Tag Archives: athletics

What’s in a name

In my romp through the sports world this year, the name of one university has popped up in conversation more than any other — UCLA.

            Here’s one instance:

            In 1939, UCLA enrolled baseball great Jackie Robinson. He became the school’s first athlete to letter in four varsity sports. He was one of four Black players on the football team, making UCLA college football’s most integrated team. Of course, Robinson then went on to become the first Black player on a Major League Baseball team.

            And another:

            In 1974, UCLA awarded the first athletic scholarship to a woman. Ann Meyers Drysdale was a standout basketball player, the first high school athlete to be chosen for a woman’s Olympic team. She was the first woman to sign an NBA contract (the men’s team!) and the first woman to broadcast an NBA game. She went on to have a stellar career in sports broadcasting.

            Yet one more:

            I’ve talked with people who said Title IX’s impact wasn’t felt for many years. Sportswriter Melissa Isaacson said no one really knew about it for at least three years after it became law. Others pointed out that before Title IX could really have an impact, women’s teams needed equipment, scholarships, high level coaching and competitive leagues. That all took time.

            But one day, a friend begged to differ. “We felt the impact right away,” said Roger Freberg.*

            Guess where he was in the 1970s. UCLA!

Tracking the new reality

            Roger Freberg was on a track and field scholarship at the university when Title IX was enacted. He says women appeared on the track almost immediately.

            “It might be because you don’t need much adaptation in track and field,” he says. “And it was a sport that had both men and women. We all adjusted pretty quickly.”

            Most coaches were supportive, Roger says. The pushback — at UCLA and other universities — came from the sports programs with the biggest budgets. In most cases, that meant the football and basketball programs. Coaches were afraid that Title IX would drain resources from their programs.

            UCLA’s track program wasn’t immune from the effects. Men’s scholarships were cut in half, Roger says, and when the team traveled, they no longer stayed in fancy hotels and the per diem allowance for meals was more modest.

            Still, the women were welcome. When asked why, Roger’s answer might sound sexist, but it was the reality of the time — and maybe not so different today.

            “The guys welcomed the women because they were extending the dating pool!” he says. “They’d help the women adjust their starting blocks, even though clearly they didn’t need the help. They played that old, old game.”

            Well, the other men did. Roger had gotten married in 1972, his sophomore year in college. He welcomed the women simply as fellow athletes.

Devil in the details

            Overall, Roger says any resistance was more practical than ideological. How would men and women share the weight room? Could the workout schedule be rearranged or would new facilities have to be built? How should tournaments be run to allow all athletes to remain warm and limber for their events?

            Roger doesn’t minimize the reality of the scholarship issue, though. The opportunity to attend college on an athletic scholarship narrowed.

            “You’d hear teammates say, ‘Well, now my younger brother might not make it unless he gets better,’” he says. “Universities began to offer partial scholarships, but a lot of athletes come from families that need the money and now they can’t afford the college bills.”

One more first

            As for Roger, he was UCLA’s first player to be an amateur in one sport and a professional in another. He was an All-American at UCLA; NCAA runner-up in discus; PAC 8 champion in discus and runner-up in shot put. He was caption of the team his senior year, and they were NCAA champions for three years and runner-up his fourth year.

            He was drafted in 1974 as a defensive lineman by the Los Angeles Rams. Although his premier events were the discus and shotput, football scouts were impressed by his sprinting times and figured he could take his ability to run short bursts to the football field. 

            I asked Roger why he thought UCLA was so progressive in racial and gender reform.

            “Southern California has a history not so much of tolerance but of practicality,” he muses. “If you have a good athlete, you’re thinking, ‘What can we do to help this person get to the next level?’ We just want to see people recognized for their ability.”

                                                            ______________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Roger on October 5, 2022.  

PHOTO: From the personal collection of Roger Freberg.

A first on the court

All too often, a woman’s reputation as a “first” overshadows her many other accomplishments. That’s the case for Becky Hammon, the first woman to serve as head coach for a National Basketball Association (NBA) team, even if briefly.

            On December 20, 2020, San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was ejected in the second quarter of a game against the Los Angeles Lakers in San Antonio after arguing with a referee. He turned to Becky.

            “He officially pointed at me,” Becky said. “That was it. Said, ‘You’ve got them.’”*

            Becky joined Popovich’s staff in 2014 as an assistant coach, one of six women who held an assistant coaching role in the NBA that year. For three years, she served as the head coach of the Spurs’ summer league team, the first woman to be a head coach in that league. In 2015, she lead the team to the title.  

