Daddy’s Girl
By Amy Satterthwaite Pappas
A silent chasm opened between my father and me after I was caught up in the Shocking Softball Scandal of 1976. His eager “little jock girl” was now a troubled young woman who was her mother’s problem, and not his.
My dad had pitched at Woodberry Forest, and he coached Little League in Charlottesville when my sister and I were children. By the time we were 7 and 8, Jane and I had our own gloves, and Dad had us drilling in the backyard—throwing, catching, batting, fielding grounders, and running down fly balls. I never missed a practice.
By the spring of 1976, I was 14 and playing second base for the Albemarle Pippins in the Jefferson Softball League. Dad never missed a game.
And then, a three-minute home movie ruined everything. In the film, Carol Osborne, Denise Shifflett, and I stand side by side wearing our team uniforms. We have makeup on, for once. I’m feeling dangerous.
Someone’s Brother is behind the camera pretending to interview us.
“What positions do you play?” Someone’s Brother asks.
Carol starts it off. “I play first base,” she says. And then Carol opens her red-lipsticked mouth and flicks her tongue out and around like a French kiss.
My turn. I step forward, cup my newlygrown breasts in my hands and jiggle them for the camera. “Second base, right here.”
Denise is up next. With one hand between her legs, she swivels her hips and murmurs, “I’m third base.”
“Do you go all the way?” Someone’s Brother asks.
In rehearsed unison, we say, “This year we’re going ALL THE WAY!”
Someone’s Brother walks home with his parents’ movie camera while we dissolve into giggles. And then we start winning ballgames.
***
By mid-season, the Pippins—–named for Albemarle County’s most famous apple—were in first place. My father bragged on me to everyone.
“Amy’s fast and she’s got good, soft hands,” I’d hear him say to people on the telephone.
I was small and slender—not much power in my swing—but I led the league in stolen bases, and my dad told people I could turn a “stylish” double play. A curious tone would come into his voice when he talked about me. It wasn’t the voice he used at home; it was lighter and full of wonder.
But off the ballfield, trouble was brewing. Someone’s Brother had filmed our little skit over the beginning of a tape of his parents’ anniversary party. He kept inviting his friends over to watch us, and his parents eventually got suspicious and viewed it themselves. They showed it to Coach Posada. He called a meeting with the three of us and our parents.
Coach called us “vulgar girls.” Carol wept, but her tears failed to soften the room. I went scarlet and kept my eyes on my mother’s sensible shoes. Denise bravely piped up, saying it was all an inside joke. We just wanted to do something funny for the team, she said. Nobody laughed.
I remember my father clearing his throat and asking in that slow, theatrical way he had: “And are we all afraid this major motion picture might be shown downtown at the Paramount?” I recognized the anger behind his sarcasm and hoped it was aimed at Coach Posada.
But Coach wasn’t having any of it. We were wearing Pippins uniforms in the video. We’d shamed our whole team. And he’d heard not a word of remorse from any of us. For that, we were benched for the remaining few games in the regular season. Carol and Denise quit. My parents wouldn’t let me, so I sat in the dugout, without my uniform, until we failed to make the playoffs. That was the end of softball and the end of my father’s attention and physical affection for many years to come.
***
My mother kept a baby book for me, a collection of milestones, stories, and photos. Only one entry is in my father’s hand. In the spring of 1962, he wrote: “Aha! Amy’s first word is ‘ball.’ No denying that child now.”
He was a distant figure in my early childhood—often traveling for his job, and when he wasn’t working he’d be at Jaycees, or Little League, or taking someone else’s son on outings through Big Brothers. I wished I was a boy so he’d like me more. When those backyard baseball practices started, I was determined to shine. Jane, always more interested in what her friends were doing down the street, would invariably wander away. Then I had him all to myself.
“More grounders!” I’d implore, loving to dash, block, scoop, and throw back to my father. I knew I was as good as some boys on his team, but Little League kept girls out until I was 13. And by 13, my father’s little jock girl had a full sports schedule of her own.
I rose at dawn for swim practice at the University’s pool because I competed year-round on a travel swim team. Dad would drop me off on his way to work and then drive me to swim meets all over Virginia and Maryland on the weekends, serving his parental duty as lane judge or timekeeper for hours just to watch me in three sprinting events. After swim practice and a day at school, it was on to YMCA basketball. We’d sub in with the boys when not enough girls showed up to play. It was there on the court jostling with boys, hands all over each other, that I morphed from wanting to be a boy to wanting to be liked by a boy. That, I would keep a secret. What I couldn’t hide were the outward changes in my developing body.
Puberty—and the body you end up with afterward—can alter an athlete’s course. And puberty can also make things terribly awkward between fathers and daughters. I was starting to lose swim races to girls I’d previously beaten, girls who grew taller, more broad-shouldered and muscular. Girls whose chests remained flat and who hadn’t started their periods yet. For the first time in my life, I was self-conscious in my racing suit. I’d stand with a hand on opposite shoulders, crossing my arms like a shield over my chest.
One day, heading home in the car after another swim meet where I’d failed to medal, my father destroyed me.
“You don’t have the right body to keep on with swimming,” he said, eyes straight ahead on the road. This shamed me far more than Coach Posada’s “vulgar girls” would the following year. But Dad was smiling. “You’ll make a fine ballplayer. Let’s dig out your glove.”
That I did, and we all know how that ended. Our lurid little skit was released a full two years ahead of Meat Loaf’s famous “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” a song that made both of my parents switch the radio station. They gave me zero credit for being ahead of my time on that one.
