October 8, 2024 • 36 mins
Melissa Ludtke, award-winning journalist and author of the recently released book, Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside, joins Sarah to discuss a serendipitous meeting that helped her realize sports media was her calling, being the only woman assigned to cover Major League Baseball full-time for Sports Illustrated in the mid-70s, and filing – and WINNING – a lawsuit against the MLB. Plus, some folks really don’t understand the concept of personal space.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Good Game, where we're rereading this Mirror and
Fader deep dive on Paige Becker's for a second time.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Miron's one of the best, and she's done it again.
On today's show, we're going to talk.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
To award winning journalist Melissa Ludkey about her new book,
Locker Room Talk, A Woman Struggled to get inside, and
how she won her lawsuit against Major League Baseball to
earn the right to locker room access. Plus WNBA Playoffs,
close Talkers, and more. It's all coming up right after
this welcome back slices. Meche has your need to note today,
(00:32):
Take it away, Mesh.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
The Connecticut Sun in Minnesota Lynks meet tonight in a winner,
go home Game five to determine who will face off
against the New York Liberty in the WNBA Finals. The
Connecticut son are looking to make it back to the
finals for the second time in three years, while the
Links are looking for their first finals appearance since winning
it All in twenty seventeen. In other basketball news, sisters
(00:56):
Isabelle and Dory Harrison are both gonna hoop in the
upcoming season of Athletes Unlimited Basketball in Nashville Tennessee. And
it's even cooler because that's where they grew up. Talk
about a full circle moment with your pal. I don't
actually know if they like each other as siblings. I
don't know nothing about that. I'm an only child. That
ain't my business. But Izzy plays in the WNBA for
the Chicago Sky and has been a part of AU
(01:18):
since the league's inaugural twenty twenty two season, while Dorry made.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Her AU debut last year.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
The twenty four game AU season will run from February
fifth through March second at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. In
hockey news, GG Marvin is retiring after a long career
that included three Olympics, seven World Championship appearances in one
Walter Cup Finals run. The thirty seven year old was
a member of the US Olympic team that won gold
(01:44):
in twenty eighteen, ending a nearly two decade gold medal
drought during which Canada topped the podium four straight times.
Marvin initially retired from the national team in twenty twenty one,
but she returned to competitive hockey last year in order
to play for Boston in the inaugural PWHL season.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
P WHL.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Boston went on to make the Walter Cup Finals, losing
to Minnesota in a decisive game five. Thanks so much
for everything, Gigi. We're gonna Misha. And in tennis, the
tournaments keep on coming. The Wuhan Open got started yesterday
at the Optics Valley International Tennis Center. The tournament features
a stacked field including Coco Golf, who just won the
China Open, and Arena Sabalanka, the number one seed in
(02:23):
the tournament and the number two rink player in the world.
World number one IGOs Viantik withdrew from the tournament after
splitting with her coach of three seasons at the end
of last week. Arena Sabalanka took home the trophy at
the last iteration of the contest way back in twenty nineteen,
beating American Alison Risk in three sets. Sabalanka was also
the champion twenty eighteen. And we'll look to three pte.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Thanks Mesh, we got to take another break. Well we
come back. Melissa Ludkey.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
She's an award winning journalist who in nineteen seventy eight
won a law suit for the right to be allowed
in Major League Baseball locker rooms. She's worked for ABC Sports, Sports, Illustrated,
Time Magazine, CBS News, and spent thirteen years as a
writer and editor for The Niemen Reports, magazine of Harvard
University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. This year, she released a
new book, Locker Room Talk, A woman Struggle to get inside.
She's a Wellesley alum, like producer Alex. Will have to
(03:19):
let them chat about that later. It's Melissa Lutkey. What's up, Melissa.
Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Hey, that's the best news I've heard recently. Alex. I'll
just ask you at some point if we do our
reunion together.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
There we go, Melissa, This conversation in your book is
actually especially relevant now. The WNBA doesn't currently allow media
access in the locker room. That was the change made
a few years ago, and just last week the NFLP
announced publicly that they've been working to follow suit, spending
the last three years and discussions to try to move
media interviews out of locker rooms. Now, before we get
into the modern conversations about that space and access, I
(03:53):
want to go back to your particular fight and how
it all fits in. So let's start with how you
got into sports reboarding and why you felt confident and
comfortable pursuing the job despite so few women and what
was often a really toxic environment at that time.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Sarah, I don't think I understood the toxicity the environment.
What drove me to get into it was absolute love
of sports and a knowledge and a love of baseball
that had been passed down to me from my mom.
When I did graduate from Wellesley College in nineteen seventy three,
I really had no plan. I'd majored in art history,
(04:31):
which I loved studying, but I'd worked in an art
gallery and that had maybe decided that that was not
the venue for me to be happy in a job,
and so I began to think about the other passions
that drove me. One of them was teaching, but the
other really was sports. I didn't know it at the time,
(04:52):
but I had an exceptional girlhood in the sense that
I had the opportunity to play team sports. In the
nineteen fifty and sixties, when you're growing up, you think
everyone is doing what you're doing. You just don't have
a wider perspective. But I've come to learn over the
years and appreciate even more the opportunities I had. So
(05:13):
not only could I talk sports, my mother teaching me baseball,
my dad taking me along at football games. Basketball was
something we watched in our house. I played basketball. I
really had a grounding in it that I was once
told And this is really the spur to me moving
(05:33):
into sports media. After having the opportunity to sit at
a dinner table with Frank Gifford, who was then at
ABC Sports, he'd just become one of the opening trio
on Monday Night Football with Dandy, Don Meredith and Howard Cosell.
So he was a very well known sports broadcaster. And
(05:54):
after we had talked across a dining room table for
I don't know, maybe an hour and a half with
just sports, sports, sports, he told me, you know that
for a girl, I knew a lot about sports, and
I thought, wow, I mean, you know, that was a
huge compliment, I thought, coming from him, And he followed
(06:15):
it up with an invitation that if I was in
New York, he would be happy to show me around
ABC Sports and introduce me to the people who worked there.
So when I went to dinner that night, I had
no intention of going to New York City, But as
I walked home from that dinner, I was already planning
(06:36):
a trip, it would take a couple of weeks to
pull it together, and in those intervening weeks, Sarah, you
can't make this up. Billy Jean King played Bobby Riggs
at the Houston Astrodome in that Battle of the Sexes, which,
in many ways, coming on the heels of the passage
of Title nine, really began to change everything. And it
(06:58):
was at that time that I did take my father's
car drive down to New York, have a chance for
Frank to show me around. And the last thing I'll
say is that Frank left me that afternoon in the
office of the only woman sports producer at ABC Sports.
She then invited me to stay an extra couple days.
