Last Updated: March 27, 2000
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Women in sports
Family issues come to fore for sportswriters
No longer focused on locker room access, women find
that covering sports conflicts with having a family life
By Claire Smith
The sports world, which likes its entertainment untainted by real-world
issues, seldom accepts progress without a prod. Its participants, frighteningly
disconnected from the world around them, too often don’t even realize the
currents, issues and changing times roiling soc iety.
This is why I had to smile at the way in which a handful of black baseball
players wrestled around baseball’s record of intolerance after Al Campanis
exposed the game’s dirty little mindset on race in 1987. Campanis then
the general manager of the Dodgers, shocked the sports world by opining
on national television that blacks lacked “the necessities” to hold certain
management positions much the way they lacked buoyancy, ergo no black Johnnie
Weismullers.
The ’87 season that was to serve as a placid but benign celebration
of Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier was awash with
controversy from day one. This much I knew as I stood in a major-league
baseball stadium waiting to begin my sixth year covering the New York Yankees
for The Courant in Hartford, Conn.
Dave Winfield, the Yankee’s all-star right fielder and future Hall of
Famer, called me prior to the season opener. Whispering conspiratorially,
Winfield — an African-American — informed me that he and other black players
had been discussing the Campanis incident when they reached what was apparently
a startling conclusion. The players realized that not only was I a woman,
but an African-American as well! The newly discovered distinction would
assuredly earn for me a greater degree of cooperation from “the brothers”,
not to mention a scoop or two, Winfield declared with great solemnity and
solidarity.
I had to smile. For the first time ever, being African-American had
finally overshadowed my other lonely outpost: standing sentry as one of
the few women reporters to work in the major league press boxes. In 1987,
there were precious few women covering major league baseball; you could
count them on one hand. When I left the national baseball beat in 1998,
my departure brought the number of women holding that job to zero. However,
women in increasing numbers do cover Olympic sports, collegiate athletics,
tennis and men’s and women’s basketball.
I have never claimed to be in that first wave of either African-Americans
or women to cover professional sports in America. Wendell Smith, Sam Lacy
and other members of traditionally African-American news organizations
started the long, tortuously slow journey from the colored sections of
the bleachers to the press boxes the moment Robinson took the lead on the
field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
As for women, the walls came tumbling down in the 1970s when the courts
agreed with the contention that professional sports teams had to right
to deny women journalists equal access. Pioneer reporters such as Mary
Garber had covered sports for decades while handicapped by arcane rules
limiting their contact with male athletes. Syndicated columnist Elinor
Kaine and Melissa Ludtke of Sports Illustrated were the first to successfully
argue for their right to walk through locker room doors in order to fully
do their jobs. Tracy Dodds, Diane K. Shah, Jane Gross, Melanie Hauser and
Mary Schmitt followed, trailblazers who, like Robinson, changed perceptions
in the workplace and in life in extraoradinary fashion just by insisting
they be treated in an ordinary but fair fashion.
Today there are by some counts well over 500 women working in the once-male-dominated
worlds of sports media as well as for pro teams, leagues and sports-related
industries, though still relatively few of these women are beat reporters
covering major league teams. Each year, hundreds attend the national convention
of the Association of Women in Sports Media, which was founded in 1987.
The fact that women have come of age in these traditionally male industries
isn’t so much seen in the fact that an organization such as AWSM exists,
but rather that locker room access (and the attitudes and behaviors of
the athletes) is no longer the dominant subject at AWSM gathering. The
receding hot-button topic of the 1980s has been replaced by issues such
as juggling work and family responsibilities, managing finances, and attempting
to secure quality of life in the midst of what this line of work demands.
The career path of a sportswriter usually means traveling with teams
and spending more time in hotel rooms than at home. And for young women
who enter this profession, there can also be the culture shock of learning
to socialize and coexist in a male-oriented workplace without losing their
sense of self.
I found that insisting on the right to retire to one’s room on the road
often saved my sanity, even when it came at the expense of scoops such
as when I missed one of Billy Martin’s many late night barroom incidents.
Just as I made it clear early on that I didn’t hang out in bars, later
in my career I’ve made it obvious that my family life comes first.
Male beat writers with families usually have built in child-care in
the form of a wife. Working mothers, especially those of us who are single,
have two-full-time jobs, both rewarding, both demanding. The job and the
children continually pull in opposite directions, a tug-of-war without
end. Many women leave the more arduous beats, if not the profession completely,
because they can’t fight this battle any longer. Many of my peers chose
a route similar to mine, striving to write a column or do magazine work
— jobs with more downtime from travel and night games, the enemy of a normal
life and families.