First class all the way

            So how did it come about that a woman was on the coaching staff of an NBA team? Pure chance!

            Becky was undrafted out of Colorado State University but played in the WNBA for 16 years, becoming a six-time All-Star. After being passed over for the United States Olympic team, she gained Russian citizenship and represented that country in the 2008 and 2012 Games.

            On her flight home from the 2012 London Games, Becky was seated next to Popovich. She recalls the conversation.

             “So if you were an assistant for me, and I asked you something, you’d tell me the truth?” he asked her.

            “I don’t know why else you’d ask if you didn’t want me to tell the truth.”

            He answered, “Good, I don’t want a bunch of yes men.”

Passing the test

            In 2013, Hammon tore a ligament in her left knee, abruptly ending her WNBA season. While she was in rehab, she served as a coaching intern with the Spurs.

             After her debut as head coach in the 2020 game, players had nothing but good things to say about her coaching.

            “It’s a beautiful thing just to hear her barking out calls, barking out sets,” said Lakers player LeBron James. “She’s very passionate about the game. So congrats to her, congrats to our league.”

            Said retired NBA player Pau Gasol: “I’m telling you: Becky Hammon can coach. I’m not saying she can coach pretty well. I’m not saying she can coach enough to get by. I’m not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA’s male coaches. I’m saying: Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period.”**

All because of Title IX

            Although everyone was looking — and hoping — for Becky to move into a head coaching role in the NBA, she chose a different path. Today, she is head coach for a WNBA team, the Las Vegas Aces. She signed a seven-figure contract, making her the highest-paid coach in the WNBA.

            Clearly, Becky has benefited from the gains of Title IX. She was born in 1977, five years after passage of the gender equality law.

            “Obviously, I’m a product of Title IX,” she said. “My whole life, my whole livelihood was because Title IX was in place.”***

            She understands the debt her generation owes to the women who came before her, the women who had to fight year after year just for a chance to play.

            “We’re super grateful for the people that came before and fought much tougher battles so that we didn’t have to fight those kind of battles,” she said.† “We have to continue to push that line. For me, it’s still about the perception of the next generation seeing women and girls are great athletes, period.”

                                                _________________________

* Victor Mather and Marc Stein, “Becky Hammon Becomes First Woman to Serve as Head Coach in N.B.A. Game,” The New York Times (December 31, 2020). This quote, Becky’s next quote and LeBron James’s quote all come from this article.

** Paul Gasol, “An open letter about female coaches,” The Players’ Tribune (May 11, 2018).

***Annie Costabile, “50th anniversary of Title IX exposes how much work remains,” The Chicago Sun-Times (June 25, 2022).

† Mark Anderson, “In their own words: What Title IX means to Las Vegas sports women,” Las Vegas Review-Journal (June 22, 2020) and “50th anniversary of Title IX.”  

And yer OUT!

The World Series is on deck and that reminds me of a baseball player I’ve been meaning to write about. Jackie Mitchell — the girl who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

            Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell was only the second female to play professional baseball.* Born in 1913, she learned the game from her father, which as you can imagine was unusual for the time.

            But a neighbor, Charles “Dazzy” Vance, also coached the budding player. He was a Major League pitcher who had lead the league in strikeouts for seven seasons.

            When Jackie was 16, she joined the Englettes, a woman’s team in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The lefty-throwing Jackie’s skill as a pitcher — and her sinking curveball — caught the eye of Joe Engel, also owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a AA minor-league team. On March 25, 1931, Engle signed Jackie to the team.

It’s game day

            On April 2, 1931, the Lookouts played an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, who were traveling north from spring training. The stands were filled with 4,000 spectators. 

            Seventeen-year-old Jackie took the mound in the first inning as a relief pitcher. The starting pitcher had given up a single and a double. Ruth and Gehrig were next in the lineup. 

            Mitchell was throwing her trademark sinker. Her first pitch to Ruth was called a ball, and Ruth swung at and missed the next two pitches. Dramatically, he asked the umpire to inspect the ball, and the umpire threw out a new one. The fourth pitch was called a strike — Ruth had struck out.

            At that, The Bambino charged the ump, while teammates hiked onto the field to lead him back to the bench. He stomped off the field and threw his bat against the dugout.

            Next up was Gehrig. Jackie threw three pitches; Gehrig swung at and missed all three. The crowd was on its feet with a standing ovation. She walked the next batter and was pulled from the game. The final score was 14-4 Yankees. But who really cared about the score!

            “Girl Pitcher Fans Ruth and Gehrig” blared the headline in the next day’s New York Times.