(07:19):
They were going to be doing a special on women
in sports and evening special. And when I said yes
and hung out for three more days with them, Billy
Jean King walked up the stairs into that studio and Sarah,
I had no idea how, but I knew at that
moment that I was going to figure out a way
(07:40):
to get into sports media.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Gosh, it sounds like truly the stars aligned to bring
you into the space. It also helps me confirm my
pre existing theory that Billy Jing King is the forrest
Gump of women in sports that at any time, in
any place, someone will tell a story, and Billy jan
King was always there.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I love that she played role in your story too.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So it's the mid seventies, you're reporting for Sports Illustrated.
You're the only woman assigned full time to Major League Baseball.
The Yankees give you a credential for the final games
of the regular season in nineteen seventy seven. What were
those first few games, like, how were you received by
players and managers and other media.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Well, the reason that they gave me those two credentials,
and you're right, the very last two games of the
nineteen seventy seven season, Mickey Morribido, the very young PR,
first year PR person for the Yankees, gave me the
clubhouse passes. Now, let's be sure that we understand that
that was after two years of me gradually gradually earning
(08:45):
the trust both of Mickey but also the players being
up at that ballg park game after game after game,
having no access whatsoever, and Mickey coming to understand by
watching the frustrations that I would have with my reporting,
first opening up the manager's office for me after the games,
(09:07):
and then those last two games, deciding, for whatever reason,
leaving those two passes for me. And when I went
out on the field, I said, Mickey, you left these passes.
Did you really mean to He said yes, He says,
you certainly earned the right to do this, use them
how you want. And I think you said that knowing
me very well. By that point, I was really understanding
(09:30):
that to make this work I had to be a gradualist.
This wasn't banging down a door, It wasn't demanding. It
was being the only woman up there, and that meant
trying to get along with the men, trying not to
upset them in the process of making forward progress for me.
So the fact that Micky recognized that and gave me
(09:52):
the two passes, Sarah, I only used them before the game, which,
for some mysterious reason, i'd alway been kept out of
the clubhouse. Then too, the commissioner contended that the reason
for me being out of the clubhouse was to protect
the sexual privacy of players. Well before the game started,
(10:13):
between batting practice and the game, not one player changed
out of his uniform. So I went into the clubhouse
during that period. For those two games, I didn't need
to be there like a daily reporter might for the
game coverage afterwards. And so again, as a gradualist, you know,
I have to frankly say it worked fine. The players
(10:36):
knew me, they were prepared by Mickey that I had
the pass, and things worked out well well enough. I
might add that not one baseball reporter wrote about me
being in the locker room during those two games, or
during the American League Championship series, in which I was
(10:56):
also in the locker room, which gave me a sense
that maybe my gradualist kind of mother may I approach
had actually worked. So when we come to that nineteen
seventy seven World Series, I have a sense, why wouldn't
I have a sense at that point that maybe we're
going to make this work.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Throughout those games, you only went in before the game,
Yes you didn't.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
No, that is not the case. I'm sorry I did that.
Just those two games. And then during the American League
Championship I was in the locker room both before games
as well as.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
After, and no incidents, no one complaining.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
No incidents. I wasn't thrown out. I wouldn't say that
there were no incidents. I mean there were players who
very much voiced their disapproval of my presence among them.
But I came. I understood from the very beginning that
this was their clubhouse, this was their locker room, and
if something egregious happened, I had a sense that I
(11:56):
would understand a redline and if a player lost, then
I would either say or do something or leave. And
you know, share with Mickey my experience. But none of
that happened. Yes, were their jokes made. Yes, were there
are things that were probably said of me at the
time that were uncomfortable to year, Yes, but you know
(12:19):
that was part of what I knew would happen. I mean,
I just knew it. So your roll with it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So it ends up happening that the first game of
the nineteen seventy seven World Series arrives, the Los Angeles
Dodgers actually had a vote during which the players approved
your presence in the locker room and agreed with the
Yankees that it was fine that you were in there,
but the Commissioner of Baseball, Booie Kune, banned you from
the locker room because of your gender. Take us to
that day, Like you said, at this point, you've arrived
at the World Series, believing that the barrier has been broken,
(12:48):
and now you're a part of the crew that goes
in the locker room. How do you find out that
this is a problem and that Booie has stepped in?
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah, I mean the Dodgers were in town. I recognized
right away that they had never had a woman and
covering them. So it was actually by me going to
them what I thought of as playing a sort of
courtesy call, explaining to them that I had a pass
that said I had entrance to the clubhouse, telling them
about my experiences with the Yankees. I hoped that that
(13:18):
would ease the way for them to understand that I
might be coming into their clubhouse as well. It was
because of the conversation that I'm kind of relaying to
you at this point, with those elements in it that
I had with their player Rep. Tommy John, that that
vote was taken. And right before the first game, Tommy
(13:38):
John came out to meet me, as he said he would,
told me that it was a majority of players that
they understood and that it was fine with them for
me to be in there, And so that was how
I walked away from him. He then called me back however,
and asked me another favor, and that was to let
(14:01):
their PR people know that this might happen. And it
was that going my willingness to convey that message to
the PR people on behalf of Tommy and the team
that sort of sealed my fate, which I was informed
of five innings later.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So their PR person went to the commissioner, presumably and
maybe decided that that would be the person that they
would have to do their dirty work. Perhaps the PR
person for the Dodgers was the one who wanted it.
Who knows, At the very least they managed to take
it to a commissioner who for sure wanted to prevent you.
So your five innings into the game, and who approaches
you and how soon after that game did you decide
(14:45):
that you were going to take up a fight.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
During the fifth inning, I was sitting in the overflow
press box that was in the grand stands. Sports Illustrated
had four people assigned to the game. Only one of
them was in the main press box. So I called
over a very small loud speaker in our press box
to report to the main press box, and through a
(15:08):
series of conversations I had none of them directly with
the commissioner, even though I asked to speak with him directly,
since it was his edict, but I refused permission to
do that. The bottom line was that I was told
that it didn't matter if the Yankees gave permission. It
didn't matter that the Dodgers gave permission. It did not
(15:30):
matter that the Baseball Writers had given me permission by
issuing me that press credential. The only person in Baseball
who could give me permission was the commissioner, and he
would not He would take that permission away for the
entire series. And then added to that, I was told
(15:50):
permission would be not granted forever.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
He was very young, My goodness, a lifetime ban of sorts.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Well, he was young, and it rose. Yeah, I guess so.
But I guess the difference is that if you live
long enough as I have my passes, that clubhouse pass
and my pass for the series is in the Hall
of Fame.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's right, that's right. You've got one up on it
so far.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, So in this moment, this feels very extreme. Not
only are we rejecting you right now, but don't bother
coming back later to ask again. You decide to file
a lawsuit, and I wonder what the response to the
lawsuit was. Let's start with from colleagues, your editor, or
your bosses. What kind of support or criticism did you get?
