Speaker 1: Welcome to Good Game, where we're rereading this Mirror and
Speaker 1: Fader deep dive on Paige Becker's for a second time.
Speaker 2: Miron's one of the best, and she's done it again.
Speaker 2: On today's show, we're going to talk.
Speaker 1: To award winning journalist Melissa Ludkey about her new book,
Speaker 1: Locker Room Talk, A Woman Struggled to get inside, and
Speaker 1: how she won her lawsuit against Major League Baseball to
Speaker 1: earn the right to locker room access. Plus WNBA Playoffs,
Speaker 1: close Talkers, and more. It's all coming up right after
Speaker 1: this welcome back slices. Meche has your need to note today,
Speaker 1: Take it away, Mesh.
Speaker 3: The Connecticut Sun in Minnesota Lynks meet tonight in a winner,
Speaker 3: go home Game five to determine who will face off
Speaker 3: against the New York Liberty in the WNBA Finals. The
Speaker 3: Connecticut son are looking to make it back to the
Speaker 3: finals for the second time in three years, while the
Speaker 3: Links are looking for their first finals appearance since winning
Speaker 3: it All in twenty seventeen. In other basketball news, sisters
Speaker 3: Isabelle and Dory Harrison are both gonna hoop in the
Speaker 3: upcoming season of Athletes Unlimited Basketball in Nashville Tennessee. And
Speaker 3: it's even cooler because that's where they grew up. Talk
Speaker 3: about a full circle moment with your pal. I don't
Speaker 3: actually know if they like each other as siblings. I
Speaker 3: don't know nothing about that. I'm an only child. That
Speaker 3: ain't my business. But Izzy plays in the WNBA for
Speaker 3: the Chicago Sky and has been a part of AU
Speaker 3: since the league's inaugural twenty twenty two season, while Dorry made.
Speaker 2: Her AU debut last year.
Speaker 3: The twenty four game AU season will run from February
Speaker 3: fifth through March second at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. In
Speaker 3: hockey news, GG Marvin is retiring after a long career
Speaker 3: that included three Olympics, seven World Championship appearances in one
Speaker 3: Walter Cup Finals run. The thirty seven year old was
Speaker 3: a member of the US Olympic team that won gold
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, ending a nearly two decade gold medal
Speaker 3: drought during which Canada topped the podium four straight times.
Speaker 3: Marvin initially retired from the national team in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: but she returned to competitive hockey last year in order
Speaker 3: to play for Boston in the inaugural PWHL season.
Speaker 2: P WHL.
Speaker 3: Boston went on to make the Walter Cup Finals, losing
Speaker 3: to Minnesota in a decisive game five. Thanks so much
Speaker 3: for everything, Gigi. We're gonna Misha. And in tennis, the
Speaker 3: tournaments keep on coming. The Wuhan Open got started yesterday
Speaker 3: at the Optics Valley International Tennis Center. The tournament features
Speaker 3: a stacked field including Coco Golf, who just won the
Speaker 3: China Open, and Arena Sabalanka, the number one seed in
Speaker 3: the tournament and the number two rink player in the world.
Speaker 3: World number one IGOs Viantik withdrew from the tournament after
Speaker 3: splitting with her coach of three seasons at the end
Speaker 3: of last week. Arena Sabalanka took home the trophy at
Speaker 3: the last iteration of the contest way back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: beating American Alison Risk in three sets. Sabalanka was also
Speaker 3: the champion twenty eighteen. And we'll look to three pte.
Speaker 2: Thanks Mesh, we got to take another break. Well we
Speaker 2: come back. Melissa Ludkey.
Speaker 1: She's an award winning journalist who in nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: won a law suit for the right to be allowed
Speaker 1: in Major League Baseball locker rooms. She's worked for ABC Sports, Sports, Illustrated,
Speaker 1: Time Magazine, CBS News, and spent thirteen years as a
Speaker 1: writer and editor for The Niemen Reports, magazine of Harvard
Speaker 1: University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. This year, she released a
Speaker 1: new book, Locker Room Talk, A woman Struggle to get inside.
Speaker 1: She's a Wellesley alum, like producer Alex. Will have to
Speaker 1: let them chat about that later. It's Melissa Lutkey. What's up, Melissa.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4: Hey, that's the best news I've heard recently. Alex. I'll
Speaker 4: just ask you at some point if we do our
Speaker 4: reunion together.
