You Let Some Girl Beat You? (18 page)

“How good does a female athlete have to be before we just call her an athlete?”
~ Anonymous

I returned to California where I played in various celebrity golf tournaments and did quite well. In the spring of 1983, I was invited to play in the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament as a celebrity. Until that point it was exclusively male celebs who had been invited to play, and I was the first celebrity woman to be invited (other than Dinah). Of course, to me, all of the LPGA players were celebrities.

It was a shotgun scramble format, which meant you played as a team of four amateurs and a celebrity. Each player on the team would drive, with the best drive used by all players on the team as the spot for taking the second shot and so forth, with the team always playing the best ball. I got to hit from the women's tees, which gave my team a huge advantage since I could drive the ball just as far as the lady pros and land on the green.

“What are you letting her do that for?” some of the guys on the other teams would yell. Between my driving and a couple of my partners' putting, we were unbeatable.

I continued to play golf, entering several charity tournaments in Beverly Hills, Las Vegas, Bel Air, and I kept playing with Lou Rosanova and Tom Harmon. The fact that Lou got me down to a six in two weeks made me think that, perhaps, I really could join the LPGA.
Was I nuts?
Maybe. But Donnie was behind me all the way, even though we both knew it would mean my going on the road. I had already done that with basketball, and I knew that trying to go pro would be a huge commitment. And even
if
I got my card, it didn't mean I'd necessarily win tournaments. After much thought, I chose to stay in California and spend more time with Donnie. He was a hard man not to want to be around. I also began doing more broadcasting and promotional work for Buick and Fuji, two of the upcoming Olympic sponsors, and I was working for Sports Channel in Chicago. This turned out to be terrific because Don was broadcasting the Chicago White Sox games, so we could spend lots of time together. When Don's season was over, I stayed with my dad who was now living in Chicago with a lady friend. While I was glad to have a place to lay my head, it put me in that same conflicted situation familiar to every child of divorced parents.

During my off season, I continued to train for the upcoming
Superstars.
The ABC Sports Show had been airing since 1973, and it had seen its share of famous Olympic athletes attempting to shine in sports they weren't known for, and nearly killing themselves in the process. I still shudder over the time Joe Frazier nearly drowned. In the very first event, the 50 meter swimming heats, Frazier was clearly in trouble. After he was retrieved from the pool, he admitted to commentators that he didn't know how to swim. When asked why he would choose that event, Frazier replied, “How was I to know I couldn't unless I tried?”

It's hard to argue with that logic.

By now, I had won the previous two women's events, and while I'd helped drive up the ratings in 1981 competing in the men's event, the rules said that once you won three
Superstars
, you were done, so I knew this would be my last. In the months leading up to the event I kept getting sick. I'd been running around so much and working out so hard that I was continuously getting sick and not getting better.

My doctor suggested I have my tonsils removed.
Do I leave them in and continue to get sick, or have my tonsils out right before the Superstars knowing I won't be able to eat for awhile afterward?
I decided to have them yanked. I was twenty-seven. Don was working in Chicago, so Mom stayed in the hospital with me.

My sister Cathy came to see me a week before the event and noticed I'd lost weight. “You're too thin! How do you expect to compete?”

I knew I'd also lost a little strength, but I was still hitting tennis balls, running hills, and taking swimming lessons in preparation for the event. I had to. I was counting on that purse from the
Superstars
. The event that concerned me the most was the obstacle course.

Each competitor would run, hit a wall, climb the wall, high-step through tires, swing through monkey bars, then jump over the water, run to the high jump bar, roll into the pit, roll out, do two hurdles, and cross the finish line. The high jump bar was only 4 ft. high. Most athletes would jump over the bar and somersault into the pit.

I knew I could save time by jumping over with both feet tucked underneath me so I could quickly hop out of the pit, rather than have to get up after rolling. Lynnette Woodard was competing again in this year's
Superstars,
and she was the one I had to beat. She was like a race-horse, she was so fast. Even though I'd lost some of my strength, I was able to shave seconds off my time at the high jump.