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Well, it was actually my bosses. It was actually Time
Incorporated who came to me and asked if I would
be in a plaintiff in a lawsuit they would file
at the Southern District Court of Manhattan. This only came
about after several weeks. It might have even been two
months of negotiations that had gone on between the baseball
(17:00):
editor and the lawyer at Sports Illustrated and the commissioner
and his lawyer, And it was only toward the beginning
of December, I believe, when they realized that there was
no progress being made. Baseball believe that quote unquote, separate
accommodations would for me would be equal to what the
(17:21):
men had by interviewing the players in the clubhouse. We
disagreed fundamentally, separate would not be equal, and we demanded
equal access. There was no meeting of the minds to
be had. And it was at that point that Time
Ink made the decision Time Incorporated to file this lawsuit,
and they came to me and asked if I would
(17:44):
be the named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
As owners of Sports Illustrated, Time Inc. Which is where
we were.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Owners of Sports Illustrated. They had been sued a Time
Incorporated by their own women for gender discrimination and this
is across the company in the early nineteen seventies, and
had signed a conciliation agreement to end that legal action
(18:10):
by agreeing that from then that point out there would
be gender equality in assignments, etc. Now that wasn't instantly
something that happened, but I always believed that it was
because that conciliation agreement existed, that there was the pressure
(18:32):
through the legal department and the rest to make this happen.
They came to me, asked me, And you know, Sarah,
I was twenty six at the time. I started covering
baseball when I was twenty four, I was very naive
when I said yes, because I saw it through one
lens and one lens only. I wanted to do a
(18:52):
job I absolutely loved. I felt I was just really
getting to the point of learning how to do it.
Two years of really putting in my time at the ballparks,
I'd already written a few baseball stories by then I
just wanted to keep doing this. I loved it, and
(19:12):
I felt there was no reason for me not to
be able to do it. So I looked at it
totally as almost an employment lawsuit, But little did I
understand its cultural touchstones.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, it's nice, whether they're hand forced or not, that
you then felt the support legally and es of your
bosses and your company. Can you sum up the personal
price that you paid by being the face of the
of the change of that lawsuit.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I can try to sum it up. I certainly talk
about it in my in writing this book, and I
felt in writing the book that I had to be
incredibly well. I had to just be honest. I had
to be honest about the toll that being the target
of a lot of criticism of a person that I
(20:03):
didn't even see in myself. I was challenged, My morality
was challenged for wanting to do this. I was sexually
objectified in many ways, certainly not the loud misogyny that
you see on social media, because you had the civilizing
impact of the men had to have their bylines and
(20:27):
often their pictures on the top of the columns. But
to me it still felt harsh. It felt crude, it
felt demeaning. I didn't handle it well. So I guess
to add to the summation, I would say I made
some terrible decisions in my life in some ways as
(20:48):
a response to feeling very alone and targeted, perhaps to
some extent for being a single woman, you know, with
blonde hair, I was somewhat slim, so I think people
made a lot of assumptions about me, and the implications
(21:09):
were that I was there really to wanting to date
the ballplayers and to see them naked in their locker room.
So those were essentially the implications. So what I did
is I somewhat ran for cover. There was a sports
journalist I met a week after my lawsuit was filed,
and within three weeks he had asked me to marry him,
(21:32):
and I just lost my mind at that point and
I said I would. And it was a very bad
decision in my life that of course ended up with
a divorce several years later. But it was a very
very unhappy marriage and a very very wrong decision for
me to have made in the midst of what was
(21:53):
happening to me as part of this lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Feels like protection though, or safety protection against rumors that
you're after something else, safety against accusations, and yeah, so it.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Was a safe harbor. You're right, there's a notion that
it would be a safe harbor.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
What were your feelings after you won the lawsuit?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Relief? Relief that I felt like a year of coverage
about it might finally end. That was wrong. In fact,
it went into the next season, and certainly we've seen
indications of this same issues of women just in covering baseball,
(22:33):
incidents in locker room, sexual harassment, etc. Play out even
up till now. So you know, the victory in court
felt very good. I think I felt at the time,
again naively, that victory and court would lead to a
change in attitudes. I came to understand as I moved
(22:57):
through those decades, and certainly by the time I started
writing this book maybe in the last five, six, seven years,
that that change in attitude took takes a lot longer,
And in fact, I'd argue that we haven't quite gotten
to where I might have wished we'd gotten, even nearly
fifty years later.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, was there retaliation?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Were there other reporters or players or managers who knew
who you were when you came in after the loss.
It was one and after you were allowed and okay
to be in there, that you felt took it out
on you that you had changed things.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
No, I don't feel like I was retaliated against. I
really don't. But I will say that a very dear
friend of mine, in fact, the only woman reporter who's
in the Hall of Fame in the Writer's Wing, Claire Smith,
was still dealing with sort of the residue of my
lawsuit and the action I'd taken, and it had been resolved,
(23:53):
we thought in seventy eight. She's still in nineteen eighty four,
was basically lifted up by two players Padres, lifted out
of the locker room, put in the hallway with manager,
the manager saying we don't want you in here, we
don't like you in here. And so you know, that
was still happening, and you know, in some ways buoy
(24:14):
Kyun was a man of his word, because it took
that incident in Chicago during the National League playoffs for
the brand new commissioner Peter Uberroth to issue finally a
statement that said we're no longer saying it would be
nice if you would treat all reporters the same while
(24:34):
they're there, we're saying that you will treat It's a mandate.
So it took Qune leaving. It might have taken that
incident that Claire had to go through that evening for
Peter Ruberroth and Baseball to make the official change in
its policy. But again we see through the decades indications
(24:58):
that attitudes still we're lagging.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Sort of like Title nine.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
The law can exist, but the enforcement of it is
the thing that matters most.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
So women can be allowed.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
But over the decades, what you see so often is
that there are so many women repeating the stories about
not feeling fully welcome, being treated poorly, being treated differently,
even if technically they are allowed.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
But I think you're absolutely right, Sarah. I sometimes think
back to the history of the Brown versus Board of Education,
in which was a nine nothing decision in the Supreme
Court in nineteen fifty four, and yet in the early
sixties you still found school systems throughout the South and
in other places who refuse to adhere to it, and
(25:42):
they set up separate academies so they didn't have to
adhere to it. So these things, despite an order, despite
a landmark ruling, take a lot more than that. They
take the pressure of influential people, moving people out of
habits into a different place in their thinking, and.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
The fight sort of continues.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Every time we rest believing that something has been settled,
we run the risk of finding out later it hasn't,
as obviously Dobbs showed us, and as an effort to
turn back the time on some other things as as well.