Speaker 1: There we go, Melissa, This conversation in your book is
Speaker 1: actually especially relevant now. The WNBA doesn't currently allow media
Speaker 1: access in the locker room. That was the change made
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and just last week the NFLP
Speaker 1: announced publicly that they've been working to follow suit, spending
Speaker 1: the last three years and discussions to try to move
Speaker 1: media interviews out of locker rooms. Now, before we get
Speaker 1: into the modern conversations about that space and access, I
Speaker 1: want to go back to your particular fight and how
Speaker 1: it all fits in. So let's start with how you
Speaker 1: got into sports reboarding and why you felt confident and
Speaker 1: comfortable pursuing the job despite so few women and what
Speaker 1: was often a really toxic environment at that time.
Speaker 4: Sarah, I don't think I understood the toxicity the environment.
Speaker 4: What drove me to get into it was absolute love
Speaker 4: of sports and a knowledge and a love of baseball
Speaker 4: that had been passed down to me from my mom.
Speaker 4: When I did graduate from Wellesley College in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 4: I really had no plan. I'd majored in art history,
Speaker 4: which I loved studying, but I'd worked in an art
Speaker 4: gallery and that had maybe decided that that was not
Speaker 4: the venue for me to be happy in a job,
Speaker 4: and so I began to think about the other passions
Speaker 4: that drove me. One of them was teaching, but the
Speaker 4: other really was sports. I didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 4: but I had an exceptional girlhood in the sense that
Speaker 4: I had the opportunity to play team sports. In the
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty and sixties, when you're growing up, you think
Speaker 4: everyone is doing what you're doing. You just don't have
Speaker 4: a wider perspective. But I've come to learn over the
Speaker 4: years and appreciate even more the opportunities I had. So
Speaker 4: not only could I talk sports, my mother teaching me baseball,
Speaker 4: my dad taking me along at football games. Basketball was
Speaker 4: something we watched in our house. I played basketball. I
Speaker 4: really had a grounding in it that I was once
Speaker 4: told And this is really the spur to me moving
Speaker 4: into sports media. After having the opportunity to sit at
Speaker 4: a dinner table with Frank Gifford, who was then at
Speaker 4: ABC Sports, he'd just become one of the opening trio
Speaker 4: on Monday Night Football with Dandy, Don Meredith and Howard Cosell.
Speaker 4: So he was a very well known sports broadcaster. And
Speaker 4: after we had talked across a dining room table for
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe an hour and a half with
Speaker 4: just sports, sports, sports, he told me, you know that
Speaker 4: for a girl, I knew a lot about sports, and
Speaker 4: I thought, wow, I mean, you know, that was a
Speaker 4: huge compliment, I thought, coming from him, And he followed
Speaker 4: it up with an invitation that if I was in
Speaker 4: New York, he would be happy to show me around
Speaker 4: ABC Sports and introduce me to the people who worked there.
Speaker 4: So when I went to dinner that night, I had
Speaker 4: no intention of going to New York City, But as
Speaker 4: I walked home from that dinner, I was already planning
Speaker 4: a trip, it would take a couple of weeks to
Speaker 4: pull it together, and in those intervening weeks, Sarah, you
Speaker 4: can't make this up. Billy Jean King played Bobby Riggs
Speaker 4: at the Houston Astrodome in that Battle of the Sexes, which,
Speaker 4: in many ways, coming on the heels of the passage
Speaker 4: of Title nine, really began to change everything. And it
Speaker 4: was at that time that I did take my father's
Speaker 4: car drive down to New York, have a chance for
Speaker 4: Frank to show me around. And the last thing I'll
Speaker 4: say is that Frank left me that afternoon in the
Speaker 4: office of the only woman sports producer at ABC Sports.
Speaker 4: She then invited me to stay an extra couple days.
Speaker 4: They were going to be doing a special on women
Speaker 4: in sports and evening special. And when I said yes
Speaker 4: and hung out for three more days with them, Billy
Speaker 4: Jean King walked up the stairs into that studio and Sarah,
Speaker 4: I had no idea how, but I knew at that
Speaker 4: moment that I was going to figure out a way
Speaker 4: to get into sports media.
Speaker 1: Gosh, it sounds like truly the stars aligned to bring
Speaker 1: you into the space. It also helps me confirm my
Speaker 1: pre existing theory that Billy Jing King is the forrest
Speaker 1: Gump of women in sports that at any time, in
Speaker 1: any place, someone will tell a story, and Billy jan
Speaker 1: King was always there.