What’s the score?

            To this day, people debate the question: Did Jackie really did strike out Ruth and Gehrig? Engel was widely known as a stunt promoter. In the middle of the Great Depression, his team managed to attract large crowds despite the hard times.

            It was absolutely not a stunt, counters one sports historian. Being a lefty against the two left-handed sluggers gave Jackie an advantage.

            “Think about a pitcher coming in they’ve never seen before,” said Leslie Heaphy, an associate professor of sports history at Kent State. “She’s a lefty with a very deceptive pitch.”**

            About Gehrig, many people say he just wasn’t as skilled a hitter as Ruth. And people doubt the King of Swat would have agreed to a stunt that made him look bad. But Ruth tipped his hat to Jackie when he stepped up to bat. And the runner on first didn’t try to steal a base against her.

            Whatever the case, male sportswriters had a field day.

            “The very fact that such a thing should come to pass, even in burlesque, is cause for every male in the land to quake in his boots!” cried Alabama writer Ralph W. Callahan.***

You’re benched

            Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis intervened and voided Jackie’s contract. She joined the barnstorming circuit — traveling teams that were equal parts sports and vaudeville — but in 1937, Jackie retired from the game.

            Jackie was angry that she was scorned as a sideshow act. (“She swings a mean lipstick!” smirked the New York Times). Even when she had the chance to play again — when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League started up in 1943 during World War II — she refused. And in 1952, Major League Baseball banned women from the game. Jackie threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chattanooga Lookouts game in 1982, but that was it. She died in 1987.

            These stories of female firsts can be inspiring, but all too often they end like Jackie’s, a sad story of thwarted ambition. She was truly a woman scorned. That’s why Title IX is so important for female athletes. They just want the chance to play.

                                                _________________________

* Lizzie Arlington was the first woman to play on a men’s team. She pitched for the Reading (PA) Coal Heavers fifteen years earlier in 1898.

** Leslie Heaphy, “Overlooked No More: Jackie Mitchell, Who Fanned Two of Baseball’s Greats,” The New York Times (Nov. 7, 2017). Healey is also co-author of The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016)

*** “Morning Musings,” The Anniston (Alabama) Star (March 29, 1931), p. 12. 

Gentlepeople, start your engines

Today I’m talking about something I know nothing about. Could be dangerous! But not as dangerous as auto racing. In the 1970s, one woman broke the gender barrier in this once all-male sport.

            In 1977, Janet Guthrie was the first woman to qualify for and drive in the Indianapolis 500. The race was first held in 1911, so Janet was breaking a 66-year-old tradition.

            Janet was born in Iowa in 1938 and grew up in Florida. Her love for machines led her to learn to fly planes when she was only 13 years old. She made her first parachute jump at 16 years old. She was off and running!

            At the University of Michigan, she studied physics. “The beauty of it just entranced me,” she said.* She started her career as an engineer for an aircraft manufacturer.

Her first car

            Janet needed a car to get to work, so she bought a used 1953 Jaguar XK120 M coupe. She loved that car! And she loved speed. In 1963, she began competing in solo events called gymkhanas. A gymkhana features a starting point, a finish line and obstacles to maneuver though in between, all within a stated time limit. 

            By 1972, Janet was racing full time. She had learned the craft at the Sports Car Club of America driver’s school and began racing in another Jaguar, an XK 140. She built the engine of that car, did her own body work and sometimes slept in the car.

            In the 1976 World 600 (now the Coca Cola 600), Janet finished 15th, becoming the first woman to compete in a NASCAR Winston Cup Superspeedway race. It’s the longest closed-course NASCAR race, 100 miles longer than the Indy 500. She competed in four more races that year. 

The allure of speed

            What attracted Janet to this all-male — and very dangerous — sport?

            “You have to think about what you are doing all the time. You have to commit yourself to going very fast. It commands every faculty you have,” she said. Besides, she added, “It is exhilarating and it’s fun!”**

            Although she admitted at times to being hurt by the negative comments from men who didn’t think a woman had the strength and stamina to race, she had a pretty good comeback.

            “I don’t carry the car, I drive it,” she said.***

            Janet competed in her first Daytona 500 in 1977, finishing 12th, when her car’s engine failed with 10 laps to go. When she competed in the Indy 500 that year, she finished 29th, again slowed by engine problems. She competed in two more Indy 500s, finishing ninth in the 1978 race. In total, Janet competed in eleven IndyCar events, with a best finish of fifth place. 

