TWO
DRIVE
I was born a size 6X. I was always tall. Growing up, my dad often told us, “stand up straight, shoulders back. That way people think you are older than you are.”
—Christine Brennan1
CHRISTINE WAS the first child born to a collegiate athlete who had a tryout with the Chicago Bears football team and a woman who swam Lake Michigan in the summers and played softball and basketball in high school. Her mother, Betty Brennan, worked at home and had a passion for recording life in journals and diaries. Her father, Jim Brennan, was a businessman who loved politics.2 Either the news or sports constantly blared from their radio or the black-and-white television in their family room.
Christine was destined to grow up to write about either politics or sports.
Jim Brennan was born in Chicago in 1926. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, eight-year-old Jim sold magazines to help his family put food on the table. He threw shot put on the track and field team and played tackle for the football team in high school. Jim received a football scholarship to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He only played for one season as a lineman before he signed up to serve in the army.
Jim and Betty Brennan on their wedding day
Courtesy of Christine Brennan
His stint with the army took him to Europe, where he served after World War II. Jim rose to the rank of sergeant, then made his way back home to Chicago. He studied at the University of Chicago before starting his career in business.3
He met a bright fellow Chicagoan who attended Loyola Business College. Betty Anderson worked for Illinois Bell, a telephone company, managing clerks, employees who help with administrative tasks like typing letters and answering phone calls. The two connected at a church singles party on a Sunday night. Betty described the day she first laid eyes on Jim as the “best day of my life.”4
They married in 1955 and moved to Toledo, Ohio, several years later. An opportunity had presented itself. A forklift truck business had opened in Toledo. Jim wanted to be an independent business owner, and this was his chance. Christine’s father sold, leased, rented, and repaired forklift trucks. The business eventually was named Brennan Industrial Truck Company, Inc. As the company grew, so did Jim and Betty’s family.
Christine with her younger sister, Kate, and her mom
Courtesy of Christine Brennan
Christine made her appearance in the Brennan lineup on May 14, 1958.
The Brennan team eventually grew to include Christine’s younger siblings: Kate, born in November 1959; Jim, in June 1962; and Amy, who arrived in August 1967.
When Christine was just four years old, the World Series of 1962 was being battled between the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants. The young family gathered around their black-and-white television to take in the action. Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra was the star catcher for the New York Yankees. Yogi was quick and a great handler of pitchers.
Yogi Bear was a favorite cartoon show of little Christine’s. Although “Yogi” Berra didn’t get his nickname from the cartoon, the names sounded alike to this four-year-old.
As the first game of the New York Yankees broadcast on the Brennans’ television, Christine announced to her parents, “Yogi Bear is going to catch. When he gets the ball, he’ll steal it, as he does the picnic baskets.”5
Christine didn’t recall this story, but her mother did. Betty kept a baby book for Christine and recorded the whole incident.
At the age of five, Christine wasn’t interested in playing with Barbie dolls as her sister Kate did. Instead, she grabbed her father’s old baseball glove to play catch with him. And instead of discouraging her, Jim taught his daughter how to throw properly, throwing hard with the motion from behind her right ear. Neither seemed to mind that most dads didn’t play sports with their daughters back then.
Several years later, after playing catch all the time with her dad, and hanging with the neighborhood boys playing ball, Christine asked for her own baseball mitt.
Fun with Kate
Courtesy of Christine Brennan
On her eighth birthday, she got her wish. Her dad proudly presented her with a new store-bought Rawlings mitt. Christine held it to her face, inhaling its fresh, leathery smell, just as she saw her friends who were boys do. Baseball smelled like this, she thought.
On the palm of the mitt was a signature, in script. Tony Cloninger was the name on her glove. Christine didn’t know who he was. She looked through the sports section of the newspaper to learn about him. She discovered that Tony Cloninger was a right-handed pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. That same year Tony gained fame not for any ball he threw, but for hitting two grand slams in one game against the San Francisco Giants. Two grand slams in one game! And she had his signature right on her glove.6
Betty also gave Christine a diary to write in when she was ten years old. Her first entry in the blue-and-green floral print book with the unused lock was dated January 1, 1969.
It read, “Woke up late after staying up last night to wait for the New Year. After lunch, went to the Sports Arena to ice skate. After that, watched the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl. In the Rose Bowl, Ohio State won over USC, 27–16. In the Orange Bowl, Penn State won over Kansas, 15–14.”7
When she was ten years old, Christine was given a diary by her mother.
Courtesy of Christine Brennan
Christine made a promise to herself that she was going to write in it every day. And she did. Even if one day meant that she wrote, “Nothing happened today.” And then she turned the page and wrote for the next day’s entry, “Nothing happened today either.”8
The days may have seemed uneventful to young Christine, but there was a lot happening around her. And she was the drive behind a lot of the action.
Christine couldn’t wait to grab the sports section from the Toledo Times, Toledo Blade, and Detroit Free Press that arrived daily at the Brennan home on Barrington Drive. She read all the sports articles, for local as well as national teams.
When she was eleven years old, she’d sit by the radio in the family room, curl up on the sofa, and listen to the Toledo Mud Hens games broadcast from WCWA 1230 AM. With a scorebook her father had given her and a wrinkled and worn copy of the Blade’s special preseason section featuring the Mud Hens roster, she’d record the game.9
Her young imagination got the best of her as she listened to those games, especially the games on the road. Christine sat close to the radio, taking in every sound of those games being played in cities like Syracuse, New York, and Richmond, Virginia. She’d hear the crack of the bat and the crowd cheers, and even thought she heard a man selling hot dogs in the stands.
Christine’s father broke the news gently to her that some of the games weren’t being broadcast live. They were recreations of the actual game. The announcer sat in the radio studio and produced the appropriate sounds as he read the game plays over a ticker. Once she learned this, although she was disappointed, it brought a whole new perspective to this dedicated fan. Christine listened even more closely to the broadcast to determine if the game was live or “fake.” Often the soundtrack of crowd noises, which sounded the same regardless of the play, was the giveaway to Christine.10