Speaker 2: I love that she played role in your story too.
Speaker 1: So it's the mid seventies, you're reporting for Sports Illustrated.
Speaker 1: You're the only woman assigned full time to Major League Baseball.
Speaker 1: The Yankees give you a credential for the final games
Speaker 1: of the regular season in nineteen seventy seven. What were
Speaker 1: those first few games, like, how were you received by
Speaker 1: players and managers and other media.
Speaker 4: Well, the reason that they gave me those two credentials,
Speaker 4: and you're right, the very last two games of the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy seven season, Mickey Morribido, the very young PR,
Speaker 4: first year PR person for the Yankees, gave me the
Speaker 4: clubhouse passes. Now, let's be sure that we understand that
Speaker 4: that was after two years of me gradually gradually earning
Speaker 4: the trust both of Mickey but also the players being
Speaker 4: up at that ballg park game after game after game,
Speaker 4: having no access whatsoever, and Mickey coming to understand by
Speaker 4: watching the frustrations that I would have with my reporting,
Speaker 4: first opening up the manager's office for me after the games,
Speaker 4: and then those last two games, deciding, for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: leaving those two passes for me. And when I went
Speaker 4: out on the field, I said, Mickey, you left these passes.
Speaker 4: Did you really mean to He said yes, He says,
Speaker 4: you certainly earned the right to do this, use them
Speaker 4: how you want. And I think you said that knowing
Speaker 4: me very well. By that point, I was really understanding
Speaker 4: that to make this work I had to be a gradualist.
Speaker 4: This wasn't banging down a door, It wasn't demanding. It
Speaker 4: was being the only woman up there, and that meant
Speaker 4: trying to get along with the men, trying not to
Speaker 4: upset them in the process of making forward progress for me.
Speaker 4: So the fact that Micky recognized that and gave me
Speaker 4: the two passes, Sarah, I only used them before the game, which,
Speaker 4: for some mysterious reason, i'd alway been kept out of
Speaker 4: the clubhouse. Then too, the commissioner contended that the reason
Speaker 4: for me being out of the clubhouse was to protect
Speaker 4: the sexual privacy of players. Well before the game started,
Speaker 4: between batting practice and the game, not one player changed
Speaker 4: out of his uniform. So I went into the clubhouse
Speaker 4: during that period. For those two games, I didn't need
Speaker 4: to be there like a daily reporter might for the
Speaker 4: game coverage afterwards. And so again, as a gradualist, you know,
Speaker 4: I have to frankly say it worked fine. The players
Speaker 4: knew me, they were prepared by Mickey that I had
Speaker 4: the pass, and things worked out well well enough. I
Speaker 4: might add that not one baseball reporter wrote about me
Speaker 4: being in the locker room during those two games, or
Speaker 4: during the American League Championship series, in which I was
Speaker 4: also in the locker room, which gave me a sense
Speaker 4: that maybe my gradualist kind of mother may I approach
Speaker 4: had actually worked. So when we come to that nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy seven World Series, I have a sense, why wouldn't
Speaker 4: I have a sense at that point that maybe we're
Speaker 4: going to make this work.
Speaker 1: Throughout those games, you only went in before the game,
Speaker 1: Yes you didn't.
Speaker 4: No, that is not the case. I'm sorry I did that.
Speaker 4: Just those two games. And then during the American League
Speaker 4: Championship I was in the locker room both before games
Speaker 4: as well as.
Speaker 2: After, and no incidents, no one complaining.
Speaker 4: No incidents. I wasn't thrown out. I wouldn't say that
Speaker 4: there were no incidents. I mean there were players who
Speaker 4: very much voiced their disapproval of my presence among them.
Speaker 4: But I came. I understood from the very beginning that
Speaker 4: this was their clubhouse, this was their locker room, and
Speaker 4: if something egregious happened, I had a sense that I
Speaker 4: would understand a redline and if a player lost, then
Speaker 4: I would either say or do something or leave. And
Speaker 4: you know, share with Mickey my experience. But none of
Speaker 4: that happened. Yes, were their jokes made. Yes, were there
Speaker 4: are things that were probably said of me at the
Speaker 4: time that were uncomfortable to year, Yes, but you know
Speaker 4: that was part of what I knew would happen. I mean,
Speaker 4: I just knew it. So your roll with it.