That year I placed in the swimming, came in second in tennis, won the quarter, placed top three in the 100, came in first in the golf, got points in rowing, and won the obstacle course. I came in first overall, and won my third and final
Superstars
.

The show remained popular for a few more years before losing its appeal. Once you've lost your audience, it doesn't matter if conjoined twins are competing because it's hard to resuscitate a thing once it's run its course—whether it's a basketball league, a TV series, or a marriage.

Don had been married to Ginger Dubberly for nearly twenty-five years. Don's divorce was official now, and he asked me, again, to marry him. My heart said
maybe
, but I worried that his parents and his grown daughter, Kelly, might think he was rushing into things—or worse, that I had been the cause of the divorce. Everything was fine just the way it was.

While I intended to stay Ann Elizabeth Meyers a little while longer, I still wanted to spend time with Don, so I began looking for a place to buy in Palm Springs, the golf capital of the world. Don had maintained a home in nearby Rancho Mirage for years. I'd been living at home with Mom and my younger siblings in La Habra since returning from New Jersey, but between the
Superstars
winnings, the money from the Gems, and the KGMB gig, I'd earned enough to buy my own place. Several of my siblings had places or timeshares in the desert. My family knew it was good vacation spot. There was golf, great weather, smart real estate, and, of course, there was Don.

By now it was pretty clear to my family that we were getting very serious. It turned out that my sister-in-law, Frannie, had suspected we'd end up together from the first day she met him, and confided in me while we were out house hunting. “I told Mark I could see from the way he looked at you in the Bahamas, ‘that's the man who will take care of our Annie.'”

I never did end up buying a place in the desert. Instead, I ended up buying a condo elsewhere, which turned out to be a great investment. But I still spent time with Donnie out in Palm Springs working on my golf game.

“What are you doing here, big guy?” I teased him one day out on the course. “Shouldn't you be shooting from the
men's
tees?”

“These
are
the men's tees,” he said, pointing out the large black-painted cement representations of golf balls on either side of the divot-marked swath of grass.

“Well, then I guess we'll
both
be shooting from the men's tees.”

When I first started out playing golf, Donnie was supportive and offered good advice. “You're not keeping your head down,” he'd tell me if I hit a shot I didn't like. “You've got to swing through the ball.”

“When you're shooting even par,
then
you can tell me what to do,” I'd say back. I was no longer a six handicap since I wasn't working regularly with Lou anymore. Now I was about a ten, but I was still giving Donnie a run for his money.

I remember one time we'd just teed off, and I'd landed right in the middle of the fairway, a good 220 yards out from the tee box, 150 yards away from the green. I took out my six iron, swung, never taking my eye off the ball, and landed on the green not far from the pin. Donnie smiled. He was supportive alright, but he was also every bit as competitive as I was.

“Beat that,” I said.

“In golf, you're competing against yourself. It's you against the course,” he told me very matter-of-factly, as he had so many times before. But this time he wasn't smiling. He looked through his bag and finally grabbed his Wilson 8 iron.
Ping!
The club made solid contact, sending that crisp pop that's music to any golfer's ear down the length of the fairway, right along with the ball, which landed on the green right next to mine. Okay, so Donnie could give me a run for my money, too.

We were pretty well matched on the golf course, but I was always looking to do something athletic, like a rabbit hopping around. I'd often go out for a run. “Why don't you come with me?” I asked him one day

“I did all that when I was with the Dodgers,” he'd say. “I don't need to do it anymore.” Of course! The poor guy had a bad shoulder and a bad knee from his baseball days.

Baseball had defined Don's life from the time he was a young boy. That he would grow up to define how the games' players were treated was something I'm sure he never could have imagined. The Drysdale-Koufax 1-2 pitching combination had helped win the World Series in '63 and '65, but it was the Big Holdout of '66 that became a defining moment for baseball players. Don and Sandy had formed their own mini union to negotiate for better pay. It was a calculated, ground-breaking move, and it rattled the baseball world like nothing before. The games' two best pitchers were refusing to sign unless each could get paid what he believed he was worth. I was only eleven at the time, but everyone's parents had read about it, sometimes quoting sportswriters who cast the two as villains. To the players, however, they were heroes.

