Boston Public Radio Podcast
Best Of BPR 9/26: Lewis Black + Melissa Ludtke
Today: Comedian Lewis Black is in town for two shows at The Wilbur this weekend. He Zooms in to tell us all about his final comedy tour: “Goodbye Yeller Brick Road”And, trailblazing sports journalist Melissa Ludtke joins us ahead of two events in Massachusetts promoting her book “Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside” – all about her fight for equal access in Major League Baseball.
- Broadcast on:
- 26 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
Support for Boston Public Radio comes from Mass General Brigham, dedicated to building a world-class setter of cancer care. With the most cancer surgeries and specialists in New England, they're committed to being with patients for every twist and turn. Learn more at massgeneralbrigham.org/cancer. And the Boston Philharmonic with conductor Benjamin Zander, performing Beethoven's Eggmont Overture, Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, and Brahms violin concerto with soloist guy Bronstein at Symphony Hall, October 20th, tickets at BostonPhil.org. I'm Jim Brody and I'm Marjorie Egan. This is the best of Boston Public Radio, a new daily podcast from GBH, featuring our favorite conversations from our three-hour radio show in under 40 minutes. Don't panic. If you love filling your phone with episodes of our full show podcast, you can still find it anywhere you get your podcast, or just catch us live on 89/7 GBH, starting at 11 o'clock. Ahead on the podcast, comedian Louis Black is in town for two shows at the Wilbur this weekend. He zooms in and tells us all about his final comedy tour, "Goodbye, Yeller, Brick Row!" and is for you in the podcasting, delivering audience-written rants via a rantcast. And trailblazing sports journalist Melissa Lucky joins us ahead of two events in Massachusetts, promoting your great new book, "Locker Room Talk," a woman's struggle to get inside, all about her fight for equal access in major league baseball, and here's the show. Our next guest certainly holds the crown as the longest-running correspondent on Comedy Central's "Great The Daily Show," shaping America's views on the state of the world and directing the nation's zeitgeist with his commentary, or not. Here's a bit from his latest stand-up comedy special out on YouTube. "Never has I said anything on the stage that has changed anything. Thousands and thousands of people have come and watched me, and the next day woke up and went, "Pfft, still the same." And you should know that since I started doing it, things have gotten worse. Of course, we're talking about the legendary, I think grumpy comedian Louis Black. He's allegedly saying goodbye to the Comedy Circuit for Good with a good-by-yeller brick road tour. He has two shows this weekend, Saturday and Sunday at the Wilbur Theatre. Saturday's sold out, still seats for Sunday for information and to book tickets, go to the Wilbur.com, and serendipity for us, because Louis joins us the day after his city's mayor is indicted on corruption charges. Welcome to the show, Louis. It's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. What do you think about the mayor? I mean, he's been a little bit sketchy for a while, according to some voters. But now they're searching his house? Yeah, whatever they got to do to get him out of office, I don't care. They're going after him because he might have committed some crimes. As big as crimes, he's made the Blasio, who I thought was the worst mayor ever, look good. I mean, normally I don't care so much. I don't pay much attention. You have a sense of the city being one way or the other, but this is just beyond belief. So which mayor did you like? Ed Koch? Who's your guy? None of them. None of them, okay. Well, Ed Koch would come into a restaurant, a friend of mine owned, you know, and wave his, "How am I doing? How am I doing?" Well, I'll tell you how you do it. But you know who was good? Who? Blumberg. Blumberg. Michael Blumberg. Do a good job. A local boy from Medford, Massachusetts, Louis, by the way. Is that right? Yeah. Well, he learned something up there much the way I learned comedy up there because he was A, he didn't, he shut his mouth. B, if something was wrong and they couldn't find money, he'd throw some money. Where'd you learn comedy up here? What do you mean by that? I've worked a lot at The Catcher Rising Star and that was pivotal, I think, in terms of my learning process. It was huge. I learned a lot from Boston Comics, you know, Don Gavin, to Sweeney, to, you know, Tony V. I can go through a list of them. I worked with the Cross Comedy, which was David Cross's comedy group. And then I brought them to New York to that restaurant. I was talking about where Catch would show up and they performed downstairs. But I did a show with Hasty putting one fall winner and it was, and I only had to do like four shows or five shows that was played by Chris Durang and we did it with the ART. And I could go after the show and perform at Catch, which was a half a block away. So, you know, before we leave New York, since you are a New Yorker, I can't help our listeners might want to know what you think of the trajectory of the former mayor of America. Could you ever see Rudy Giuliani winding up where he is now, back when you came here? Yeah, from the very beginning winding up where he is now. He did. He followed himself, you know, I mean, he did initially an interesting job. I mean, he got some things that, you know, he dealt with some stuff. But without Dinkins, once again, these idiots don't have any sense, none of them have a sense of history. If it's not for Dinkins getting the cops, Giuliani can execute what he wants to do in the city. Well, I mean, just, look, I got, this is, I got arrested for, with a bunch of others, I was going to show the Opian Anthony show. We were driving. Oh, yeah. We were driving to the city. This is, this will no doubt bring the audience out. Well, we were driving to the city with, with topless girls in a bus. And, and Giuliani had us pulled over and said, we, you know, and it, and it wasn't against the law. I mean, it was, it all because women can be topless in New York. So