Speaker 1: So it ends up happening that the first game of
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy seven World Series arrives, the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Dodgers actually had a vote during which the players approved
Speaker 1: your presence in the locker room and agreed with the
Speaker 1: Yankees that it was fine that you were in there,
Speaker 1: but the Commissioner of Baseball, Booie Kune, banned you from
Speaker 1: the locker room because of your gender. Take us to
Speaker 1: that day, Like you said, at this point, you've arrived
Speaker 1: at the World Series, believing that the barrier has been broken,
Speaker 1: and now you're a part of the crew that goes
Speaker 1: in the locker room. How do you find out that
Speaker 1: this is a problem and that Booie has stepped in?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the Dodgers were in town. I recognized
Speaker 4: right away that they had never had a woman and
Speaker 4: covering them. So it was actually by me going to
Speaker 4: them what I thought of as playing a sort of
Speaker 4: courtesy call, explaining to them that I had a pass
Speaker 4: that said I had entrance to the clubhouse, telling them
Speaker 4: about my experiences with the Yankees. I hoped that that
Speaker 4: would ease the way for them to understand that I
Speaker 4: might be coming into their clubhouse as well. It was
Speaker 4: because of the conversation that I'm kind of relaying to
Speaker 4: you at this point, with those elements in it that
Speaker 4: I had with their player Rep. Tommy John, that that
Speaker 4: vote was taken. And right before the first game, Tommy
Speaker 4: John came out to meet me, as he said he would,
Speaker 4: told me that it was a majority of players that
Speaker 4: they understood and that it was fine with them for
Speaker 4: me to be in there, And so that was how
Speaker 4: I walked away from him. He then called me back however,
Speaker 4: and asked me another favor, and that was to let
Speaker 4: their PR people know that this might happen. And it
Speaker 4: was that going my willingness to convey that message to
Speaker 4: the PR people on behalf of Tommy and the team
Speaker 4: that sort of sealed my fate, which I was informed
Speaker 4: of five innings later.
Speaker 1: So their PR person went to the commissioner, presumably and
Speaker 1: maybe decided that that would be the person that they
Speaker 1: would have to do their dirty work. Perhaps the PR
Speaker 1: person for the Dodgers was the one who wanted it.
Speaker 1: Who knows, At the very least they managed to take
Speaker 1: it to a commissioner who for sure wanted to prevent you.
Speaker 1: So your five innings into the game, and who approaches
Speaker 1: you and how soon after that game did you decide
Speaker 1: that you were going to take up a fight.
Speaker 4: During the fifth inning, I was sitting in the overflow
Speaker 4: press box that was in the grand stands. Sports Illustrated
Speaker 4: had four people assigned to the game. Only one of
Speaker 4: them was in the main press box. So I called
Speaker 4: over a very small loud speaker in our press box
Speaker 4: to report to the main press box, and through a
Speaker 4: series of conversations I had none of them directly with
Speaker 4: the commissioner, even though I asked to speak with him directly,
Speaker 4: since it was his edict, but I refused permission to
Speaker 4: do that. The bottom line was that I was told
Speaker 4: that it didn't matter if the Yankees gave permission. It
Speaker 4: didn't matter that the Dodgers gave permission. It did not
Speaker 4: matter that the Baseball Writers had given me permission by
Speaker 4: issuing me that press credential. The only person in Baseball
Speaker 4: who could give me permission was the commissioner, and he
Speaker 4: would not He would take that permission away for the
Speaker 4: entire series. And then added to that, I was told
Speaker 4: permission would be not granted forever.
Speaker 2: He was very young, My goodness, a lifetime ban of sorts.
Speaker 4: Well, he was young, and it rose. Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 4: But I guess the difference is that if you live
Speaker 4: long enough as I have my passes, that clubhouse pass
Speaker 4: and my pass for the series is in the Hall
Speaker 4: of Fame.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. You've got one up on it
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in this moment, this feels very extreme. Not
Speaker 1: only are we rejecting you right now, but don't bother
Speaker 1: coming back later to ask again. You decide to file
Speaker 1: a lawsuit, and I wonder what the response to the
Speaker 1: lawsuit was. Let's start with from colleagues, your editor, or
Speaker 1: your bosses. What kind of support or criticism did you get?
