Has the world of sports journalism gotten any better for the women who have made a career there? Longtime sports journalist Susan Reimer thinks it may have improved (there was a time when she wasn’t allowed in the Orioles locker room), but there’s still a long way to go.
A woman ran a seminal and nearly successful race for the Democratic nomination for president, and the Republican Party placed a woman on the national ticket for the first time. A woman is sitting in Walter Cronkite's chair. But give a woman a notebook or a microphone and ask her report on sports and it becomes a gross-out contest for the numskull players and their overgrown frat-boys fans.
Has the world of sports journalism gotten any better for the women who have made a career there? Longtime sports journalist Susan Reimer thinks it may have improved (there was a time when she wasn’t allowed in the Orioles locker room), but there’s still a long way to go.
A woman ran a seminal and nearly successful race for the Democratic nomination for president, and the Republican Party placed a woman on the national ticket for the first time. A woman is sitting in Walter Cronkite's chair. But give a woman a notebook or a microphone and ask her report on sports and it becomes a gross-out contest for the numskull players and their overgrown frat-boys fans.
She also recalls a story from 30 years ago in which the Baltimore Orioles manager openly suggested she was gay.
The Sun sent me to the Orioles locker room to report on the scene, and manager Earl Weaver refused to let me enter unless I had a note from my father.
Later that same season, Weaver asked me, in front of my colleagues from the local and national press, if I got "horny" when I entered the locker room. In the stunned silence that followed this incredible remark, Mr. Weaver declared that I was probably a lesbian anyway.
Read the full column here.
Hat tip to twin fifty eight.