Despite the fact that women still have to go in
and sometimes fight these fights on a smaller scale than
an actual lawsuit, which was your battle, you do recognize
the impact that you had on other women in the
(26:26):
space and other women joining the space in the years
that followed as a result of what you did. When
you're writing this book now and you look back, how
much pride do you feel in understanding the impact that
you had and putting your name on that lawsuit and
being the first.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Well, you're not seeing me right now, but I am smiling.
There was a lot of reflection that went into writing
this book on my part, and I think it's fair
to say that one of the things that I might
have felt even more as I set out to write
this story and till it was a sense of accomplishment
and Joy. I write in the book that I thought back,
(27:04):
as I was going through my early years to the
words that Shirley Chisholm, who had been the first black
woman to have a seat in Congress. She was my
commencement speaker in nineteen seventy three, and at our commencement
she made a point of talking about her own activism.
(27:24):
She had run for president the year before, so she
was very well known as an activist for civil rights
and also women's rights. She urged us, as highly educated
women to find our place in what she called the
social movements of our time. I had not done that.
(27:46):
I had gone into sports media. They were eighteen nineteen
hour days for me because of my time at the
ballpark every night. I hadn't carved out a space to
really become the participatory, act activist in either of those movements,
although my heart was certainly with them. But I looked
back and I realized that by moving into this space,
(28:11):
into this visible space, and winning this lawsuit, which is
memorable and did have a lasting impact, that somehow I
did finally manage to sort of live up to what
she had asked me to do as a sort of
soldier in her campaign and I so admire her that
(28:33):
there did come a point in writing this book, and
I think I actually say it in the book that
I did feel as though I lived up to Shirley's
words and I love that good.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Run out of time here, but I want to ask you,
you know, understanding the fight that you put up for
access in locker rooms, how do you feel about the
potential change in the way pro sports operate taking interviews
outside of that space like they do in that WNBA,
like the NFLPA working toward most professional women's sports now
don't offer up access in the PWHL, in the NWSL,
(29:07):
the interviews are done outside the locker room. Do you
feel like that's something that can be done in other
professional spaces, assuming that there is still control over deadlines
and time and whether athletes have to participate, as long
as it's done in a different space.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
The short answer is yes, And in terms of my
own situation and how it relates to what's happening today,
we were always fighting not for access to the locker room,
but for equal access to the athletes. Had Baseball decided
at that time to move the interviews outside of the
(29:49):
clubhouse and provide the same access to men and women.
The order that my judge ruled in my case, that
would have solved their problem. But at the time, and
we found this out in our discovery process, the men
who were covering baseball were communicating with the commissioner's office
(30:10):
and sort of warning him, however, you take care of
this lucky situation. Do not take away our access, do not.
And so, in fact, I think that baseball and other
sports in the seventies were almost singularly relying on newspaper
(30:31):
coverage to drive people to those stadiums. That is very
different now, as we know, and so we're in a
very different media environment. We're in a very different ecosystem.
The players are on Instagram, they send out their stories,
they're even players channels that they can send out their
(30:52):
information on. They are no longer dependent on newspapers in particular,
who needed that kind of access to write the kind
of in depth stories that they wanted to write, carrying
the emotion and the rest that we now might get
mainly through TV into people's living rooms the next morning.
(31:16):
It was sort of a direct way to convey what
TV largely conveys. Do I feel that there's still a
reason for players, I mean for people to want to
be in a clubhouse. I do because with a team
sport as large as a team is in baseball or football,
(31:37):
unlike basketball, by the way, you have, I believe a
need for that communicator to be able to see and
hear the dynamics that are going on between the team members.
There is nothing that can be conveyed on a conference
(31:57):
table with three microphones in a conference room that will
give you the kind of paragraphs that Roger Kahn wrote
at the end of the nineteen fifty five World Series,
when the Brooklyn Dodgers came into that locker room and
sat there, I would urge people to go back and
read the Voice of Summer. It's a fabulous It takes
(32:20):
you in there, you understand the feelings you see in
their actions. That's what a writer can do. If you're
doing mainly radio TV and you're putting it out on
social media as a press conference, of course you can
do that the way they're doing it now. But I
think I've given you a sense of where I come
(32:40):
down on this. But as it relates to my case,
we never pretended it was never an issue of us
saying we're going to federal court so that I can
be in the locker room. That was never it. That's
how the stories conveyed it because the male writers did
not want to treat it as an equal rights case.
(33:01):
They wanted to treat it as a woman invading a
man's space, etc. So that's why people have a misinterpretation
in many ways that I was fighting to get inside
of locker room so as fighting for equal access. So
you know, who am I to say that elite can't
provide equal access in the way they want to their athletes.
(33:23):
You know, it's a tough question.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
You bring up some interesting points, though, and we're going
to keep having this conversation on the show, because there
are elements of immediacy. There are elements of elusiveness from
athletes if they know that they can evade the media
by just waiting long enough before coming out, and then
they'll skip deadlines and other things. And then the personal
connection and the relationships that you can create in a
locker room that aren't done with simple scrums. There's so
(33:45):
many elements to this. But your perspective is fascinating and
the book is fascinating. Locker room talk a woman struggle
to get inside. There is so much to be learned
by hearing stories from people like Melissa Ludkey and how
things were decades ago. A specially when we see how
things have not changed, it reminds us that the fight
remains in so many ways, but also how far we've
(34:07):
come in some ways. So Melissa, thank you so much
for the time, and thank you for writing the book,
and thank you for being part of the reason that
I've been able to be in locker rooms and do
the job that I do.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Sarah, what a pleasure it is to be with you.
Thanks so much for thinking of me.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Thanks again to Melissa for joining us. We have to
take another break when we come back, step back, bro,
Welcome back, my little slices. We love that you're listening,
but we always want you to get in the game
every day too. So here's our good gameplay of the day.
(34:42):
Duh winner take all Game five tonight, Baby, who's going
to meet the Liberty in the finals?
Speaker 2 (34:47):
The Sun or the Links?
Speaker 1 (34:49):
You got to watch eight pm Eastern ESPN two and
we always love to hear from you, so hit us
up on email. Good game at wondermedianetwork dot com. Or
leave us a voicemail at eight seven two two oh
four fifty seventy, and don't forget to subscribe, Rate and review.
It's so easy. Watch people who step closer to you
when you step away from them. Rating zero out of
(35:10):
five review How are you not even remotely self aware?
I took a step back because you're talking too close.
I can literally smell what you had for lunch, and
I can see the leftovers in your teeth. Get the hint, bro,
And if I keep stepping back and you keep stepping
toward me, we're literally going to fight spatial awareness.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Motherfucker.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good Game, Melissa, Good Game,
Billy Jean King again and forever few people who think
women are trying to pick up a man in the
locker room. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(35:51):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett Jesse Katz. It's Jenny Kaplan and
Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rudder, Britney Martinez, Grace
Lynch and Lindsay Cradwell.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Production assistant from Lucy
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Jones and I'm Your Host Santa Spain,
Welcome to Good Game, where we're rereading this Mirror and
Fader deep dive on Paige Becker's for a second time.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Miron's one of the best, and she's done it again.