Speaker 4: Well, it was actually my bosses. It was actually Time
Speaker 4: Incorporated who came to me and asked if I would
Speaker 4: be in a plaintiff in a lawsuit they would file
Speaker 4: at the Southern District Court of Manhattan. This only came
Speaker 4: about after several weeks. It might have even been two
Speaker 4: months of negotiations that had gone on between the baseball
Speaker 4: editor and the lawyer at Sports Illustrated and the commissioner
Speaker 4: and his lawyer, And it was only toward the beginning
Speaker 4: of December, I believe, when they realized that there was
Speaker 4: no progress being made. Baseball believe that quote unquote, separate
Speaker 4: accommodations would for me would be equal to what the
Speaker 4: men had by interviewing the players in the clubhouse. We
Speaker 4: disagreed fundamentally, separate would not be equal, and we demanded
Speaker 4: equal access. There was no meeting of the minds to
Speaker 4: be had. And it was at that point that Time
Speaker 4: Ink made the decision Time Incorporated to file this lawsuit,
Speaker 4: and they came to me and asked if I would
Speaker 4: be the named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Speaker 1: As owners of Sports Illustrated, Time Inc. Which is where
Speaker 1: we were.
Speaker 4: Owners of Sports Illustrated. They had been sued a Time
Speaker 4: Incorporated by their own women for gender discrimination and this
Speaker 4: is across the company in the early nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 4: had signed a conciliation agreement to end that legal action
Speaker 4: by agreeing that from then that point out there would
Speaker 4: be gender equality in assignments, etc. Now that wasn't instantly
Speaker 4: something that happened, but I always believed that it was
Speaker 4: because that conciliation agreement existed, that there was the pressure
Speaker 4: through the legal department and the rest to make this happen.
Speaker 4: They came to me, asked me, And you know, Sarah,
Speaker 4: I was twenty six at the time. I started covering
Speaker 4: baseball when I was twenty four, I was very naive
Speaker 4: when I said yes, because I saw it through one
Speaker 4: lens and one lens only. I wanted to do a
Speaker 4: job I absolutely loved. I felt I was just really
Speaker 4: getting to the point of learning how to do it.
Speaker 4: Two years of really putting in my time at the ballparks,
Speaker 4: I'd already written a few baseball stories by then I
Speaker 4: just wanted to keep doing this. I loved it, and
Speaker 4: I felt there was no reason for me not to
Speaker 4: be able to do it. So I looked at it
Speaker 4: totally as almost an employment lawsuit, But little did I
Speaker 4: understand its cultural touchstones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice, whether they're hand forced or not, that
Speaker 1: you then felt the support legally and es of your
Speaker 1: bosses and your company. Can you sum up the personal
Speaker 1: price that you paid by being the face of the
Speaker 1: of the change of that lawsuit.
Speaker 4: I can try to sum it up. I certainly talk
Speaker 4: about it in my in writing this book, and I
Speaker 4: felt in writing the book that I had to be
Speaker 4: incredibly well. I had to just be honest. I had
Speaker 4: to be honest about the toll that being the target
Speaker 4: of a lot of criticism of a person that I
Speaker 4: didn't even see in myself. I was challenged, My morality
Speaker 4: was challenged for wanting to do this. I was sexually
Speaker 4: objectified in many ways, certainly not the loud misogyny that
Speaker 4: you see on social media, because you had the civilizing
Speaker 4: impact of the men had to have their bylines and
Speaker 4: often their pictures on the top of the columns. But
Speaker 4: to me it still felt harsh. It felt crude, it
Speaker 4: felt demeaning. I didn't handle it well. So I guess
Speaker 4: to add to the summation, I would say I made
Speaker 4: some terrible decisions in my life in some ways as
Speaker 4: a response to feeling very alone and targeted, perhaps to
Speaker 4: some extent for being a single woman, you know, with
Speaker 4: blonde hair, I was somewhat slim, so I think people
Speaker 4: made a lot of assumptions about me, and the implications
Speaker 4: were that I was there really to wanting to date
Speaker 4: the ballplayers and to see them naked in their locker room.
Speaker 4: So those were essentially the implications. So what I did
Speaker 4: is I somewhat ran for cover. There was a sports
Speaker 4: journalist I met a week after my lawsuit was filed,
Speaker 4: and within three weeks he had asked me to marry him,
Speaker 4: and I just lost my mind at that point and
Speaker 4: I said I would. And it was a very bad
Speaker 4: decision in my life that of course ended up with
Speaker 4: a divorce several years later. But it was a very
Speaker 4: very unhappy marriage and a very very wrong decision for
Speaker 4: me to have made in the midst of what was
Speaker 4: happening to me as part of this lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Feels like protection though, or safety protection against rumors that
Speaker 1: you're after something else, safety against accusations, and yeah, so it.