That year, Donnie took me back to his home away from home in Vero Beach, Florida, where the Dodgers held fantasy baseball camps every year for adults who wanted to play with giants like Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, PeeWee Reese, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Don Drysdale. Following the fantasy camp, the Dodgers held a Hall of Fame camp with guys like Hank Aaron, Brooks Robinson, and Sandy Koufax, all of Don's friends from the baseball world. The first time I went, I couldn't believe it.

Dodgers Owner, Peter O'Malley, was the Walt Disney of baseball. There were basketball courts, tennis courts, an Olympic-sized pool, and a carnival day. In February, Mr. O'Malley had Santa show up to hand out Christmas gifts, and he saw to it that everything was done in a family atmosphere. There were theme nights like Western Night, where everybody would wear jeans and hats and eat BBQ. It was surreal seeing baseball icons sitting around a fire, licking their fingers while recalling the old days. They were men in their twenties right up through their seventies, and everybody wanted to rehash old games. It was Dodgertown, and they were inviting me to become part of the Dodger family.

Donnie and I went back every year, but it was in 1983, when I was shooting hoops, that Tommy Lasorda first came over and challenged me to a game of pick-up. As manager, he'd helped the Dodgers win the World Series two years before, and he was feeling pretty darn good about himself. “Come on hot shot, show me what you got.”

Though Tommy was quite a bit older than I, he still thought he had game. He'd just come off the diamond pitching batting practice and now he was willing to see if he could beat me at basketball. On offense, he couldn't get the ball from me. He'd get frustrated and talk trash, and knock me down to the ground. He figured if he was physical with me, I'd back down on him. A few people started to gather, including the Dodger photographer, who took some pictures. Tommy's face started getting a little red. He was getting winded and that made him even madder. The more he tried to knock me down, the more I went past him and scored. By the end a nice little crowd had gathered and some of the guys started razzing him.

“I want a rematch,” he said. “You didn't play fair.”

I loved that Tommy was so tough, so competitive. He was great.

All of the camaraderie aside, regardless of where we were—Florida at Dodgertown, or in Chicago with the White Sox, or at home in California—when Sundays came around I went to Mass.

“It's her thing,” Donnie would say if anyone asked where I was. Going to church on Sundays was more than just my thing, it was something I couldn't get away from, even when I tried. My first time away from home playing with the Women's National Team, Juliene Simpson ended up dragging me to Mass on Sundays when we were on the road. Here I thought I'd finally caught a break from going to church, being out of Mom's sight, but Juliene was a devout Catholic, and she wouldn't dream of letting my soul get dusty, even for a weekend. By now my faith had become ingrained.

Hope and faith had seen my family and me through so many near misses from as far back as I could remember. Without it I'd have been like a dingy adrift in a storm. Instead, God looked after us. There was the time my younger brother, Jeff, and I suffered third degree burns over most of our bodies. We were five and three, and had been playing too near an open water heater flame with the gas can my dad kept in the garage for the lawn mower. There was a big explosion and the next thing I knew doctors were pealing away the dead skin, strip by strip. It was painful, and the stench of burned hair and flesh is something I'll never forget. To this day, we're amazed that neither of us has any scars.

Then there was the time Dad was driving home from a basketball game in Chicago and his Corvette skidded on black ice and careened into the guard rail on the overpass, preventing the car from crashing down onto the freeway below. His feet went clear through the floorboard, and his ankle bones shot clear through the skin. The doctors told us the frigid temperatures kept him from bleeding to death, but they also said he'd never walk again. Mom, who was eight months pregnant with my little sister, Kelly, nursed him to health, and he was up and back to work within three months. But Mom was so paralyzed with fear over the accident that her body literally shut down, and Kelly was born five weeks overdue—beautiful and healthy. Yes, God looked over us. But in August of 1983, our faith was tested like never before.