On today's show, we're going to talk.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
To award winning journalist Melissa Ludkey about her new book,
Locker Room Talk, A Woman Struggled to get inside, and
how she won her lawsuit against Major League Baseball to
earn the right to locker room access. Plus WNBA Playoffs,
close Talkers, and more. It's all coming up right after
this welcome back slices. Meche has your need to note today,
(00:32):
Take it away, Mesh.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
The Connecticut Sun in Minnesota Lynks meet tonight in a winner,
go home Game five to determine who will face off
against the New York Liberty in the WNBA Finals. The
Connecticut son are looking to make it back to the
finals for the second time in three years, while the
Links are looking for their first finals appearance since winning
it All in twenty seventeen. In other basketball news, sisters
(00:56):
Isabelle and Dory Harrison are both gonna hoop in the
upcoming season of Athletes Unlimited Basketball in Nashville Tennessee. And
it's even cooler because that's where they grew up. Talk
about a full circle moment with your pal. I don't
actually know if they like each other as siblings. I
don't know nothing about that. I'm an only child. That
ain't my business. But Izzy plays in the WNBA for
the Chicago Sky and has been a part of AU
(01:18):
since the league's inaugural twenty twenty two season, while Dorry made.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Her AU debut last year.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
The twenty four game AU season will run from February
fifth through March second at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. In
hockey news, GG Marvin is retiring after a long career
that included three Olympics, seven World Championship appearances in one
Walter Cup Finals run. The thirty seven year old was
a member of the US Olympic team that won gold
(01:44):
in twenty eighteen, ending a nearly two decade gold medal
drought during which Canada topped the podium four straight times.
Marvin initially retired from the national team in twenty twenty one,
but she returned to competitive hockey last year in order
to play for Boston in the inaugural PWHL season.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
P WHL.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Boston went on to make the Walter Cup Finals, losing
to Minnesota in a decisive game five. Thanks so much
for everything, Gigi. We're gonna Misha. And in tennis, the
tournaments keep on coming. The Wuhan Open got started yesterday
at the Optics Valley International Tennis Center. The tournament features
a stacked field including Coco Golf, who just won the
China Open, and Arena Sabalanka, the number one seed in
(02:23):
the tournament and the number two rink player in the world.
World number one IGOs Viantik withdrew from the tournament after
splitting with her coach of three seasons at the end
of last week. Arena Sabalanka took home the trophy at
the last iteration of the contest way back in twenty nineteen,
beating American Alison Risk in three sets. Sabalanka was also
the champion twenty eighteen. And we'll look to three pte.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Thanks Mesh, we got to take another break. Well we
come back. Melissa Ludkey.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
She's an award winning journalist who in nineteen seventy eight
won a law suit for the right to be allowed
in Major League Baseball locker rooms. She's worked for ABC Sports, Sports, Illustrated,
Time Magazine, CBS News, and spent thirteen years as a
writer and editor for The Niemen Reports, magazine of Harvard
University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. This year, she released a
new book, Locker Room Talk, A woman Struggle to get inside.
She's a Wellesley alum, like producer Alex. Will have to
(03:19):
let them chat about that later. It's Melissa Lutkey. What's up, Melissa.
Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
Hey, that's the best news I've heard recently. Alex. I'll
just ask you at some point if we do our
reunion together.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
There we go, Melissa, This conversation in your book is
actually especially relevant now. The WNBA doesn't currently allow media
access in the locker room. That was the change made
a few years ago, and just last week the NFLP
announced publicly that they've been working to follow suit, spending
the last three years and discussions to try to move
media interviews out of locker rooms. Now, before we get
into the modern conversations about that space and access, I
(03:53):
want to go back to your particular fight and how
it all fits in. So let's start with how you
got into sports reboarding and why you felt confident and
comfortable pursuing the job despite so few women and what
was often a really toxic environment at that time.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Sarah, I don't think I understood the toxicity the environment.
What drove me to get into it was absolute love
of sports and a knowledge and a love of baseball
that had been passed down to me from my mom.
When I did graduate from Wellesley College in nineteen seventy three,
I really had no plan. I'd majored in art history,
(04:31):
which I loved studying, but I'd worked in an art
gallery and that had maybe decided that that was not
the venue for me to be happy in a job,
and so I began to think about the other passions
that drove me. One of them was teaching, but the
other really was sports. I didn't know it at the time,
(04:52):
but I had an exceptional girlhood in the sense that
I had the opportunity to play team sports. In the
nineteen fifty and sixties, when you're growing up, you think
everyone is doing what you're doing. You just don't have
a wider perspective. But I've come to learn over the
years and appreciate even more the opportunities I had. So
(05:13):
not only could I talk sports, my mother teaching me baseball,
my dad taking me along at football games. Basketball was
something we watched in our house. I played basketball. I
really had a grounding in it that I was once
told And this is really the spur to me moving
(05:33):
into sports media. After having the opportunity to sit at
a dinner table with Frank Gifford, who was then at
ABC Sports, he'd just become one of the opening trio
on Monday Night Football with Dandy, Don Meredith and Howard Cosell.
So he was a very well known sports broadcaster. And
(05:54):
after we had talked across a dining room table for
I don't know, maybe an hour and a half with
just sports, sports, sports, he told me, you know that
for a girl, I knew a lot about sports, and
I thought, wow, I mean, you know, that was a
huge compliment, I thought, coming from him, And he followed
(06:15):
it up with an invitation that if I was in
New York, he would be happy to show me around
ABC Sports and introduce me to the people who worked there.
So when I went to dinner that night, I had
no intention of going to New York City, But as
I walked home from that dinner, I was already planning
(06:36):
a trip, it would take a couple of weeks to
pull it together, and in those intervening weeks, Sarah, you
can't make this up. Billy Jean King played Bobby Riggs
at the Houston Astrodome in that Battle of the Sexes, which,
in many ways, coming on the heels of the passage
of Title nine, really began to change everything. And it
(06:58):
was at that time that I did take my father's
car drive down to New York, have a chance for
Frank to show me around. And the last thing I'll
say is that Frank left me that afternoon in the
office of the only woman sports producer at ABC Sports.
She then invited me to stay an extra couple days.
(07:19):
They were going to be doing a special on women
in sports and evening special. And when I said yes
and hung out for three more days with them, Billy
Jean King walked up the stairs into that studio and Sarah,
I had no idea how, but I knew at that
moment that I was going to figure out a way
(07:40):
to get into sports media.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Gosh, it sounds like truly the stars aligned to bring
you into the space. It also helps me confirm my
pre existing theory that Billy Jing King is the forrest
Gump of women in sports that at any time, in
any place, someone will tell a story, and Billy jan
King was always there.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I love that she played role in your story too.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So it's the mid seventies, you're reporting for Sports Illustrated.
