The 1950s were not perfect. It was a frustrating decade for the USC Trojans, who went 2-7-1 against UCLA, 3-7 against Notre Dame and 1-1 in the Rose Bowl. The 1957 season, in which USC wone only one game, was its worst season of the century.
The only bright spot came at the end of the 1950 season in which a team that had gone 1-5-1 including a 39-0 blowout by UCLA, rose to the occasion on the last game of the year to win 9-7 over a Notre Dame coached by the legendary Frank Leahy, one of the game’s greatest coaches.
I was born in ‘49. My G.I. dad had just graduated from UCLA. In ‘54 the Bruins won their only national championship in football, so he bought our first TV so he could watch their games. I was five, saw those little players running around, and looked around at the back of the set in order to see them. Later I graduated from USC, so every year we would watch the big game together.
I still have my 1959 Little League Directory, listing every boy with his address and parents. Between the majors and minors there were 16 teams of 15 players each, or 240 kids. There were plenty of brother-sets, but that still left nearly 200 families. Yet in that entire directory there is only one single-parent family.