Speaker 4: Was a safe harbor. You're right, there's a notion that
Speaker 4: it would be a safe harbor.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: What were your feelings after you won the lawsuit?
Speaker 4: Relief? Relief that I felt like a year of coverage
Speaker 4: about it might finally end. That was wrong. In fact,
Speaker 4: it went into the next season, and certainly we've seen
Speaker 4: indications of this same issues of women just in covering baseball,
Speaker 4: incidents in locker room, sexual harassment, etc. Play out even
Speaker 4: up till now. So you know, the victory in court
Speaker 4: felt very good. I think I felt at the time,
Speaker 4: again naively, that victory and court would lead to a
Speaker 4: change in attitudes. I came to understand as I moved
Speaker 4: through those decades, and certainly by the time I started
Speaker 4: writing this book maybe in the last five, six, seven years,
Speaker 4: that that change in attitude took takes a lot longer,
Speaker 4: And in fact, I'd argue that we haven't quite gotten
Speaker 4: to where I might have wished we'd gotten, even nearly
Speaker 4: fifty years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was there retaliation?
Speaker 1: Were there other reporters or players or managers who knew
Speaker 1: who you were when you came in after the loss.
Speaker 1: It was one and after you were allowed and okay
Speaker 1: to be in there, that you felt took it out
Speaker 1: on you that you had changed things.
Speaker 4: No, I don't feel like I was retaliated against. I
Speaker 4: really don't. But I will say that a very dear
Speaker 4: friend of mine, in fact, the only woman reporter who's
Speaker 4: in the Hall of Fame in the Writer's Wing, Claire Smith,
Speaker 4: was still dealing with sort of the residue of my
Speaker 4: lawsuit and the action I'd taken, and it had been resolved,
Speaker 4: we thought in seventy eight. She's still in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 4: was basically lifted up by two players Padres, lifted out
Speaker 4: of the locker room, put in the hallway with manager,
Speaker 4: the manager saying we don't want you in here, we
Speaker 4: don't like you in here. And so you know, that
Speaker 4: was still happening, and you know, in some ways buoy
Speaker 4: Kyun was a man of his word, because it took
Speaker 4: that incident in Chicago during the National League playoffs for
Speaker 4: the brand new commissioner Peter Uberroth to issue finally a
Speaker 4: statement that said we're no longer saying it would be
Speaker 4: nice if you would treat all reporters the same while
Speaker 4: they're there, we're saying that you will treat It's a mandate.
Speaker 4: So it took Qune leaving. It might have taken that
Speaker 4: incident that Claire had to go through that evening for
Speaker 4: Peter Ruberroth and Baseball to make the official change in
Speaker 4: its policy. But again we see through the decades indications
Speaker 4: that attitudes still we're lagging.
Speaker 2: Sort of like Title nine.
Speaker 1: The law can exist, but the enforcement of it is
Speaker 1: the thing that matters most.
Speaker 2: So women can be allowed.
Speaker 1: But over the decades, what you see so often is
Speaker 1: that there are so many women repeating the stories about
Speaker 1: not feeling fully welcome, being treated poorly, being treated differently,
Speaker 1: even if technically they are allowed.
Speaker 4: But I think you're absolutely right, Sarah. I sometimes think
Speaker 4: back to the history of the Brown versus Board of Education,
Speaker 4: in which was a nine nothing decision in the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court in nineteen fifty four, and yet in the early
Speaker 4: sixties you still found school systems throughout the South and
Speaker 4: in other places who refuse to adhere to it, and
Speaker 4: they set up separate academies so they didn't have to
Speaker 4: adhere to it. So these things, despite an order, despite
Speaker 4: a landmark ruling, take a lot more than that. They
Speaker 4: take the pressure of influential people, moving people out of
Speaker 4: habits into a different place in their thinking, and.
Speaker 2: The fight sort of continues.
Speaker 1: Every time we rest believing that something has been settled,
Speaker 1: we run the risk of finding out later it hasn't,
Speaker 1: as obviously Dobbs showed us, and as an effort to
Speaker 1: turn back the time on some other things as as well.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that women still have to go in
Speaker 1: and sometimes fight these fights on a smaller scale than
Speaker 1: an actual lawsuit, which was your battle, you do recognize
Speaker 1: the impact that you had on other women in the
Speaker 1: space and other women joining the space in the years
Speaker 1: that followed as a result of what you did. When
Speaker 1: you're writing this book now and you look back, how
Speaker 1: much pride do you feel in understanding the impact that
Speaker 1: you had and putting your name on that lawsuit and
Speaker 1: being the first.
