Sports

To say that my life was influenced by my father would be putting it mildly. He was an ideal role model for finding balance in life and sports was an important part in his physical being as well as being an outlet for emotional energy. As a background, I should tell you about his activities, because they would help form my philosophy about the role of athletic activities in my life. Dad grew up in the depression and was one of four brothers. He was the second oldest, and because his father was ill from 1926 until his death in 1944, Dad and his older brother became the father surrogates and the bread winners for the family. They worked 2-3 jobs each during the depression years with Dad working for a bakery delivering bread at age 16 and then being empl0yed by an envelope company as a stock boy at age 18. Dad would tell me that in order to keep his job, he had to excel in various industrial sports leagues. Excel he did, playing guard on the company basketball team; pitcher on the hard pitch softball team; a member of the champion table tennis team; a member of the bowling team and actively worked out in the local athletic club. He never swam much, claiming he would just sink and didn't like to fish (not active enough). He would take up golf in his 30's, was self taught and shot in the 80's. Golf was the one sport that he and Mom played together. Never knew him to play tennis but he was an avid handball player. Dad's real ambition in life was to go to college and become a college level coach. He was never able to attend college as he had to work to support his younger brothers' education (both graduated college, one becoming a lawyer, the other a salesman for the envelope company for whom Dad worked). Dad would substitute for his lost dream of being a college coach by coaching me in various sports.

In the early years in Iowa, Dad introduced me to golf (age 4), baseball (catch in the backyard) and swimming. When we moved to Kansas, he enrolled us in the city's athletic club where I took courses in gymnastics (not my thing); boxing; general conditioning; basketball; handball and swimming. I became a member of the athletic club's swimming team, swimming in freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke events. I was better than average as a swimmer but always suffered from irritation of my allergies by the chlorine in the water. Never was accomplished as a diver as my sinuses couldn't take the pressure of submersion in more than ten feet of water and I didn't like doing flips off of the high board. Boxing was a good conditioning sport, but during one practice session, I knocked out my opponent even though he had a head guard on and I decided that I neither wanted to hurt anyone again or run the risk of my getting knocked out myself (this occurred at age 12). I remember many handball sessions with Dad and many basketball shoot arounds (think I actually beat him at HORSE 2-3 times out of the hundreds we played). He taught me to play table tennis and after four or five years of playing him, I finally almost won a game from him (think I scored 18 points). He had a serve that I was never able to read which he struck with a combined chop and forward movement of the paddle and which either bounced hard right or left when it hit the opponents side of the table. The problem was, unlike most chops, you couldn't read the spin and you were always just trying to block it back which usually resulted in a weak return and a subsequent hard slam from him. HE HEVER WOULD TEACH ME THIS SERVE!!! I have never figured it out. Dad became my golf coach and friendly opponent, my baseball coach and constant supporter of any athletic endeavor I attempted with the possible exception of fishing, in which he never had an interest. I felt no pressure to pursue sports as a profession but was encouraged to always do my best at anything I tried. I always put out my best effort not to disappoint him. As an indication of how important this was to me, one of my clearest memories was when I was trying to leg out a triple, I heard him yell, "Krueger, you are running too long in one spot." Never was very fast but that did hurt. Another baseball memory related to running occured during a practice session (Dad was coach) when Dad said, "You all are not hustling and are lazy, even a 38 y/o man like me could beat you around the track" (we were practicing near a high school track). "I am going to race all of you around the track and anyone who can't beat me will do two more laps". We all ran two extra laps. Very embarassing for a bunch of 14 and 15 y/o kids. To be continued later...