THE SPORT OF ROWING “In 1963, I’d saved up enough money to get a Pocock single. I went up to L.A. with a friend and brought two of them back. I got a number of nice letters from George Pocock and Stan Pocock3852 over the years about the theory of rowing and what to do and encouraging words and so forth. I’ve got them all wrapped up somewhere today. I found very little that they told me that turned out not to be correct, and I have found that gradually over the years I have morphed into rowing the way they encouraged me to. “Then I had to find a place to keep the boat. I had it over at ZLAC Rowing Club briefly, but there were a lot of motorboats in upper Mission Bay. Then I took it down to the old Rowing Club, and it was miserable rowing down there on San Diego Bay with all the Navy shore boats and harbor traffic. Finally my dad, who was a member of the San Diego Yacht Club, asked around, and found one of the older members had the lease of a room in a building there which was just large enough that I could open the door, get the boat in, pull one end up to the ceiling, and then I could shut the door. I rowed as hard as I could there [in the adjoining marina] five days a week. I figured it was about 1,200 meters, and I’d go out three days during the week in the mornings and then Saturday and Sunday. Typically I’d row about two or three round trips, quarter on, quarter off, quarter on, quarter off, about 300 meter pieces. Then sometimes I’d row a time trial, the full length of it, and that’s what I did. “We had a couple of little races that spring [1964], and I won them, and then I shipped my boat back to the East Coast. I got a little letter of encouragement from Ky Ebright.3853 I got the boat to the NYAC, put it in the water, and rowed the Olympic Singles Trials. 3852 See Chapter 45 ff. 3853 See Chapters 54, 57 and 62. “Don Spero won. I was the disappointed third-place finisher, and Sy Cromwell was the disappointed second- place finisher. I rowed over to him. I felt I had done pretty well, given where I had come from. We were catching our breaths after the race, and I said, ‘Well, are you and Don going to row the double as well?’ “And he said, ‘Well, I was thinking of asking you.’ “I said, ‘Boy . . . how nice . . . I’d be glad to . . . uh . . . ‘ “I felt like a kid hanging around a ball park hitting balls when Mickey Mantle3854 comes up and says, ‘Hey kid, we need another guy for the team today. Would you like to play with us?’ “That was July 11. We decided to get together in August before the Doubles Trials. “Also at the Singles Trials, Joe Burk3855 walked by. I went up to him because he was one of my heroes. He said, ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you come down to Philly, stay at my house, we’ll get a boat, you can row out on the Schuylkill, and I’ll go out and tell you what I see.’ “We did, and he said he had two recommendations for me. One was to look around only during the pullthrough, and I forget the other one now, but he said, ‘Don’t go around trying to change too much. You’re doing pretty well.’ Just a very, very pleasant guy. How generous! Cromwell and Storm Storm: “So I returned to San Diego and rowed for a month. I had some trouble with back spasms, and when I went back East in 3854 in the 1940s and 1950s, one of the most beloved stars of American baseball. During his career, the New York Yankees won the World Series seven times. 3855 See Chapters 58, 65 and 66. 1060