AWSM’s forums give women a chance to explore such issues and accept
without guilt career choices that others might not ever understand; my
mother still wonders what went wrong because I left The New York Times
for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Nothing went wrong. Everything went right
because I have more quality time with my 12-year-old son, Josh, something
much more important than location of my byline at this stage of my life.
Unfortunately, the complex issues of today have not completely replaced
the other lingering issue: life on the sports beat for women reporters.
The difficulties first faced by the pioneer female reporters who were literally
barred at the door still exist in some latent forms. Still, press boxes
too often remain a mostly male bastion. There are still pockets of resistance
among athletes despite the fact that leagues have long-established access
policies that allow for designated interview times after cooling-off (read
that disrobing) periods. Just this past spring, Reggie White, a former
defensive lineman with the Green Bay Packers, wrote in The Wall Street
Journal that female journalists should not have access to the locker rooms
of male athletes.
His article gained notoriety when it reached all the way to the NBA.
New York Knicks guard Charlie Ward seemingly questioned the long-established
policies of one of the most traditionally open-minded leagues when he passed
out copies of White’s comments to his teammates. Ward later denied he was
campaigning for a change in the NBA’s access policies. Rather, he said,
he felt a need to discuss the issue during a players’ prayer meeting because,
Ward said, as a Christian he felt uncomfortable dressing in front of any
woman who was not his wife.
Ward, who has access to areas of locker rooms that are off-limits to
reporters and is also the beneficiary of all those cooling-off post-game
minutes, nonetheless fed a misconception as old as the issue of women in
the locker-room debate. He attached a sexual connotation to journalism
assignments. (Sleeping with sources is no more the goal than it should
be an issue.) The day the first reporters left the press box to seek the
raw emotions of athletes following victories or defeats, locker rooms ceased
being just changing rooms and sanctuaries. Rather, clubhouses became a
common ground where teams, players and the media conspire to sell a product,
be it a game, a newspaper or a broadcast, by putting a human face on sports.
Women reporters, simply stated, want and demand the opportunity to report
on human dimensions of sports just as their male counterparts do. But,
do women reporters bring a different approach, whether covering the Washington
Redskins or the White House? Is every affront gender-based or would that
politician, pitcher or big-screen star be just as likely to blow off a
male as he would a female reporters? Are there different rules for professional
conduct than those that apply to “The Boys on the Bus?”
Any attempt to supply absolute answers to such questions flirts with
stereotyping, something that should be an anathema to women who have had
to fight such prejudices from the moment we stepped into the clubhouse.
That said, two subtle differences have always fascinated me: the greater
cooperation received from minority athletes and the good working relationships
that are often found among reporters and the athletes’ wives.
When I first began covering baseball, I always assumed that good rapport
with the Dave Winfields of the sport might be because I was black. Too
many women of all hues have since pointed out this greater degree of cooperation,
leading me to suspect that this has less to do with my race. No one could
really explain this feeling until the former football great, Ronnie Lott,
addressed the issue at the first AWSM convention. Many black athletes commiserated
with the female reporters who covered them, Lott said, because blacks understood
what it was like to walk into a room and be instantly hated.
As for the wives of athletes, Gretchen Randolph, wife of former Yankees
second baseman Willie Randolph, once dispelled the notion that players’
wives were all resentful of the women who covered their husbands’ teams.
Rather, she said, she found more understanding for the players’ family
and for herself among women. Men, she said, would call at all hours, often
without apology, whereas women reporters who called would often inquire
as to whether they were interrupting dinner or apologize about the lateness
of the hour. Most important, Gretchen said, were the questions about how
she and her children were faring, an indication that they mattered to the
reporter. Gretchen Randolph’s explanation said a lot about self-worth and
how others influence it.
Just as girls growing up today can envision themselves as world champion
soccer stars so, too, more and more aspire to sports writing jobs that
were not imagined as possible by previous generations of women. But even
as they dream, the realities of this job — the travel, the constant deadlines,
the unpredictable hours, and the workplace demands — continue to challenge
this second tier of women pioneers. These issues might not make headlines,
as locker room access did, but they are the same challenges women confront
today in all professions. In fact, what is somewhat comforting is that
unlike the 1970s when our male colleagues didn’t wrestle with the issues
we did, nowadays many of the men are searching for some of the same answers
that we are in trying to balance family life with professional obligations.
Smith is a sports columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. This article
originally appeared in Nieman Reports.
