After attending his first Portland Timbers match at old Civic Stadium during the NASL era, nine-year-old Ken Reade was anxious to kick around a soccer ball.
Reade and his father drove out to the local sporting goods store in Gresham, Ore., only to make a startling discovery: the store didn't have a single soccer ball for sale. Everything else a kid like Reade could have wanted was there—footballs, basketballs, baseballs—but no soccer balls available.
So Reade made do with what he could get, a .99 cent rubber ball from the grocery store, the kind you would have to dig out of a big metal cage.