Money’s the problem

            So, why do so few people know about Janet Guthrie today? The answer to that is money. Despite her historic firsts, Janet was unable to find sponsors. She was puzzled by that fact — surely, a female driver would attract a lot of attention for her sponsors? But without financial backing, she was forced into retirement.

            In 1982, she spoke at a 10-year celebration of Title IX on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

            “We are here to celebrate our accomplishments, but also to point out how much work remains to be done,” said Guthrie. “We have the framework in place to insure equality, to insure what is morally and legally just. We have to call attention to the progress that is being made.”****

            Billy Jean King, the tennis great who broke ground in her sport, understood the stakes for Janet. King had put her reputation on the line in the “Battle of the Sexes,” her 1973 match against Bobby Riggs.

            “The biggest difference between my challenge match with Bobby Riggs and Janet’s historic races at Indianapolis and Daytona is the difference between hitting a ball into the net and hitting a concrete wall at 200 mph. Janet put everything on the line, including her life.”†

            But for Janet, being a female first isn’t foremost in her mind. She knew that her racing career was in part a result of the women’s movement, and she’s glad to have moved the needle. But what’s really important to her is her achievement on the track.

            “I want to be remembered as damn good racing driver,” she said.††

            And that indeed is her true legacy.

                                                            __________________

* Automotive Hall of Fame, 2019 inductee.

** Tom McEwen, “Janet Guthrie: She’s Paid Her Dues for Indy,” The Tampa Tribune (May 25, 1977), p. 29.

*** Bill Lyon, Janet Guthrie has paid her dues and is ready to roar,” The Chicago Tribune (May 27, 1979), p. 161.

**** Ronn Levine, “A Celebration for Title IX,” The Washington Post (June 17, 1982). 

† “Qualified,” ESPN 30-for-30 documentary (Debut: May 28, 2019).

†† Patrick Donovan, “Janet Guthrie: The First Woman to Qualify for the Indy 500,” The Hollywood Times (May 28, 2019).

Collegiate fencer parries

Sometimes when your alma mater is in the news, it’s not something to be proud of. This week, I learned of a Title IX lawsuit brought against Penn State by Zara Moss, a student athlete who fenced for the university.

            In her suit, Zara accuses head fencing coach Wes Glon of abusing her and other female fencers and the university of failing to address these complaints.

            Now a graduate, the All-American fencer alleged that the team was a “hotbed for sexual assault and gender discrimination.” She accuses Glon of subjecting female fencers, including Moss, to physical, verbal and psychological abuse.

            “No one pursuing educational or athletic excellence should ever experience abuse for any reason,” said Zara’s lawyer, Chelsea Weaver.*

            The lawsuit falls under the banner of Title IX because abuse based on gender disrupts a student’s college years, making it impossible to have an equal educational experience. In many cases, abuse leads its victims to drop out of college or fail to pursue their educational or athletic goals.  

A litany of complaints

            As an example of the abuse, Zara, once an Olympic hopeful, said that Glon, who has coached at Penn State since 1985, injured her by forcing her to spar against him without protective equipment. Glon struck her as she “sobbed and pleaded with him to stop,” the lawsuit says.

            In her sophomore year, Zara suffered an ankle injury, and she says Glon forced her to return to fencing before her injury had healed. In addition, Zara says Glon bullied the female fencers about their weight, but didn’t level the same abuse at male fencers.

            “Wes’s conduct towards women fencers was no secret,” her attorney said. “Penn State athletic directors and administrators knew about or had observed Wes’s egregious behavior towards female fencers. But Wes’s prestige, influence, and connections were more important to Penn State than protecting its athletes.”**

            Zara says she suffers from an eating disorder, body dysmorphia (a mental health condition), panic attacks and anxiety as a result of the alleged abuse. She’s being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and is under the care of a psychiatrist. She hasn’t fenced for more than a year.

They didn’t learn

            After the suit was filed, Penn State put Glon on paid leave. USA Fencing forced him to resign as president of the Central Division of USA Fencing and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit that monitors abuse in Olympic sports, began an investigation.  

            This is the second time that Glon has been suspended. In August 2021, USA Fencing and SafeSport placed him on a three-year suspension after Jennifer Oldham, a North Carolina fencing club owner and instructor, accused him of failing to act on a sexual misconduct complaint she brought against an assistant fencing coach. She accused George Abashidze of groping and sexually assaulting her on a flight after a national fencing competition in 1917.

            Glon was reinstated before the three years were up, after a favorable ruling from an arbitration panel. Oldham’s suit ultimately failed, the judge determining that it didn’t apply because Oldham had no ties to the university. But in 2019, USA Fencing suspended Abashidze, leading Penn State to fire him. 

