could, she tried to imagine those games over that little radio. The announcer did not describe the other team’s members, what they looked like, or what numbers they wore. If it weren’t for her worn and crinkled preseason special section on the Mud Hens, she wouldn’t know what her team members looked like, or what number they wore. It was a lesson she carried with her later in life.
And Christine began to practice the lesson in her own sports reports. Christine may have been the youngest sportswriter when she started using her mom’s Olympia typewriter to crank out her previews of the “Major League Game of the Week” to be shown on NBC on television.
Christine typed up several paragraphs on each game. She placed a piece of copy paper behind the round cylinder of the typewriter, pressed on the appropriate letter keys, and the metal “hammers” instantly printed a letter image on the paper. There was no room for error in typing, so Christine had to be precise.
She had an assistant, her seven-year-old brother, Jim. He’d provide her with all the player statistics she needed from the Blade. Then she distributed her stories to her dedicated followers: her family members. Christine’s first sports writings had a grand circulation of six people.11
USA Today, the newspaper that Christine now writes her sports column for, has print circulation of over nine hundred thousand people, per day.12
She had to start somewhere.
Christine was hooked on Mud Hens baseball—so much so that she asked her dad if they could go to see the home games, live, from the stadium just twenty minutes from their home. Her dad bought season tickets along the first baseline.
The Mud Hens stadium at the Lucas County Recreation Center was an old horseracing track. The clubhouse, where the team prepared for a game, was separate from the field. Players coming from the locker room and making their way into the baseball park had to walk through an outside corridor. Fans hung out in the space, hoping to get autographs from their favorite players.
The first time Christine and her family went, she asked her dad if they could line up to meet the players as well. He gave his blessing, and soon Christine and her younger siblings zoomed around the players, chasing after all the names she had memorized from her time spent listening to the games on the radio. It was a thrill for them all.13
Christine got the bug to watch even more sporting events live, and her dad was happy to fuel her passion. The family went to one or two Detroit Tigers games a year. That’s all it took to get Christine and her younger brother, Jim, addicted to following the Tigers. The legendary Ernie Harwell broadcast the games on Detroit’s powerhouse radio station, WJR. Many summer nights Jim fell asleep to the sounds of the Tigers games coming to them from Oakland or Anaheim, California, starting at 7 p.m. Pacific Time Zone. It was 10 o’clock Toledo time. Christine often crossed the hall and shut his radio off after Jim had fallen asleep, and her parents did the same for her after she had.14
The Brennans on a family bike ride: (left to right) Christine, Jim, Kate, Amy, and their dad, Jim
Courtesy of Christine Brennan
Since they lived nearly in the shadow of the University of Toledo clock tower, the family began taking in the Rockets’ football games. Her dad bought season tickets, near the forty-yard line behind the visiting team’s bench.
“Dad was the Pied Piper with season tickets,” Christine said.15 Whenever and wherever her father went for a sports contest, Christine and her younger sister and brother were sure to follow.
Along with going to sporting events and school, Christine was still faithfully recording significant events both in her little world and in the big world outside in her diary. And something pretty important was going on with the Brennan family. They moved to the beautiful community of Ottawa Hills, just miles away from their home on Barrington Drive. Although they were further from the Rockets stadium, they still went to each home game.
University of Toledo’s undefeated quarterback Chuck Ealey
The University of Toledo
While her mom stayed home with little Amy, Christine and her dad, sister Kate, and brother, Jim, witnessed the magic of the 1969–71 seasons in the Rockets Glass Bowl. With each Rockets score, a Civil War-era cannon shot off from one of the two huge stone towers at the end of the stadium. Under the guidance of quarterback Chuck Ealey, the team scored a lot. And each time the cannon shot off, much to the fans’ delight.
The Rockets went undefeated, for all three seasons—thirty-five games in a row, leading to three straight Mid-American Conference championships and three successive winning appearances in the Tangerine Bowl, now called the Citrus Bowl.
“Every ounce of me was being poured into that team, and they never, ever disappointed me,” Christine said.16
Chuck Ealey and University of Toledo coach Frank Lauterbur receive their medals at the 1969 Tangerine Bowl.
The University of Toledo
A small package sat under the Brennan Christmas tree in 1971. It was for Christine. As she tore off the wrappings, she couldn’t believe her eyes. In the box were two tickets to the Toledo Rockets versus the Richmond Spiders at the Tangerine Bowl, in Orlando, Florida, on December 28. Christine and her dad were going to see Chuck Ealey and her beloved Rockets play in the Bowl game!17
The Rockets won handily, 28–3, led by quarterback Chuck Ealey. It was an exciting victory for Toledo. It also capped a career that opened Christine’s young eyes to the injustice and discrimination happening in the National Football League at the time.
Christine credits Chuck Ealey and the University of Toledo Rockets’ glorious, undefeated seasons as the reason she ultimately chose to become a sportswriter.
Despite being named First Team All-American by Football News, Second Team All-American by United Press International, and Third Team All-American by Associated Press and in the running for the Heisman Trophy, Chuck Ealey was not drafted to play in the National Football League in 1972.
“Seventeen rounds, 442 players, and Chuck Ealey is not picked. It makes me sad to this day, quite frankly,” Christine said.18
Christine’s dad tried to explain to her that most NFL teams didn’t believe black athletes were considered smart enough to lead a team. A childhood friend of Chuck’s who went on to play as an outfielder in Major League Baseball, Larry Hisle, said that National Football League owners and coaches apparently felt that, “intellectually, minority quarterbacks didn’t have what it took to be able to run the team.”19
Since Chuck was not destined to play as a quarterback for the National Football League, Chuck’s sports agent reached out to the Canadian Football League. The Hamilton, Ontario, Tiger Cats drafted Chuck. Chuck moved to Canada to play for the team, as quarterback.
That first year, his rookie season, Chuck led the team to the Grey Cup, the equivalent of the Super Bowl in the United States. Not only did he lead the team to the game, the Tiger Cats won the Grey Cup. Chuck was named Rookie of the Year and the Grey Cup MVP.
. . .
AFRICAN AMERICAN QUARTERBACKS IN THE NFL
THERE ARE thirty-two teams in the National Football League. In 2017 there were nine black starting quarterbacks. That is just over a quarter of the teams. Progress is being made, though, as in the late 1960s and early 1970s there often was just one African American starting in the position of quarterback in the whole league.
Marlin Briscoe was drafted by the Denver Broncos in 1968, but as a defensive back. He became the first black quarterback to start in a game when he was shifted to quarterback midseason that same