I got into politics because of basketball. In Waterville one of the most important things in life was high school basketball, and my three older brothers were all great players. Then I came along. I was not as good as they were. In fact I was not as good as anyone else’s brother. When I was fourteen I began to be known as Johnny Mitchell’s kid brother, the one who isn’t any good. As you might expect, I developed a massive inferiority complex and a highly competitive attitude toward my brothers. I hoped it would just be a passing phase. But it wasn’t. Even after high school and college, I continued to be known as the Mitchell brother who wasn’t any good. So I resolved to outdo my brothers, to become more famous than my brother Johnny, nicknamed “the Swisher” for his prowess on the basketball court. As proof that I’ve succeeded, one of the high points in my life was the day after my election to a full term in the Senate. The Portland paper ran a big picture of the victory celebration the night before. It showed me waving to the cheering crowd, and draped over me, mugging for the camera, is my brother Johnny. The caption read, “Senator George Mitchell, celebrating his surprise election victory, being cheered on by an unidentified supporter.”
Our lives revolved around team sports: baseball all summer, some football, and especially basketball. While in high school I could not have named either of Maine’s U.S. senators, but I knew exactly what Ted Williams’s batting average was every day. We played sports almost daily, for as long as possible. Right after school, from early fall to late spring, if work didn’t interrupt, we went to the Boys Club. There boys of all ages played basketball until the Club closed at nine o’clock.
I was younger and smaller than most of my classmates—sixteen when I graduated from high school, twenty when I graduated from college. My father explained to me over and over again that the reason I didn’t seem to be as good an athlete as my brothers was that I was always playing against boys older than I was; in the meantime, he said, I was actually better off because I was getting through school faster. What he said may have been logical, but it did nothing to ease the hurt and constant embarrassment.
My two oldest brothers’ teams won the State and New England championships, and Robbie’s won the State Championship. I played on the junior varsity in my sophomore and junior years and made the varsity in my senior year, but I started only one game (and played poorly) and played little in the others. I couldn’t even make the tournament team. That was the low point, the final humiliation. The best teams in the state are divided into the eastern and western Maine tournaments of eight teams each; then the winners of the two regional tournaments meet for the State Championship. When tournament time came, our squad had to be cut to ten, down from the twelve that were carried during the year. The coach gave me and one other sad boy the bad news. As a consolation he asked us to come to the tournament with the team as ball boys. Ball boys! I was so surprised, hurt, and angry I was afraid I’d cry if I opened my mouth. So I didn’t say anything. Neither did the other boy (I assume for the same reason). The coach took our silence for acquiescence, and we went to the tournament as ball boys. Fortunately all of my brothers were away. If they had been at home, they would have made fun of me and made me even more miserable than I was.
My father handled the situation well. He encouraged my brothers without discouraging me. He kept sports in the proper perspective and emphasized scholastic achievement. He urged me to study, to read, to get the education he never had but that he was determined his children would have. I didn’t really listen, didn’t read or study much. But every time I attended a game or a practice and heard other fathers yelling at their kids, at the opposing team, at the coaches, at the referees, I silently thanked God for my father. He attended some games, but by no means all the ones in which we played, and when he did attend he sat quietly, never raising his voice.
Not so my mother. She attended many more games than did my father. Although she didn’t understand any of the sports involved, her point of view was simple: her boys were playing and she was there for them. In 1949, when I was a junior in high school and Robbie a senior, Waterville won the Eastern Maine Championship and played South Portland for the state title. Robbie was the star of the team and had a great night in the championship game, scoring twenty-one points and leading Waterville to victory. According to several eyewitnesses, my mother was seated directly in front of a man who throughout the game made loud and abusive remarks about Robbie. Finally, during a timeout, unable to stand it any longer, she stood up, wheeled around, swung her handbag, and belted the man on the side of the head. As she did so, she shouted, “That’s my son you’re talking about!” The crowd around her cheered. The man, obviously embarrassed, sat silently through the rest of the game.
While supportive of her sons, she understood the meaning of team effort. In the fall of Johnny’s junior year in high school, he refused to report when the basketball team started practice. He was angry at the coach because in the last game of the recently concluded football season, the coach had used Johnny for only a few minutes. The same man coached both football and basketball, and Johnny fancied himself a star in both sports. He was sitting around the house one afternoon after school, sulking. My mother was baking bread at the time. She asked him why he wasn’t at basketball practice. She was holding a large wooden spatula that she used for baking bread. When Johnny told her why he wasn’t at practice, she hit him with the spatula, which broke apart. “You psynee!” she said, using the Arabic word for kitten, or pussycat, which she frequently called Johnny. “You’re going to practice right now.” She grabbed him by the ear and started for the door. He, fearing the embarrassment of having his mother drag him into practice, pleaded with her to let him go alone. She made him call the coach and tell him he’d be there in fifteen minutes. He didn’t miss another practice. That year Waterville was undefeated and became the first (and still only) Maine team to win the New England High School Basketball Championship when all six states participated. In the final game, held at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Johnny excelled and was named the Most Valuable Player. It was his eighteenth birthday.
Our mother didn’t understand anything about baseball, but because her children listened to the games on the radio, so did she. Because her children loved the Red Sox and idolized Ted Williams, so did she. She had great fun talking back to the radio, arguing with the announcer, all in fractured English that kept everybody laughing, and when Williams hit a home run she led the cheers. Although I didn’t think of her in such terms at the time, she was a lot of fun to be around, especially when she was in her jovial, self-deprecating moods.
By my senior year in high school my relative lack of athletic ability was evident to everyone. But I wouldn’t admit it. I went to college determined to play basketball and prove to my brothers that I could keep pace with them. Although I played more in college than I did in high school, and even more later while in the army, I gradually came to realize and accept the truth. It was a hard but useful lesson.