Speaker 4: Well, you're not seeing me right now, but I am smiling.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of reflection that went into writing
Speaker 4: this book on my part, and I think it's fair
Speaker 4: to say that one of the things that I might
Speaker 4: have felt even more as I set out to write
Speaker 4: this story and till it was a sense of accomplishment
Speaker 4: and Joy. I write in the book that I thought back,
Speaker 4: as I was going through my early years to the
Speaker 4: words that Shirley Chisholm, who had been the first black
Speaker 4: woman to have a seat in Congress. She was my
Speaker 4: commencement speaker in nineteen seventy three, and at our commencement
Speaker 4: she made a point of talking about her own activism.
Speaker 4: She had run for president the year before, so she
Speaker 4: was very well known as an activist for civil rights
Speaker 4: and also women's rights. She urged us, as highly educated
Speaker 4: women to find our place in what she called the
Speaker 4: social movements of our time. I had not done that.
Speaker 4: I had gone into sports media. They were eighteen nineteen
Speaker 4: hour days for me because of my time at the
Speaker 4: ballpark every night. I hadn't carved out a space to
Speaker 4: really become the participatory, act activist in either of those movements,
Speaker 4: although my heart was certainly with them. But I looked
Speaker 4: back and I realized that by moving into this space,
Speaker 4: into this visible space, and winning this lawsuit, which is
Speaker 4: memorable and did have a lasting impact, that somehow I
Speaker 4: did finally manage to sort of live up to what
Speaker 4: she had asked me to do as a sort of
Speaker 4: soldier in her campaign and I so admire her that
Speaker 4: there did come a point in writing this book, and
Speaker 4: I think I actually say it in the book that
Speaker 4: I did feel as though I lived up to Shirley's
Speaker 4: words and I love that good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Run out of time here, but I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: you know, understanding the fight that you put up for
Speaker 1: access in locker rooms, how do you feel about the
Speaker 1: potential change in the way pro sports operate taking interviews
Speaker 1: outside of that space like they do in that WNBA,
Speaker 1: like the NFLPA working toward most professional women's sports now
Speaker 1: don't offer up access in the PWHL, in the NWSL,
Speaker 1: the interviews are done outside the locker room. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like that's something that can be done in other
Speaker 1: professional spaces, assuming that there is still control over deadlines
Speaker 1: and time and whether athletes have to participate, as long
Speaker 1: as it's done in a different space.
Speaker 4: The short answer is yes, And in terms of my
Speaker 4: own situation and how it relates to what's happening today,
Speaker 4: we were always fighting not for access to the locker room,
Speaker 4: but for equal access to the athletes. Had Baseball decided
Speaker 4: at that time to move the interviews outside of the
Speaker 4: clubhouse and provide the same access to men and women.
Speaker 4: The order that my judge ruled in my case, that
Speaker 4: would have solved their problem. But at the time, and
Speaker 4: we found this out in our discovery process, the men
Speaker 4: who were covering baseball were communicating with the commissioner's office
Speaker 4: and sort of warning him, however, you take care of
Speaker 4: this lucky situation. Do not take away our access, do not.
Speaker 4: And so, in fact, I think that baseball and other
Speaker 4: sports in the seventies were almost singularly relying on newspaper
Speaker 4: coverage to drive people to those stadiums. That is very
Speaker 4: different now, as we know, and so we're in a
Speaker 4: very different media environment. We're in a very different ecosystem.
Speaker 4: The players are on Instagram, they send out their stories,
Speaker 4: they're even players channels that they can send out their
Speaker 4: information on. They are no longer dependent on newspapers in particular,
Speaker 4: who needed that kind of access to write the kind
Speaker 4: of in depth stories that they wanted to write, carrying
Speaker 4: the emotion and the rest that we now might get
Speaker 4: mainly through TV into people's living rooms the next morning.
Speaker 4: It was sort of a direct way to convey what
Speaker 4: TV largely conveys. Do I feel that there's still a
Speaker 4: reason for players, I mean for people to want to
Speaker 4: be in a clubhouse. I do because with a team
Speaker 4: sport as large as a team is in baseball or football,
Speaker 4: unlike basketball, by the way, you have, I believe a
Speaker 4: need for that communicator to be able to see and
Speaker 4: hear the dynamics that are going on between the team members.