            At first, Zara resisted filing a lawsuit, afraid of making life hard for women currently on the team. But she ultimately decided it was worth coming forward.

            “Things need to change,” she said.*** “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anybody else, and the way to do that and to make sure that happens is to tell my story.”

                                                _________________________

**  Susan Snyder, “Penn State places head fencing coach Wes Glon on paid leave after allegations surface,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (September 12, 2022).

** Matt DiSanto, “Former Penn State Fencer Sues University, Coach Wes Glon for Alleged Abuse,”  StateCollege.com (April 12, 2022).

*** Bret Pallotto, “Zara Moss explains why she came forward with allegations of abuse on Penn State’s fencing team,” Centre Daily Times (April 13, 2022).

Rebel in the 1950s

In the 1970s, several dozen determined girls brought lawsuits to play in Little League baseball. But none of them was actually the first to breach the gender barrier there. That honor goes to Kathryn “Kay” Johnston Massar.

            For her story, we have to go all the way back to 1950.

            Kay lived in Corning, New York, a hot spot for Little League baseball. A Corning team had gone to the Little League World Series quarter-finals in 1948 and the semifinals in 1949. Kids could really play ball in Corning.

            But no matter how much she loved baseball, Kay realized that her gender would shut her out of the game.

            “My mother was braiding my hair one day when I was 13 years old and my brother left the house with his bat to go practice, and I started crying,” she recalled. “I knew I could play. I was just as good as him and better than some of the other boys.”*

The braids gotta go

            Kay and her mother hatched a plot. They cut off her waist-length braids, and on the day of the Little League tryouts, she borrowed a pair of her brother’s baseball pants, grabbed a baseball cap and her glove and took off out the door.

            Only one thing remained to pull off the deception. How could she sign up as Kay? She wouldn’t even be allowed to try out. So Kay borrowed one more thing — the name of a character in “Little Lulu,” her favorite comic strip. Tubby. She tried out for the King’s Dairy team across town, where no one knew her or would recognize her.

            Kay — I mean, Tubby — made the team, as she knew she would. Her father bought her a first baseman’s glove. She slept with the mitt under her pillow, breathing in the smell of the leather.         

            “I was so happy,” Kay said. “I wasn’t thinking, I’m breaking a barrier; I was just playing the sport I loved.”**

Better ‘fess up

            She played for a few weeks before her nerves got the best of her. Afraid of being discovered and kicked off the team, she confessed to her coach what she’d done. He waved off her concern. “You’re my first baseman,” he said.***

            Kay had the time of her life on that team. “I played the whole season,” she said. “So much fun, a thrill!”

            Despite Kay’s new look and name, word soon got around that a girl was playing with the boys. While her teammates didn’t seem to mind, other people did.

            “It was the other [opposing] players that would push me down or call me names, and the parents initially booed when I went out to play,” Kay said. “They could see that I was a better player than some of their sons.”****

And that’s that… until…

            Eventually, word reached Little League headquarters that a girl was playing on a team in Corning. The higher-ups put a stop to the insurrection, adding wording into the Little League rules that excluded girls. Unofficially, the rule became known as the Tubby Johnston Rule.

            That rule stood for the next 24 years, until 1974, when Maria Pepe, a 12-year-old girl in Hoboken, New Jersey, sued Little League for the right to play, and she won.

            Kay’s story was eclipsed by Maria’s for a long time, but on September 27, 2006, she threw out the first pitch at a Yankees game; she’s also thrown out a first pitch for the Oakland A’s. She is honored as a trailblazer at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. But in the end, her status as a first has always been eclipsed by her love of the game.

            “You know, I have to tell you, when I went out pretending to be a boy, I had no idea I was setting some sort of a record,” she said.† “That was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to play the game.”

                                                _________________

* Joe Davidson, “Yolo County’s Nakken inspires as first base coach for Giants,” The Sacramento Bee (July 24, 2020), p. B4. About her age — years later, Kay confessed that she was actually 14 years old when she tried out for the team. In reality, she’d aged out of Little League, which was open to boys ages 9-12.

** Selena Roberts, “She had a secret,” Sports Illustrated (June 20, 2011).

*** This quote and the next one comes from the Sacramento Bee article.

**** “A Little League Of Her Own: The First Girl In Little League Baseball,”NPR Morning Edition (March 30, 2018).

† NPR

Little League firestorm

The story of how Maria Pepe, a 12-year-old girl from Hoboken, New Jersey, forced Little League to accept female players is pretty well known. I’ve written about it myself.

