MARY ALES

YOUR REPORTER

Mary was born in Los Angeles and raised in the Oxnard area, where she roller-skated, rode her bike, played jacks and stickball for hours on end. Her dad was an auto mechanic: first with Squires Chevrolet and then with the navy at Pt. Mugu Naval Station. She had two younger sisters; Sharon and Julie.

After moving 14 times in five years she settled in the Mohave Desert, where she met her future husband; Gary, the Saturday after he was discharged from the Navy and two weeks after her high school graduation. Gary’s old girlfriend brought him over to meet Mary after not finding any of her other unmarried friends at home. He said that his first impression was that he had wandered into a pygmy village. (Both parents hovered near the five foot mark.) Gary and Mary were both guests at a barbeque at the friend’s house that night and began to get to know each other. They were married 18 months later. Gary often said, “All I needed to convince her to marry me was a canteen of water and a book of Blue Chip stamps.”

After the wedding she transferred from the local junior college to Long Beach State.

She began her teaching career the week she turned 21; spending 29 of the next 34 years at the same elementary school. In addition to teaching students; she enjoyed meeting in committee and then writing the mission statements and school plans and various reports required by the state.

It was at the school that she got involved with softball. A colleague was managing a U10 fast pitch team in Miss Softball America. She coached her friend’s team; and the following year they each had a team drawing 4^th and 5^th graders from their school.

Previously her only experience with organized sports was one summer in high school when she signed up on a women’s fast pitch team where she played two innings in right and was told not to swing the bat. (Mary says, “I always made contact, but was such a slow runner that I’d be thrown out at first. While being so short I was almost guaranteed a walk.”)

She managed U-ten fast pitch teams for the next 20 years. She says, “I loved having practice 2-3 times a week and began including my daughter, Ginger, when she was six. She was the first windmill pitcher in our league. My son, five years younger was raised at the softball field. He was at every practice; including one where he crawled up behind me when I was doing an in-field practice and I hit him with the bat.”

One summer she applied to the Torrance Parks and Recreation Department to coach a U-ten softball team and a T-ball baseball team. After much discussion and because the head of the department knew her from teaching she became the first and maybe the only female baseball coach in the history of the department. Her baseball teams won the city championship the next two years. Management then decided championship games were too stressful for six-year olds and stopped having them. Indirectly she was also responsible for changing the softball rules. At the championship game it took 12 innings for her team to lose 2 to 1. Her daughter had 17 strikeouts; while the opposing pitcher had 21. The next year the rules said no pitcher could pitch more than three innings.

Family life revolved around tournament softball, band and scouting. Both kids were involved with a community band from an early age and the high school band. Rod was in a Boy Scout troop that specialized in hiking; culminating in two 50-mile hikes. Ginger played on various traveling softball teams. The summer she was 13 she played in 13 tournaments. Vacations were week-ends in places like San Diego, Santa Maria and Ventura.

Ginger went to UCDavis and then settled in Sacramento with her husband; having a baby girl in 1998. That same year Rod went to work for Nabisco and moved to an apartment in Yorba Linda. So, when Hughes Aircraft offered Gary a golden handshake to retire in October of ’99, they began looking for a place near the grandchild.

They decided on a retirement community for all the activities Mary could do without having to drive a car. They decided on Lincoln because of the softball field and the fact that everyone was new, so they thought it would be easier to make friends. They asked to look at spec homes and it came down to an Annadel in village 16 or a Baldwin in village 29. The deciding factor? Their friendly neighbors, Judy and Paul Brown.

They stayed with their daughter for the month of July while the house was being finished. The first week Mary asked her to drive her over to McBean Park to see one of Paul’s games. Mary says, “I intended to offer my services as a scorekeeper. As I walked up to the gate an errant throw came into the parking lot. I threw it back and Dwight Curry yelled, ‘Sign her up’. I watched the next three innings where not one ball was fielded cleanly. I thought, ‘I could do this. I’ve found my niche. I can play with 10 year-old kids and 65 year old men.’ So I signed up. Unfortunately everyone else improved, I didn’t. But I hung in there and played 5 of the next 7 years.”

After Gary’s death in 2003 Mary began traveling; taking nine cruises in the next three years. Last fall she took a big trip with her family that was a year in the planning. The grandchildren (Emily, 9 and Michael, 6) are home-schooled and last year studied the colonies and the revolutionary war. So last September they flew to Philadelphia and spent 10 days visiting historical sites and Amish country. They then drove to Boston where her son, Rod, joined them and did the entire freedom trail. After a stop at Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame they continued on to Washington, DC. After a week of sight-seeing Rod returned home to Pleasanton and they continued on to Williamsburg. A few days later they journeyed on to Kentucky where they visited The Louisville Slugger bat factory and the Mammoth Caves. They wound up the trip with a few days in Branson, MO where the family visited friends just across the Arkansas state line. They flew home from St. Louis after spending the day at the Arch.

Mary keeps busy with volunteering one day a week in a 4^th grade class at Foskett Ranch School, playing bridge and mah jongg. She also has a monthly Bunko group and a monthly movie and dinner group. Her daughter’s family now lives in Lincoln and they are over 2-4 times a week. She also attends almost all of the grandkids’ sporting events; Emily’s gymnastics meets and Michael’s Little League games. She proudly tells anyone who will listen that he already plays better than she ever did: making an unassisted triple-play in machine-pitched farm a few weeks ago.

She is a big fan of LHSSL. Though she isn’t playing this year; you’ll still see her putting in her two cents at the general meetings and up in the scorekeeping booth. She says, “I can’t throw overhand now, and I never could hit or run; so it is just too frustrating to try to play. But I want to stay involved in making this the friendliest, all inclusive league ever.”

Oh, and by the way, she writes the “Getting to Know Your Fellow Player” profiles you read on the website: including this one.