REMINISCENCES: HEALTH SECRETARY DONNA SHALALA

I had glorious childhood summers. I played a lot of tennis, which gave me discipline. For the first time, I experienced the thrill of winning a championship. Then I made the transition to a team sport–softball. By the summer of 1954, when I was 13, the softball team began to shape my sense of self. I played with the West Boulevard Annie Oakleys in the Pigtail League in Cleveland, Ohio. The positive attitude of the coaches–one of whom was George Steinbrenner, then a graduate student–made all the difference: they decided we could win a championship. They also taught us there were ways to play the game so we could win.

If you throw a ball overhand (as boys do), you throw it farther. If you learn to slide (again like the boys), you have a better chance of stealing a base or catching a ball coming at you. If you pull for one another as a team, you can win. And we did go on to win the championship that season. The feeling of that summer remains with me still.