Thursday, someone posted this lovely gem from a 1957 newspaper. Later, you’ll understand why Thursday ...
BOSTON –Ladies, take heed. The baseball press box will remain a male sanctuary – in Boston, at least.
A vote of the Boston chapter of the Baseball Writers Assn., yesterday denied Doris O’Donnell of the Cleveland News admission to the Fenway Park press box to cover the Indians-Boston Red Sox game.
Instead, the attractive brunette sat in a rooftop box seat on the left field side of home plate.
Miss O’Donnell is not the first woman sports writer by a long shot. But she holds some kind of distinction because she is traveling as a member of the Cleveland press on the team’s current road trip.
“Why should things be any different because this is baseball?” Miss O’Donnell asked.
“I’ve tested tanks for the Army. I’ve ridden an elephant in the circus. I’ve driven cabs. Last year, I went to Russia for the paper.
“And let me tell you it was easier to get inside the Kremlin than it is to get into a baseball press box.”
Of course things did change ... but they didn’t change all that quickly.
Thursday, Alison Gordon died. Gordon was hardly the first woman to cover baseball, but she might have been the first to serve as an honest-to-goodness beat writer for any length of time.
In 1977, Sports Illustrated’s Melissa Ludtke had been banned from the Yankees’ clubhouse during the World Series. She filed a discrimination lawsuit against Major League Baseball and won. In 1979, Alison Gordon joined the Toronto Star, became the first woman in the BBWAA, and started covering the Blue Jays that year. She stayed on the beat for five years, but it wasn’t easy...
“We had four or five guys that really rallied around not letting her in the clubhouse, but I don’t think Alison gave a damn, to tell you the truth,” Moseby said. “She could have very easily taken the words that a lot of guys said and took it to heart and went back to her bosses and said, ‘I’m not doing this. I don’t get paid to take abuse.’ But she never did. She kept showing up. And it was amazing, really. I’m just proud to have known Alison.”
--snip--
Still, some teams resisted change.
“Blushing Texans won’t play ball with our Alison,” read a headline in the Star on April 26, 1979, when the Jays traveled to Arlington and Texas Rangers general manager Eddie Robinson banned all reporters from the clubhouse rather than let Gordon in. It wasn’t an isolated incident.
“I don’t think that was much fun for her,” Charles said. His sister could be combative and abrasive, he added, but she never wanted to be the story. “She just wanted to do her job.”
In addition to fighting for basic access, once granted she often endured crude gestures and intimidation from players.
“She made it funny talking about it later,” Charles said. “But I think it was really difficult at the time.”
Gordon later wrote a book about those five years, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read it. (Check back with me at the end of the month. I’ll have better news. Promise.)
Things have gotten better, though. Susan Slusser isn’t just one of the most respected beat writers around; a couple of years ago she was actually elected as president of the Baseball Writers Association. So, yes: They’ve come a long way. And by they I mean not women, but rather the overwhelmingly male membership of the BBWAA.
I don’t bring all this up as a way of ripping all those writers and baseball executives and baseball players who treated female writers so abominably for so long. These were, after all, men who were generally much-admired in their day, and for the most part still are. These men, or men just like them, might be your father, or your grandfather, or their friends. I mean, just being honest about the thing.
I bring all this up as a reminder of not their fallibility, but ours. Blessed with the self-righteousness of youth and modernity, we just love to sneer at the moral failures of our ancestors, while doing everything possible to ignore our own prejudices and petty crimes. And please believe me, we’ve all got them. And while we might believe that our crimes are nothing next to those of those old dudes, I suspect that our descendants might not be quite so charitable.
All we can do is practice charity and mercy with our ancestors, stay humble, and question everything we think – in our infinite wisdom! – that we know. It’s not much. But it’s better than nothing.