You're the only woman assigned full time to Major League Baseball.
The Yankees give you a credential for the final games
of the regular season in nineteen seventy seven. What were
those first few games, like, how were you received by
players and managers and other media.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Well, the reason that they gave me those two credentials,
and you're right, the very last two games of the
nineteen seventy seven season, Mickey Morribido, the very young PR,
first year PR person for the Yankees, gave me the
clubhouse passes. Now, let's be sure that we understand that
that was after two years of me gradually gradually earning
(08:45):
the trust both of Mickey but also the players being
up at that ballg park game after game after game,
having no access whatsoever, and Mickey coming to understand by
watching the frustrations that I would have with my reporting,
first opening up the manager's office for me after the games,
(09:07):
and then those last two games, deciding, for whatever reason,
leaving those two passes for me. And when I went
out on the field, I said, Mickey, you left these passes.
Did you really mean to He said yes, He says,
you certainly earned the right to do this, use them
how you want. And I think you said that knowing
me very well. By that point, I was really understanding
(09:30):
that to make this work I had to be a gradualist.
This wasn't banging down a door, It wasn't demanding. It
was being the only woman up there, and that meant
trying to get along with the men, trying not to
upset them in the process of making forward progress for me.
So the fact that Micky recognized that and gave me
(09:52):
the two passes, Sarah, I only used them before the game, which,
for some mysterious reason, i'd alway been kept out of
the clubhouse. Then too, the commissioner contended that the reason
for me being out of the clubhouse was to protect
the sexual privacy of players. Well before the game started,
(10:13):
between batting practice and the game, not one player changed
out of his uniform. So I went into the clubhouse
during that period. For those two games, I didn't need
to be there like a daily reporter might for the
game coverage afterwards. And so again, as a gradualist, you know,
I have to frankly say it worked fine. The players
(10:36):
knew me, they were prepared by Mickey that I had
the pass, and things worked out well well enough. I
might add that not one baseball reporter wrote about me
being in the locker room during those two games, or
during the American League Championship series, in which I was
(10:56):
also in the locker room, which gave me a sense
that maybe my gradualist kind of mother may I approach
had actually worked. So when we come to that nineteen
seventy seven World Series, I have a sense, why wouldn't
I have a sense at that point that maybe we're
going to make this work.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Throughout those games, you only went in before the game,
Yes you didn't.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
No, that is not the case. I'm sorry I did that.
Just those two games. And then during the American League
Championship I was in the locker room both before games
as well as.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
After, and no incidents, no one complaining.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
No incidents. I wasn't thrown out. I wouldn't say that
there were no incidents. I mean there were players who
very much voiced their disapproval of my presence among them.
But I came. I understood from the very beginning that
this was their clubhouse, this was their locker room, and
if something egregious happened, I had a sense that I
(11:56):
would understand a redline and if a player lost, then
I would either say or do something or leave. And
you know, share with Mickey my experience. But none of
that happened. Yes, were their jokes made. Yes, were there
are things that were probably said of me at the
time that were uncomfortable to year, Yes, but you know
(12:19):
that was part of what I knew would happen. I mean,
I just knew it. So your roll with it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So it ends up happening that the first game of
the nineteen seventy seven World Series arrives, the Los Angeles
Dodgers actually had a vote during which the players approved
your presence in the locker room and agreed with the
Yankees that it was fine that you were in there,
but the Commissioner of Baseball, Booie Kune, banned you from
the locker room because of your gender. Take us to
that day, Like you said, at this point, you've arrived
at the World Series, believing that the barrier has been broken,
(12:48):
and now you're a part of the crew that goes
in the locker room. How do you find out that
this is a problem and that Booie has stepped in?
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah, I mean the Dodgers were in town. I recognized
right away that they had never had a woman and
covering them. So it was actually by me going to
them what I thought of as playing a sort of
courtesy call, explaining to them that I had a pass
that said I had entrance to the clubhouse, telling them
about my experiences with the Yankees. I hoped that that
(13:18):
would ease the way for them to understand that I
might be coming into their clubhouse as well. It was
because of the conversation that I'm kind of relaying to
you at this point, with those elements in it that
I had with their player Rep. Tommy John, that that
vote was taken. And right before the first game, Tommy
(13:38):
John came out to meet me, as he said he would,
told me that it was a majority of players that
they understood and that it was fine with them for
me to be in there, And so that was how
I walked away from him. He then called me back however,
and asked me another favor, and that was to let
(14:01):
their PR people know that this might happen. And it
was that going my willingness to convey that message to
the PR people on behalf of Tommy and the team
that sort of sealed my fate, which I was informed
of five innings later.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
So their PR person went to the commissioner, presumably and
maybe decided that that would be the person that they
would have to do their dirty work. Perhaps the PR
person for the Dodgers was the one who wanted it.
Who knows, At the very least they managed to take
it to a commissioner who for sure wanted to prevent you.
So your five innings into the game, and who approaches
you and how soon after that game did you decide
(14:45):
that you were going to take up a fight.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
During the fifth inning, I was sitting in the overflow
press box that was in the grand stands. Sports Illustrated
had four people assigned to the game. Only one of
them was in the main press box. So I called
over a very small loud speaker in our press box
to report to the main press box, and through a
(15:08):
series of conversations I had none of them directly with
the commissioner, even though I asked to speak with him directly,
since it was his edict, but I refused permission to
do that. The bottom line was that I was told
that it didn't matter if the Yankees gave permission. It
didn't matter that the Dodgers gave permission. It did not
(15:30):
matter that the Baseball Writers had given me permission by
issuing me that press credential. The only person in Baseball
who could give me permission was the commissioner, and he
would not He would take that permission away for the
entire series. And then added to that, I was told
(15:50):
permission would be not granted forever.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
He was very young, My goodness, a lifetime ban of sorts.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Well, he was young, and it rose. Yeah, I guess so.
But I guess the difference is that if you live
long enough as I have my passes, that clubhouse pass
and my pass for the series is in the Hall
of Fame.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's right, that's right. You've got one up on it
so far.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Okay, So in this moment, this feels very extreme. Not
only are we rejecting you right now, but don't bother
coming back later to ask again. You decide to file
a lawsuit, and I wonder what the response to the
lawsuit was. Let's start with from colleagues, your editor, or
your bosses. What kind of support or criticism did you get?