            But in reality, the Little League story is not one of a single girl up against a behemoth. It’s more a case of nationwide spontaneous combustion.

            In 1974, about twenty girls across the country brought lawsuits against the all-boy Little League baseball organization. The lawsuits stretched from the East Coast to the West Coast. Maria Pepe’s lawsuit was simply the first one to go to court — and the lawsuit that won the day.

            By the time that court case was settled, Maria was too old to qualify for Little League. In 1972, she had made a team, but she only played in three games before she was forced off the field.

Fighting small minds

            Meanwhile, a girl in Peabody, Massachusetts, had a similar story. When 10-year-old Janine Cinseruli showed up for tryouts in her town, she was barred from the field.

             “When I went to sign up, a guy said, ‘You can’t play,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because you’re a girl,’” she recalled. “I was not that smart or worldly, but I knew right then it was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. … I said, ‘But I can play, I’m really good.’”*

            Janine’s mother, Marion, went to bat for her. She hired a lawyer and filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Their argument was the same as Maria Pepe’s — that Little League uses public fields and therefore can’t exclude girls from participating.

            When the case went to court, the Suffolk County Superior Court agreed.

            “The boys used to play with the boys, and the girls with the girls, but times have changed,” said Judge Samuel Adams.**

            The ruling came down in favor not only of Janine, but also of 10-year-old Susan Wegryn of Wellesley, Massachusetts, who had filed her own suit. “Baseball is my sport, and I want to play it,” she said in court.***

            The ruling also covered Janet Bowe of Allston, Mass., and Debbie MacColl of Wellesley. Janet had been barred from tryouts, while Debbie had been accepted one year when she signed up using her initials only, but barred the next year, when she wrote out her full name. 

Storming the field

            Trailblazers like these girls don’t forge a path easily. Janine’s family was bombarded with hate mail, which they tried to ignore, but it wasn’t easy.

            “Most of the letters I couldn’t even repeat because they were obscene, that’s just what they were,” Janine’s mother, Marion, said. “But I feel they come from small-minded people and I just burn them, throw them away.”****

            Little League didn’t really see the light. They caved because the cost of the mounting lawsuits would have bankrupted the organization. They continued to insist that Little League was the “prerogative” of males only.

            Meanwhile, after the ruling, in Peabody alone, 25 girls showed up for tryouts.

            Janine celebrated her win in court by dedicating her first game to her attorney, Ruth Budd. She pitched in that game and struck out 16 batters.

            “Roger Clemens did that for the Red Sox [in 1997] and I thought, ‘Cool, I did that, too, when I was 11,’” she said later as an adult.

            Janine went on to play not only regular season Little League, but in all-star teams for the next two summers. She was even elected team captain. I guess she showed them! As did all the other ball-playing girls who started a firestorm on the baseball field.  

                                                __________________________

* Melissa Isaacson, “The girls who toppled Little League,” ESPN.com (June 24, 2014).

** Joseph M. Harvey, “Peabody girl wins Little League trial,” The Boston Globe (April 25, 1974), p. 3.

*** Paul Langner, “2 Mass. girls win Little League case,” The Boston Globe (May 19, 1974), p. 29.

**** This quote and the following one come from Isaacson, “The girls.”

A woman of firsts

Like so many  parents, I had visions of my kid getting a sports scholarship. And because he’s a boy, that could have happened, even if it were fifty years ago. But if you were a girl back then? No scholarship for you!

            It was 1974 before the first woman got a college sports scholarship. Ann Meyers Drysdale got a scholarship to play basketball for UCLA, just two years after Title IX was enacted. She was a standout player in California and is the holder of many other “first” titles.

  • First high school player to be chosen for a woman’s U.S. Olympic team
  • Player on the first Olympic women’s basketball team (that won silver at the 1976 Montreal Olympics)
  • First woman to carry her country’s flag at the Pan Am games
  • First woman to sign a contract with an NBA (National Basketball Association) team — a men’s team!
  • First woman to broadcast an NBA game
  • First overall draft pick for the Women’s Professional  Basketball League (WBL), which was a short-lived women’s league 

            Whew! That’s a lot of firsts. And Ann worked hard for those “first” titles.

            “There was no doubt I was competitive. I was fiercely and passionately competitive. A desire  to win coursed through my veins, and I was glad for it,” she said.*

            Ann was so competitive that part of her maturing as an athlete was to control the temper that came along with the competitiveness: “The first thing that every great athlete must learn;  to control the mind and emotions as well as the body.”                  