Speaker 4: There is nothing that can be conveyed on a conference
Speaker 4: table with three microphones in a conference room that will
Speaker 4: give you the kind of paragraphs that Roger Kahn wrote
Speaker 4: at the end of the nineteen fifty five World Series,
Speaker 4: when the Brooklyn Dodgers came into that locker room and
Speaker 4: sat there, I would urge people to go back and
Speaker 4: read the Voice of Summer. It's a fabulous It takes
Speaker 4: you in there, you understand the feelings you see in
Speaker 4: their actions. That's what a writer can do. If you're
Speaker 4: doing mainly radio TV and you're putting it out on
Speaker 4: social media as a press conference, of course you can
Speaker 4: do that the way they're doing it now. But I
Speaker 4: think I've given you a sense of where I come
Speaker 4: down on this. But as it relates to my case,
Speaker 4: we never pretended it was never an issue of us
Speaker 4: saying we're going to federal court so that I can
Speaker 4: be in the locker room. That was never it. That's
Speaker 4: how the stories conveyed it because the male writers did
Speaker 4: not want to treat it as an equal rights case.
Speaker 4: They wanted to treat it as a woman invading a
Speaker 4: man's space, etc. So that's why people have a misinterpretation
Speaker 4: in many ways that I was fighting to get inside
Speaker 4: of locker room so as fighting for equal access. So
Speaker 4: you know, who am I to say that elite can't
Speaker 4: provide equal access in the way they want to their athletes.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a tough question.
Speaker 1: You bring up some interesting points, though, and we're going
Speaker 1: to keep having this conversation on the show, because there
Speaker 1: are elements of immediacy. There are elements of elusiveness from
Speaker 1: athletes if they know that they can evade the media
Speaker 1: by just waiting long enough before coming out, and then
Speaker 1: they'll skip deadlines and other things. And then the personal
Speaker 1: connection and the relationships that you can create in a
Speaker 1: locker room that aren't done with simple scrums. There's so
Speaker 1: many elements to this. But your perspective is fascinating and
Speaker 1: the book is fascinating. Locker room talk a woman struggle
Speaker 1: to get inside. There is so much to be learned
Speaker 1: by hearing stories from people like Melissa Ludkey and how
Speaker 1: things were decades ago. A specially when we see how
Speaker 1: things have not changed, it reminds us that the fight
Speaker 1: remains in so many ways, but also how far we've
Speaker 1: come in some ways. So Melissa, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for the time, and thank you for writing the book,
Speaker 1: and thank you for being part of the reason that
Speaker 1: I've been able to be in locker rooms and do
Speaker 1: the job that I do.
Speaker 4: Sarah, what a pleasure it is to be with you.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for thinking of me.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Melissa for joining us. We have to
Speaker 1: take another break when we come back, step back, bro,
Speaker 1: Welcome back, my little slices. We love that you're listening,
Speaker 1: but we always want you to get in the game
Speaker 1: every day too. So here's our good gameplay of the day.
Speaker 1: Duh winner take all Game five tonight, Baby, who's going
Speaker 1: to meet the Liberty in the finals?
Speaker 2: The Sun or the Links?
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Speaker 1: leave us a voicemail at eight seven two two oh
Speaker 1: four fifty seventy, and don't forget to subscribe, Rate and review.
Speaker 1: It's so easy. Watch people who step closer to you
Speaker 1: when you step away from them. Rating zero out of
Speaker 1: five review How are you not even remotely self aware?
Speaker 1: I took a step back because you're talking too close.
Speaker 1: I can literally smell what you had for lunch, and
Speaker 1: I can see the leftovers in your teeth. Get the hint, bro,
Speaker 1: And if I keep stepping back and you keep stepping
Speaker 1: toward me, we're literally going to fight spatial awareness.
Speaker 2: Motherfucker.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good Game, Melissa, Good Game,
Speaker 1: Billy Jean King again and forever few people who think
Speaker 1: women are trying to pick up a man in the
Speaker 1: locker room. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
Speaker 1: women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
Speaker 1: You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
Speaker 1: our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Christina Everett Jesse Katz. It's Jenny Kaplan and
Speaker 1: Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rudder, Britney Martinez, Grace
Speaker 1: Lynch and Lindsay Cradwell.
Speaker 2: Production assistant from Lucy
Speaker 1: Jones and I'm Your Host Santa Spain,