he said we were, you know, we were creating a public nuisance. And we spent a literally a night in jail in the, in, in the tombs there, which was, but that was how anybody ends up going to prison and says, I'm going to commit another crime. One night was enough. By the way, the U S attorney just texts that he'd like to talk to you right after interview. So is this farewell thing BS? I never know when, when somebody like you has been around forever and is beloved, which you are in an odd sort of way, when you say it's a farewell tour, is it really a farewell tour or is that, is that a little bit of hyperbole there, Lois Black? Oh, it's really, I mean, I'm not going to do 150 shows. You're not going to see this is the, this, you know, I did, you know, I did a tour called Old Yeller. I did another tour, you know, you know, I've done, you know, like 15, 16, 17, we have very many tours. They all have titles. This, this is the end of tour, you know, I'm not going to do 150. I may show up and do a show. I may show up and sit with somebody and talk about some things, right? You know, the daily show or whatever people want to listen to me, you know, wax on about good, but I'm not, I'm not doing it and I will open for certain people. But can I do some math for you? I mean, so if that's true and I know you love stand up, Marjorie wants to talk about that in a second in your relationship to the audience, I've heard you say, I think both your parents lived into their hundreds, which means you have decades to go theoretic. Well, actually, before I ask this, here's from your latest stand-up special, Tragically I Need You, where you're talking about your incredible 103-year-old mother and what she had to say about you here in the nursing home. To give you an idea just how tough, I mean, she practiced on me, okay? And this is how, this is the last, one of the last things she said when I saw her recently, just to give you a taste of what's coming for you. She said to me through actually to the caregiver there, he just put me to sleep. I can't imagine what he does doing a lot of years. So is she as funny as she appeared to be and if she was, is that where you got this thing years? I got a lot of it from her. I got the sarcasm from her and from my father, my father also was very funny and you'd be sitting there, you didn't think he was listening this up and then he'd come out with a singer. And he also, he taught me that there is a line you can't cross, which my mother would cross all the time. So I have to say, I got a bit from both of them and it was huge. But I can't see. I saw one of the reasons for retirement too is I ran into Don Rickles on a flight up to Michigan and we were staying there. I was staying in the city we were in that night and the next morning he was going to continue to fly further north and he was in his 80s and I just said to my opening act, if I was doing that in my 80s, I want you to shoot me, I'm not doing that. It's kind of like, for me, it's running part, it's course, how many jokes can you make about this insanity? Every special, I have a joke that Democrats are this, the Republicans are this, honky honk, quack, quack, quack. It's the same over and over and over again. Now it's just gotten a little crazier, but it's the same. So eventually I'll come up with the joke before the next special, everybody will move on to the next series of jackasses. Do you ever bump into Trump in the city? Yeah. And he was an idiot, okay. I mean, he was not, you know what he, I was at a, I was doing something that a book thing, a big benefit book thing for the, I can't remember for what, and we were at the Big Natural History Museum there with the way we were all eating, eating under the whale and I'm standing there and Trump's there with his family and he's yelling that he doesn't have the right tables and I'm going, oh, God, serious, he didn't get the good table and you watch that and I, at the time, you know, I, it's the first time I knew who he was and stuff and I thought, really, this is, that's, that's what, you know, generally, when you go to those events, there's somebody who is always thinks they're more entitled than the next person. I thought, this is perfect. So that's what I've got. Nothing changes. We're talking. Huh? He called to talk to me and he did? Yeah. And his assistant called my assistant and because I had done a piece on him, you can see it. It's on the, the Daily Show and I did this thing where I talked about how this was years ago before his election, I said that what he needed, what we, what America needed was a banana boat dictator. So we did it and then the literally two days later, I get a call. They call my assistant, she says, what do I tell him? I said, tell him I'm busy. I just, I'm busy right now and my parents were, literally, my parents are coming to town. So I said, you know, some of you know, we can, and I didn't really want to talk to him, but I hadn't gotten to that point. And so I just said, you know, just tell him it's too hard at this point. And then they came back, no, he really wants to talk to you, what would be a good time. And I'm like, tell him my parents are coming to town and I'm dealing with him and I'm thinking, he's making apparently millions of dollars. I'm a schmuck comic and I'm busier than he is. I'm like, come on. And I just thought, I'm not going to talk to him because this is after the entitlement month and time. I said, I'm not going to talk to him because then he'll feel like he's entitled to talk to me. And I don't talk to people I make jokes about. So do you ever talk to him? Do you ever talk to him? No. Okay. So have you been surprised by Donald Trump's presidency? Did, did anything there surprise you? I mean, I know that entitled to the table, but he's really taken things many steps further than I think some of us thought he would. Oh yeah, no, he went way further than I imagined he would go. I didn't think that would be the case of him doing that. I just didn't think. You didn't see the dogs and cats coming? I didn't really because I didn't think, you know, I thought he'd get tired of it because it was like the pomp and circumstance and all of that he, I'm sure he