***
I no longer pined for either parent’s attention after the Shocking Softball Scandal of 1976. Free of sports and the pressure that came with it, I went buck wild. The late ’70s were a chaotic blur of skipping school, doing drugs, and lying to adults. Twice, police came to the door. I’d been seen riding in a stolen car. I’d been caught smoking pot in the parking lot of the local arcade. My best friend’s parents told mine I was a “bad influence,” and I was no longer welcome at their house. Boys would sometimes toss pebbles at my window after dark, until my father and his cigarette would appear from the shadows.
“Good night, gentlemen,” he’d bellow in his actor’s voice. They’d scatter to the woods.
If my parents grounded me, I’d sneak out. If they took away my driving privileges, I’d hitchhike into town. They were powerless, and they turned on each other. My father had checked out of my life after the softball debacle, and my mother returned to work full time. It was her fault I had no structure, he claimed. Four years later, they would divorce in the cold, passionless manner of their entire marriage. No ugly scenes; my mother helped him load his belongings into a rented truck. He thanked her and moved to Florida.
Jane and I went to college, had careers, got married, and became mothers. I heard from Dad occasionally—a congratulations for being named news editor of my college paper, a phone call at Christmas when I received his annual holiday check. He always paid what he was bound to by law or tradition—our tuitions, our medical bills. He bought me a car when I graduated from VCU. Paid for our weddings. He was so much more generous with his money than his love, though my mother would say he was stingy with both.
But right before he walked each of us down the aisle, he took our arms and said, “Are you quite sure? Just say the word and I’ll take you home right now.” That was surely love.
***
I am my father’s daughter—mouthy, theatrical, and competitive. We found our way back to each other the same way we first found each other, through sports.
My husband and I lived in Fredericksburg by then, and when our daughter, Eva, was 9 she started playing field hockey. I coached her team when she got to senior level, and it wasn’t long before the whole family was involved—my husband’s business sponsored the team, our son played and napped on the sidelines, and Eva was the talented center midfielder.
Lured by the opportunity to be a loyal fan, and sick of evacuating Naples, Florida, during hurricanes, my father took an apartment on Kenmore Avenue across from the public tennis courts. He was a regular at our field hockey games. Sometimes I’d forget he was there, and then I’d hear a loud, “Way to hustle, Eva!” and suddenly I was a transported back to my childhood yard in Charlottesville, trying to earn a remote man’s affection.
When the Fredericksburg Field House was built in 2005, they started an indoor field hockey team for adult women. I captained the team that first season. Our practices were great fun, but we were all about 40 years old and our opponents were much younger. We’d limp off the field with bruised shins and egos. We won only one game that season. My father was at each one. I’d pick him up on the way there. One day, on the ride home, he nearly destroyed me again.
“You don’t have the stamina. I see you fading out there,” he said. I looked over at him, but he was smiling the same smile he’d worn when I was a a girl and he said I should quit swimming and take up softball instead.
“Let’s start hitting some tennis balls,” he finished.
And we did just that until the day came when I could hit him right off the tennis court. He’d played his whole life, but he was almost 70 by then. I was too much for him. I was playing down to him, and we both knew it. I hope it destroyed him.
I found other tennis coaches, joined an amateur USTA women’s team, and played hard and well for the next eight years. He never missed a match or a post-game critique.
“Why are you so timid about coming to net?” he’d ask. “Get up there.” By then, I was wise enough to know he was rarely wrong about my game, and that this was his love language—as good as it was ever going to get with my dad, and I could take it or leave it.
I took it.
***
We both moved home to Charlottesville in 2010, a few years after the death of my husband. Strangely, my parents forged a much stronger and easier bond than they’d had as a married couple. They were regulars at my house, spent the holidays together, and were invited to the same parties by the same mutual friends. They’d often ride together, gossiping over who among their friends looked ghastly old and who should probably quit drinking. Jane and I could hardly believe it. We were a family again, for 10 sweet years.
But just as there was no halting a developing girl’s body, there’s no halting an old man’s dementia once it takes hold. I didn’t walk away from him, as he’d walked away from me all those years ago. I wish he’d been lucid enough to be proud of me for that. I’ll brag about it myself if I ever see him again.
When my father died last November, my sister and I knew what we had to do. We’d promised to spread his ashes on Grounds at UVA, which is technically illegal but that’s never kept me from trouble. For several months, his cremains languished in a storage compartment at my mother’s condominium. Oh, the dark jokes he would have made about that mortification. I rather think Mom enjoyed it.
We scattered his ashes this summer, when the students were gone and all was quiet and dark at the Rotunda. First, Jane mixed us a stiff cocktail. She was nervous we’d get caught. I was feeling dangerous, my favorite feeling these days. We separated on the Lawn, spread out and sprinkled ashes back and forth, here and there. Then we walked down the street to my father’s old fraternity house and left some ashes in the yard. He’d always said—as if we’d never existed—that those were the happiest days of his life. All those boys, all those ballgames and parties.
The last bit of him we saved for Madison Bowl, an all-purpose athletic field where he’d once played club sports.
“Bye, Daddy,” I whispered into the dark, shaking and beating the box until it was empty.
***
Amy Satterthwaite Pappas lived and wrote and raised two children in Fredericksburg, Virginia, before moving back home to the Charlottesville area in 2010. She writes and paints when she’s not fighting the wild woods from taking over her Crozet property.