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Well, it was actually my bosses. It was actually Time
Incorporated who came to me and asked if I would
be in a plaintiff in a lawsuit they would file
at the Southern District Court of Manhattan. This only came
about after several weeks. It might have even been two
months of negotiations that had gone on between the baseball
(17:00):
editor and the lawyer at Sports Illustrated and the commissioner
and his lawyer, And it was only toward the beginning
of December, I believe, when they realized that there was
no progress being made. Baseball believe that quote unquote, separate
accommodations would for me would be equal to what the
(17:21):
men had by interviewing the players in the clubhouse. We
disagreed fundamentally, separate would not be equal, and we demanded
equal access. There was no meeting of the minds to
be had. And it was at that point that Time
Ink made the decision Time Incorporated to file this lawsuit,
and they came to me and asked if I would
(17:44):
be the named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
As owners of Sports Illustrated, Time Inc. Which is where
we were.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Owners of Sports Illustrated. They had been sued a Time
Incorporated by their own women for gender discrimination and this
is across the company in the early nineteen seventies, and
had signed a conciliation agreement to end that legal action
(18:10):
by agreeing that from then that point out there would
be gender equality in assignments, etc. Now that wasn't instantly
something that happened, but I always believed that it was
because that conciliation agreement existed, that there was the pressure
(18:32):
through the legal department and the rest to make this happen.
They came to me, asked me, And you know, Sarah,
I was twenty six at the time. I started covering
baseball when I was twenty four, I was very naive
when I said yes, because I saw it through one
lens and one lens only. I wanted to do a
(18:52):
job I absolutely loved. I felt I was just really
getting to the point of learning how to do it.
Two years of really putting in my time at the ballparks,
I'd already written a few baseball stories by then I
just wanted to keep doing this. I loved it, and
(19:12):
I felt there was no reason for me not to
be able to do it. So I looked at it
totally as almost an employment lawsuit, But little did I
understand its cultural touchstones.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, it's nice, whether they're hand forced or not, that
you then felt the support legally and es of your
bosses and your company. Can you sum up the personal
price that you paid by being the face of the
of the change of that lawsuit.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
I can try to sum it up. I certainly talk
about it in my in writing this book, and I
felt in writing the book that I had to be
incredibly well. I had to just be honest. I had
to be honest about the toll that being the target
of a lot of criticism of a person that I
(20:03):
didn't even see in myself. I was challenged, My morality
was challenged for wanting to do this. I was sexually
objectified in many ways, certainly not the loud misogyny that
you see on social media, because you had the civilizing
impact of the men had to have their bylines and
(20:27):
often their pictures on the top of the columns. But
to me it still felt harsh. It felt crude, it
felt demeaning. I didn't handle it well. So I guess
to add to the summation, I would say I made
some terrible decisions in my life in some ways as
(20:48):
a response to feeling very alone and targeted, perhaps to
some extent for being a single woman, you know, with
blonde hair, I was somewhat slim, so I think people
made a lot of assumptions about me, and the implications
(21:09):
were that I was there really to wanting to date
the ballplayers and to see them naked in their locker room.
So those were essentially the implications. So what I did
is I somewhat ran for cover. There was a sports
journalist I met a week after my lawsuit was filed,
and within three weeks he had asked me to marry him,
(21:32):
and I just lost my mind at that point and
I said I would. And it was a very bad
decision in my life that of course ended up with
a divorce several years later. But it was a very
very unhappy marriage and a very very wrong decision for
me to have made in the midst of what was
(21:53):
happening to me as part of this lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Feels like protection though, or safety protection against rumors that
you're after something else, safety against accusations, and yeah, so it.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Was a safe harbor. You're right, there's a notion that
it would be a safe harbor.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
What were your feelings after you won the lawsuit?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Relief? Relief that I felt like a year of coverage
about it might finally end. That was wrong. In fact,
it went into the next season, and certainly we've seen
indications of this same issues of women just in covering baseball,
(22:33):
incidents in locker room, sexual harassment, etc. Play out even
up till now. So you know, the victory in court
felt very good. I think I felt at the time,
again naively, that victory and court would lead to a
change in attitudes. I came to understand as I moved
(22:57):
through those decades, and certainly by the time I started
writing this book maybe in the last five, six, seven years,
that that change in attitude took takes a lot longer,
And in fact, I'd argue that we haven't quite gotten
to where I might have wished we'd gotten, even nearly
fifty years later.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, was there retaliation?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Were there other reporters or players or managers who knew
who you were when you came in after the loss.
It was one and after you were allowed and okay
to be in there, that you felt took it out
on you that you had changed things.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
No, I don't feel like I was retaliated against. I
really don't. But I will say that a very dear
friend of mine, in fact, the only woman reporter who's
in the Hall of Fame in the Writer's Wing, Claire Smith,
was still dealing with sort of the residue of my
lawsuit and the action I'd taken, and it had been resolved,
(23:53):
we thought in seventy eight. She's still in nineteen eighty four,
was basically lifted up by two players Padres, lifted out
of the locker room, put in the hallway with manager,
the manager saying we don't want you in here, we
don't like you in here. And so you know, that
was still happening, and you know, in some ways buoy
(24:14):
Kyun was a man of his word, because it took
that incident in Chicago during the National League playoffs for
the brand new commissioner Peter Uberroth to issue finally a
statement that said we're no longer saying it would be
nice if you would treat all reporters the same while
(24:34):
they're there, we're saying that you will treat It's a mandate.
So it took Qune leaving. It might have taken that
incident that Claire had to go through that evening for
Peter Ruberroth and Baseball to make the official change in
its policy. But again we see through the decades indications
(24:58):
that attitudes still we're lagging.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Sort of like Title nine.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
The law can exist, but the enforcement of it is
the thing that matters most.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
So women can be allowed.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
But over the decades, what you see so often is
that there are so many women repeating the stories about
not feeling fully welcome, being treated poorly, being treated differently,
even if technically they are allowed.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
But I think you're absolutely right, Sarah. I sometimes think
back to the history of the Brown versus Board of Education,
in which was a nine nothing decision in the Supreme
Court in nineteen fifty four, and yet in the early
sixties you still found school systems throughout the South and
in other places who refuse to adhere to it, and
(25:42):
they set up separate academies so they didn't have to
adhere to it. So these things, despite an order, despite
a landmark ruling, take a lot more than that. They
take the pressure of influential people, moving people out of
habits into a different place in their thinking, and.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
The fight sort of continues.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Every time we rest believing that something has been settled,
we run the risk of finding out later it hasn't,
as obviously Dobbs showed us, and as an effort to
turn back the time on some other things as as well.
Despite the fact that women still have to go in
and sometimes fight these fights on a smaller scale than
an actual lawsuit, which was your battle, you do recognize
the impact that you had on other women in the
(26:26):
space and other women joining the space in the years
that followed as a result of what you did. When
you're writing this book now and you look back, how
much pride do you feel in understanding the impact that
you had and putting your name on that lawsuit and
being the first.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Well, you're not seeing me right now, but I am smiling.