Bringing home the win

            That’s a particularly hard lesson for female athletes to learn, because for so long women were told they should play sports just for fun, not to be competitive and, god forbid, not strive to win. In the 1950s and ‘60s, “play days” were often the only option offered young athletic girls, and the scores didn’t count. Even in the days of the WBL (1978-81), the emphasis was often on demeanor — the players had to take lessons in how to eat, dress, walk and apply makeup. Some teams even sent their players to charm school! 

            Women were ready to break out back then, and Ann definitely wanted to win. And she did! While in college, she led the UCLA Bruin women to their first national basketball championship. She credits Title IX for that victory.

            “I’d been born into a wonderful family… with parents who stoked the flames of our competitive natures rather than squelch them for harmony’s sake,” she said. “But it was Title IX that gave me a full ride to a Division I school. If not for Title IX, I wouldn’t have been part of the Bruin women and their first national basketball championship.”

            Now let’s talk about that contract with an NBA team — the Indiana Pacers. Ann participated in a three-day tryout under a three-year contract. She played her heart out and was pretty happy with her performance in the tryout. But then the head coach lowered the hammer.

            “I wish you had their height,” he said. She read his words as: Hey, you got your shot, now get lost.

From the court to the camera

            Fortunately, Ann was able to parlay her contract into broadcasting work, where ultimately her career led her. In her day, after the WBL folded — and before the advent of the Women’s National Basketball Association — there was no professional path for a female basketball player to follow.

            For more than 26 years, Ann served as a network television sports analyst for TNT, ESPN, CBS and NBC. Currently, she is a vice president for the Phoenix Mercury and a color analyst for the Phoenix Suns television broadcasts. She was president and general manager for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and a vice president for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns.

            The title of Ann’s book is You Let Some Girl Beat You? It’s what one mother yelled at her son when a young Ann tried out for a boys’ summer basketball league. She made the team. Sometimes, that competitive nature comes in handy!

                                                _________________________

* All quotes come from Ann’s book You Let Some Girl Beat You? The Story of Ann Meyers Drysdale (Lake Forest, CA: Behler Publications, 2012). And just because I love baseball, let me mention that Ann married Don Drysdale, the Baseball Hall of Famer who played for the Dodgers (both Brooklyn and LA). Don died in 1993, when their children were still very young. 

Inaugural Ballers pub day!

It’s pub day for Andrew Maraniss! His book, Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team released today. Congrats to Andrew!

            The team played in the 1976 Olympics, only four years after the passage of Title IX. That surprised me, because for most women’s sports, it took years, and even decades, for teams to really get going. Women needed programs at all levels, college scholarships and high-level coaching, all of which didn’t exist at the time. In most cases, achievement did take a lot of time. This team was clearly an outlier.

Sports and social justice

            My first question for Andrew was: How is it that a guy gets to write about a women’s team? Isn’t that a job for a female author? He didn’t back away from the question.

            “Sports give me a way to write about social justice,” he says. “I write stories that expose racism, sexism and hypocrisy of all kinds. And, even today, it’s not true to say that sports have achieved a level playing field.”*

            Andrew’s earlier books established his credentials in social justice issues. His first book, Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016) told the story of the first African American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). He broke the color barrier when he began playing for the Vanderbilt Commodores in 1966.

            “My book stemmed from a paper I did in college about Perry,” he said. “His story had such an impact on me that it’s one of the few things I remember doing in college!”

            Perry Wallace’s story of persevering in the segregated South never left Andrew’s mind, and he decided to expand it into a book. A biographer doesn’t need the approval of his subject, but he contacted Perry anyway. His response? “Go for it!”

            Andrew spent the next eight years working on the book. His respect for Wallace only grew. “It was an incredible education for me,” he says. In 2017, a new version of the book released for young readers.

            Andrew’s next book, Games of Deception: The True Story of the First Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021) addresses the big question of that Olympics: Should the U.S. have boycotted those Games given the dictator’s growing racial discrimination against Jewish people?

            His third book concerned bias of another kind. Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021) tells the story of the first openly gay player in Major League Baseball.

            So there’s a theme here, right? Andrew Maraniss tells True Stories!

Inquiring minds want to know

            While Andrew was giving talks about the 1936 Olympic men’s basketball team, he faced some tough student audiences. 

            “I went to schools in North Carolina and Kansas, and the students there asked me the same question: ‘What’s the story of the first women’s Olympic basketball team?’” Andrew says.

            Well — that set the wheels turning. Andrew saw the 50th anniversary of Title IX coming up and thought, What better time?

            There are some lofty names on that Olympic team, many of whom he interviewed: Nancy Dunkle, Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers, Lusia Harris, coach Billie Moore and coach Pat Head (Summitt), who went on to become the winningest coach in women’s college basketball (only recently surpassed by Tara VanDerveer). Last week, he met another player from the team — Juliene Simpson — and she draped her silver medal around his neck!

            Yes, that underfunded, unappreciated upstart team that no one thought had a chance of succeeding went on to take a silver medal at the Montreal Olympics. The U.S. boycotted the Olympics in 1980 but the team won gold in 1984 and again in 1988. At the 1992 Games, the U.S. took home a bronze, but since that year has won gold at every Olympics, not even dropping a single game — a gold-medal winning streak of seven straight Olympics.

            Andrew hopes that by sharing the story of these pioneering women, he’ll not only inspire new generations, but also focus attention on the work yet to be done.

            “Title IX needs to be protected and expanded,” he says. “It’s important for both men and women to take an interest in women’s sports. We need to offer equal scholarships and pay equal attention. We’re not done, but this generation of women paved the way.”

                                                ________________________
* All of Andrew Maraniss’s quotes come from our interview on September 6, 2022. One last bit of information: Andrew was a baseball player in high school and was offered a scholarship to play at a D3 school (Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.). But he was also offered a sports writing scholarship at Vanderbilt, which he accepted. He continues to work for his alma mater as special projects director for the athletic department. Visit Andrew’s website at http://andrewmaraniss.com/

The pay gap narrows

Elite female athletes are more than aware of the pay gap between them and their male peers. Just ask anyone in the WNBA.

            Today, I want to widen out the lens to the pay inequity faced by women in any and every profession. The good news is that the picture has improved in recent years. The bad news is that only a small subset of women are benefiting.

            This year, it’s estimated that women are earning 83 cents for every $1 that men earn, according to Payscale, a company that tracks wage data.

            The gap narrows when you compare men and women with similar job titles, education, experience, industry and hours worked. This subset of women earns 99 cents for every $1 men make.

            That sounds great, doesn’t it? And it is progress — in the early days of my career the number was 75 cents. But these numbers don’t paint a true picture. Many women aren’t making that 83 cents, let alone the 99 cents.  

            “Many women and people of color are still segregated into a small number of jobs such as clerical, service workers, nurses, and teachers,” said a spokesperson for the National Committee on Pay Equity. “These jobs have historically been undervalued and continue to be underpaid to a large extent because of the gender and race of the people who hold them.”*

She starts the wheels turning

            While there’s still a long way to go, some of the progress that’s been made is due to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. It was the first law President Barack Obama signed when he took office.

            In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter took a management job at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama. She was hired as a supervisor and later promoted to an area manager’s job. 

            Pay was a taboo subject at the company.

            “I was told to never discuss my pay, and if you did discuss your pay, you would no longer work there,” she said. “There was no way to find out where I stood, how I rated according to my peers.”**

            But two years before she planned to retire, someone — she doesn’t know who — passed along a note to Lilly with the salaries of the four area managers. She discovered she was being paid thousands less per year than the other three, all of them men.

            “It was so devastating. It didn’t just impact my pay, it impacted my overtime, my family and my future,” she said.

            Lilly had a 401(k) plan into which she made contributions matched in part by Goodyear. Contribution caps meant that she hadn’t been able to sock away as much as her male peers, so her retirement benefits would be less. The reduced salary also meant that her Social Security benefits were less as well.   

Her legacy lives on

            All along, Lilly had thought that because of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, she was being paid fairly.

            “I was young and naïve when I started at Goodyear,” she said. “I thought I was being paid equally…. Clearly, no one enforced [that law].”

            Lilly filed a lawsuit six months before her early retirement in 1998. She won more than $3 million in federal court, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling. The Supreme Court ruling was canceled out when the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became law.

            The act requires employers to ensure they don’t discriminate in pay practices and that they keep records proving fairness. It allows employees to file lawsuits under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The act eliminates any filing period, so an employee can at any time challenge her starting or subsequent pay.

            Lilly will never see anything from Goodyear for all her years of activism, but still, she feels that she is the victor.

            “I’ll be happy if the last thing they say about me after I die is that I made a difference,” she said.***

                                                ______________________

* Greg Daugherty, “That women make less than men remains a sad fact in 2021,” Investopedia (January 20, 2021).

** An interview with pay activist Lilly Ledbetter, Tory Burch Foundation. All of her quotes come from this article unless noted otherwise.

*** https://www.lillyledbetter.com