledon in a hurry because Betty Ann suddenly announced she was going to marry Guy Hansen, a pitcher from UCLA who was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1969. She had to leave England immediately, if not sooner, Betty Ann told Mom. It was now or never, if she wanted to marry Guy. They were married on July 17, 1970.
Well, Mom never made it back to Wimbledon, as a spectator or a qualifier. Meanwhile, Betty Ann, who eventually divorced Hansen and married tennis teacher Ken Stuart, reached the U.S. Open doubles final with Renée Richards in 1977. Betty Ann’s third husband was Australian tennis pro Phil Dent. Their son (and my cousin) Taylor De
nt has had four Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tournament victories in his career. My aunt played Wimbledon twice more, as Betty Ann Stuart in 1979 in singles, doubles (Ilana Kloss), and mixed doubles (Ross Case), and as Betty Ann Dent in 1980 in singles, doubles (Kloss), and mixed doubles (Phil Dent).
Dad recognized Barbara and Darlene, also a tennis player, were great athletes, even though he and his partner Sy Rubin, who was in his seventies, easily beat B. and D. in that first game. At that time, though, they just didn’t know the nuances of volleyball. However, if they stuck out an arm, everything went up. They resembled human pinball machines.
Neither Dad nor Sy could resist gloating after their victory.
“You ladies gave us a good match,” Sy chuckled.
Mom and Darlene needled them right back.
“Let’s see you two move around a tennis court,” Darlene said.
“I don’t like tennis,” Sy said.
So Mom hatched a plan.
“Butch, I’ll play you in a set of tennis,” she said. “I’ll spot you forty points for each of the six games.”
“How can you go wrong with that?” Dad said.
And then, Mom set some more parameters for their singles match. If she won, he had to teach her as much as he could about volleyball. If he won, he could never talk to her about tennis. Later that day, in less than twenty minutes, she deflated his ego—he never won a point.
After their day of volleyball and tennis, Dad and Mom joined the players from Muscle Beach at Sydney’s, a bar on the promenade. Dad’s cronies laughed at him because he’d gotten demolished on the tennis court. Dad asked Mom how old she was. She lied, saying she was twenty-one. Actually, she was nineteen, a sophomore at UCLA and a member of the women’s tennis team. At the time, Dad was twenty-eight and working at the MGM film lab. They dated for a year before Mom admitted she was under age. When she was refused entrée to a bar, she blurted out, “I need to get an ID.” He was shocked.
Soon after meeting Dad, she decided to withdraw from UCLA. She was beginning to feel burned out by big-time tennis, and she really wanted to pursue her new passion, volleyball. In spring 1970, she enrolled at Santa Monica College, formerly Santa Monica City College, where she played on the tennis team and participated in coed volleyball. In fall 1972, while getting ready to transfer to California State University–Northridge, she asked Dad if they’d ever get married. Trying to push off the decision, he replied, “If you graduate from college, we’ll get married.” Now, Mom, who was a great student, had a goal to shoot for.
Misty Page 3