There was a lot of reflection that went into writing
this book on my part, and I think it's fair
to say that one of the things that I might
have felt even more as I set out to write
this story and till it was a sense of accomplishment
and Joy. I write in the book that I thought back,
(27:04):
as I was going through my early years to the
words that Shirley Chisholm, who had been the first black
woman to have a seat in Congress. She was my
commencement speaker in nineteen seventy three, and at our commencement
she made a point of talking about her own activism.
(27:24):
She had run for president the year before, so she
was very well known as an activist for civil rights
and also women's rights. She urged us, as highly educated
women to find our place in what she called the
social movements of our time. I had not done that.
(27:46):
I had gone into sports media. They were eighteen nineteen
hour days for me because of my time at the
ballpark every night. I hadn't carved out a space to
really become the participatory, act activist in either of those movements,
although my heart was certainly with them. But I looked
back and I realized that by moving into this space,
(28:11):
into this visible space, and winning this lawsuit, which is
memorable and did have a lasting impact, that somehow I
did finally manage to sort of live up to what
she had asked me to do as a sort of
soldier in her campaign and I so admire her that
(28:33):
there did come a point in writing this book, and
I think I actually say it in the book that
I did feel as though I lived up to Shirley's
words and I love that good.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Run out of time here, but I want to ask you,
you know, understanding the fight that you put up for
access in locker rooms, how do you feel about the
potential change in the way pro sports operate taking interviews
outside of that space like they do in that WNBA,
like the NFLPA working toward most professional women's sports now
don't offer up access in the PWHL, in the NWSL,
(29:07):
the interviews are done outside the locker room. Do you
feel like that's something that can be done in other
professional spaces, assuming that there is still control over deadlines
and time and whether athletes have to participate, as long
as it's done in a different space.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
The short answer is yes, And in terms of my
own situation and how it relates to what's happening today,
we were always fighting not for access to the locker room,
but for equal access to the athletes. Had Baseball decided
at that time to move the interviews outside of the
(29:49):
clubhouse and provide the same access to men and women.
The order that my judge ruled in my case, that
would have solved their problem. But at the time, and
we found this out in our discovery process, the men
who were covering baseball were communicating with the commissioner's office
(30:10):
and sort of warning him, however, you take care of
this lucky situation. Do not take away our access, do not.
And so, in fact, I think that baseball and other
sports in the seventies were almost singularly relying on newspaper
(30:31):
coverage to drive people to those stadiums. That is very
different now, as we know, and so we're in a
very different media environment. We're in a very different ecosystem.
The players are on Instagram, they send out their stories,
they're even players channels that they can send out their
(30:52):
information on. They are no longer dependent on newspapers in particular,
who needed that kind of access to write the kind
of in depth stories that they wanted to write, carrying
the emotion and the rest that we now might get
mainly through TV into people's living rooms the next morning.
(31:16):
It was sort of a direct way to convey what
TV largely conveys. Do I feel that there's still a
reason for players, I mean for people to want to
be in a clubhouse. I do because with a team
sport as large as a team is in baseball or football,
(31:37):
unlike basketball, by the way, you have, I believe a
need for that communicator to be able to see and
hear the dynamics that are going on between the team members.
There is nothing that can be conveyed on a conference
(31:57):
table with three microphones in a conference room that will
give you the kind of paragraphs that Roger Kahn wrote
at the end of the nineteen fifty five World Series,
when the Brooklyn Dodgers came into that locker room and
sat there, I would urge people to go back and
read the Voice of Summer. It's a fabulous It takes
(32:20):
you in there, you understand the feelings you see in
their actions. That's what a writer can do. If you're
doing mainly radio TV and you're putting it out on
social media as a press conference, of course you can
do that the way they're doing it now. But I
think I've given you a sense of where I come
(32:40):
down on this. But as it relates to my case,
we never pretended it was never an issue of us
saying we're going to federal court so that I can
be in the locker room. That was never it. That's
how the stories conveyed it because the male writers did
not want to treat it as an equal rights case.
(33:01):
They wanted to treat it as a woman invading a
man's space, etc. So that's why people have a misinterpretation
in many ways that I was fighting to get inside
of locker room so as fighting for equal access. So
you know, who am I to say that elite can't
provide equal access in the way they want to their athletes.
(33:23):
You know, it's a tough question.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
You bring up some interesting points, though, and we're going
to keep having this conversation on the show, because there
are elements of immediacy. There are elements of elusiveness from
athletes if they know that they can evade the media
by just waiting long enough before coming out, and then
they'll skip deadlines and other things. And then the personal
connection and the relationships that you can create in a
locker room that aren't done with simple scrums. There's so
(33:45):
many elements to this. But your perspective is fascinating and
the book is fascinating. Locker room talk a woman struggle
to get inside. There is so much to be learned
by hearing stories from people like Melissa Ludkey and how
things were decades ago. A specially when we see how
things have not changed, it reminds us that the fight
remains in so many ways, but also how far we've
(34:07):
come in some ways. So Melissa, thank you so much
for the time, and thank you for writing the book,
and thank you for being part of the reason that
I've been able to be in locker rooms and do
the job that I do.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Sarah, what a pleasure it is to be with you.
Thanks so much for thinking of me.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Thanks again to Melissa for joining us. We have to
take another break when we come back, step back, bro,
Welcome back, my little slices. We love that you're listening,
but we always want you to get in the game
every day too. So here's our good gameplay of the day.
(34:42):
Duh winner take all Game five tonight, Baby, who's going
to meet the Liberty in the finals?
Speaker 2 (34:47):
The Sun or the Links?
Speaker 1 (34:49):
You got to watch eight pm Eastern ESPN two and
we always love to hear from you, so hit us
up on email. Good game at wondermedianetwork dot com. Or
leave us a voicemail at eight seven two two oh
four fifty seventy, and don't forget to subscribe, Rate and review.
It's so easy. Watch people who step closer to you
when you step away from them. Rating zero out of
(35:10):
five review How are you not even remotely self aware?
I took a step back because you're talking too close.
I can literally smell what you had for lunch, and
I can see the leftovers in your teeth. Get the hint, bro,
And if I keep stepping back and you keep stepping
toward me, we're literally going to fight spatial awareness.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Motherfucker.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good Game, Melissa, Good Game,
Billy Jean King again and forever few people who think
women are trying to pick up a man in the
locker room. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart
women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(35:51):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network,
our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones. Our executive
producers are Christina Everett Jesse Katz. It's Jenny Kaplan and
Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rudder, Britney Martinez, Grace
Lynch and Lindsay Cradwell.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Production assistant from Lucy
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Jones and I'm Your Host Santa Spain,
Host
Sarah Spain
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