I was never much of an athlete. When ORR first opened, athlete or not, everyone went out for one sport or another. Being height challenged and wearing glasses pretty much ruled out football, so having been on the Center School basketball team, I decided to try out for the junior varsity, knowing that I would never make the varsity.
I didn’t make the JV’s either, but Coach Norman, who was also the Phys. Ed. teacher and athletic director must have taken pity on me because he made me varsity team manager. This important position consisted of bringing the rack of balls out to the gym before practice and returning them to the storage room after where I was to clean them with saddle soap. Still, I was a member of the varsity.
This was a plum assignment because I got to sit in the press box where I kept the game statistics. ORR was the only school in the area that had a press box high above courtside near the gym ceiling, which you got to by climbing a ladder inside a closet in the girls’ locker room. (What red-blooded, American teenage boy didn’t want to know what the inside of the girls’ locker room looked like?) It had the best view of the game, and when WBSM, the local radio station, broadcast the game I sat next to Gil Santos, who went on to be the Voice of the New England Patriots. How cool was that?
All members of the varsity got free Converse All-Star Chuck Taylor hi-top canvas sneakers, including me. Which brings me to my point. What happened to sneakers? They’re not even called that anymore. They’re called athletic shoes and there are all kinds: tennis shoes, boating shoes, golf shoes, walking shoes, running shoes and, of course, basketball shoes. There are even cross-trainers, which means you can wear them for all the other activities. I only have two feet, yet my closet is full of sneakers … er, athletic shoes. Why do I need all these shoes?
My wife complains that she can’t find casual footwear (that’s another word for sneakers) that fit properly. It’s no surprise. According to Natalie White, a former student manager (a woman of my own heart) of the Boston College women’s basketball team, the shoes women wear for sports are not designed for women. Surprise! They were based on the mold of a male foot and were “disguised with traditional feminine coloring.” Who knew sneakers – there I go again – could be sexist? So White designed her own shoes and after much pushback from the big shoe companies, her brand became a big success.
Canvas shoes needed no break-in. Now shoes aren’t broken in until it’s time to buy a new pair, and they aren’t cheap. Converse All-Stars now run about 70 bucks a pair, but they come in all colors, stripes, checks and polka dots. Whoopie!
Another brand of canvas shoes, which were actually called sneakers, became successful among the Hollywood crowd for a while but lost its appeal and faded away. Even Leonardo DiCaprio, a big fan, couldn’t save it. So much for the rebirth of sneakers.
You are not cool unless you wear athletic shoes endorsed, even designed, by a famous athlete. Chuck Taylor would roll over in his grave if he knew how much athletes get paid to lend their names to footwear companies. He started it but Michael Jordan, the basketball legend, has made billions doing it. They even made a movie about his brand of shoes. New ones cost about $150, and vintage ones that collectors salivate over run upward of $25,000. Shoes the superstar wore in a game were recently sold at auction for over a half-million dollars.
Oh, by the way, sneakers aren’t even called shoes anymore. Apparently, they’re called “kicks.”
I just can’t keep up.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado