Susan Kaplowitz grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s and ‘60s. But her baseball loyalty didn’t lie with the Bronx Bombers. Instead, her grandmother turned her into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

            When she was 10 years old, Susan learned that before each Dodgers game, a child was chosen to play catch with a player.

             “I said to my Grandma and Dad, ‘Wow, I want to do that!’ she recalled. “So they sent in my application.”*

            A form letter came back.

            “We do not accept girls.”

            “I was heartbroken,” Susan recalled. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I?’ But the idea of equality, or fighting for equality, wasn’t on our radar yet.”

Cleanliness before competition

            Susan loved sports of all kinds. But she had few opportunities to play. Girls had no recreational teams or school teams. Gym classes were separated by sex, and while the boys had a full array of sports, in the younger grades, girls classes were mainly exercise, jumping rope and marching. She says they were graded on the cleanliness and color of their sneakers and gym uniforms!

            In high school, Susan finally got to play sports in gym class. In addition, the school had play days for girls. We’ve talked about “play days” before — after-school inter-scholastic events for girls. The teams were mixed between the schools and afterward the girls were made to socialize with each other. The structure of play days discouraged competition, which was thought to be unfeminine and detrimental to women’s health.

            Most women I’ve talked to remember play days scornfully, but Susan welcomed them.

            “I finally got to meet girls who were interested in sports,” she recalled. “We’d take buses to each other’s homes to play tennis or whatnot. It had a positive impact on me.”

            When she could, Susan played with her father, a male cousin, and her brother, although he wasn’t that interested in sports. She would play anything — basketball, baseball, tennis, touch football.

            But again, when she’d walk around her neighborhood and see boys playing Little League, she’d think, “Why can’t I do this?”

            In  the summer, Susan’s family would go to the Catskills. It was there at the Windsor Hotel that she finally got to play on a team. She practiced with the hotel’s summer softball team every day. At 11-years-old, she was five-foot-ten and strong. Everyone agreed, “She can play if she wants to play!”

Playing, kind of

            The first time Susan got to play for her school was in 1962 at Hunter College, where she was on the women’s basketball, softball, tennis and field hockey teams. She was ecstatic to finally play! But the inequities weren’t erased. The women’s basketball team, for example, had to practice at 7:30 a.m., while the men got the gym in the more reasonable afternoon hours.

            And although she got to play basketball, the game was ultimately unsatisfying. The college played the ancient “girls” game that had been started by Smith College’s Senda Berenson in 1892. The rules were intended to prevent “nervous exhaustion” from a game that was too strenuous for girls.

            In this game, the team had just six players, and the court was divided into three sections. Players couldn’t leave their section. They couldn’t dribble more than three times before passing or shooting the ball, and they couldn’t hold the ball for more than three seconds. Guarding was forbidden and falling down was a foul. Players couldn’t grab the ball from another player.

            Susan chafed under the rules.

            “I loved to shoot and I couldn’t shoot!” she said. “The coach looked at my height and put me on defense, where all you did was rebound.”

Women have to make do

            At Hunter, the women’s softball field was poorly maintained, while the men’s baseball team had an immaculate field. The men had varsity locker rooms, while the women used the gym class lockers. The women’s uniforms were hand-me-downs while the men’s teams had new uniforms every year. The women traveled to away games on old school buses while the men went on chartered buses.

            Most disappointing of all was that women did not have athletic scholarships. Because of that, college was out of reach financially for many women. Fortunately, Hunter College was doable for Susan’s family. Hunter didn’t even charge tuition until 1963.

            In my next blog post, Susan talks about how she made a life in sports with the little opportunity and encouragement she was given.

                                                            _________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

PHOTO: Susan Kaplowitz with students from Rutgers University. I’ll explain later!