enjoyed. But I didn't think it would go where he actually started and that he'd be surrounded by people who would go, you know, if you did this, you could get that, you know, if you did this, we could keep, you could keep being the president, you know, and it's, it's a, and he learned it from Roy Cohn. Oh yes. I mean, just want, come on, people. You know, I just knew that what I knew was coming was that he's relentless and I knew that we were dealing with a narcissist and I knew that the problem always was that, you know, the people of New York, nine out of ten of us literally polled said we wouldn't vote for him to be president. But nobody listens to us because they think we're, we were jackasses, you know, who, why would you listen to it in New York? You know, they just shoot their mouths off. What do they know about him? Well, meanwhile, what they ended up doing was is that, you know, not only did they not listen to us, then they end up falling in love with the biggest jackass that has ever come out of me. And it's beautifully put. Hey, you know, Lewis, you mentioned Roy Cohn and we were talking, Michael Kirk is one of the great filmmakers who works for Frontline. Every four years, he does something called the choice where he spends time on each of the candidates and he, he, he tells the story. It just aired, I think Tuesday night for this cycle. He talks about Roy Cohn and, you know, housing discrimination and Cohn tells young Trump just assert that we won even though we lost and all that sort of thing. But that when we were talking to Michael Kirk the other day, one of the things we said to him is what comes through in your film is little Donald Trump told you exactly who big Donald Trump was going to be. And every time I watch or listen to you, I swear to this is true. I imagine little Lewis Black, wherever the hell you were in Maryland or wherever you grew up or something, you were probably exactly the same as you are today. Is that a fair statement or not? It is to a point. I realized there was a little bit of a difference when I was at the Emmys. And I'm not saying that to say I was at the, he's, but I was and they, because, you know, we'd be, the Daily Show was nominated and it was a giant. You go to this governor's ball and you enter this room and there is, it must be 150 feet, 200 foot tall, Emmy that's gold that's spinning around, spinning. Oh, very slowly in the room, massive room must be 2000 people in the room and the semis in the center of it. And I'm looking at it and I'm going, part of my brain goes, this is as close as I'm ever going to get to the golden calf, you know, this is it. And, and I thought, you know, my, the Lewis, the young Lewis Black would have looked at this thing and went, are you kidding me? And I'm sitting here and it's something I wanted to get in at me. So I'm like looking at this thing and part of my brain is going, ooh, look at that. And finally my young Lewis Black went out and just go stop it, idiot. You said, you were talking about your sarcastic mom and your very funny dad. You've also said in one of these interviews, I read about you that your primary relationship has been with the audience. That's where you feel most free and most happy. So if you're not going to be in front of that audience with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, you know, you're going to do play, book and all that kind of stuff. How are you going to make up for that relationship loss? I'm going to get on public transit and yell at people to love you. I don't know. I mean, it's the rough thing to let go of. I mean, that's that stuff. I mean, as I've said, time and again from before I even got to that thought that, you know, I said, I'd go in front of going in front of an audience where people like you more than you've ever liked yourself. It was really pretty remarkable. And I don't think I have to make up. I think I will do enough kind of stuff, you know, in terms of like opening, like for my friend Kathleen Madigan or, you know, doing a lot, I'm going to do a few live rancasts. Then in Boston, I'm hoping on Sunday we might do folks right in, I'll read some rants at the end of the show and those who go live throughout the throughout the world and people can watch it on their computers. So I'm hoping we can pull that off. Lois Black, good luck this weekend and good luck for the next whatever. If you live your parents life 30 years, you're terrific. Thank you so much for your time. Good luck. Thank you so much for such enjoyment, Lois Black. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, I really appreciate your time. Thanks. You guys were terrific. Well, it's great to see you. Congratulations. Fabulous, Jim. To be here in Marjorie. Hello, hello. Hello. Remember you from many summertime staff at Cape Elizabeth? We were just talking about it. We are the Cape Cod Girls. That's right. That is correct. So congratulations to know that just Jim said this is a fascinating book about a fascinating time for women getting into journalism particularly, as you say, into sports, which was even harder. So how did this all get started? Well it got started through really cases of serendipity, which I tell young people today. Serendipity really is when something happens that you grab hold of. We can all have lots of serendipitous moments completely pass us by, but you may appreciate this. Over a dinner table in Hyannisport, after my graduation from Wellesley College in liberal arts, I'd never studied anything having to do with communication or journalism. I had the great fortune of sitting across the table from Frank Gifford, who was a sports caster at ABC Sports. And that conversation-- As a fabulous professional football player before that. Absolutely. A matinee idol. And that's kind of how he made the switchover to being a broadcaster. He had just started at Monday Night Football with Howard Coselle and Dandy Don Meredith, and we talked the entire evening. I mean, people joined in, and afterwards, Marjorie, I think you'll appreciate this. He said to me, well, for a girl, you know a lot about sports. And I was 21. I took it as a great compliment because he followed it up very quickly by saying, if you come to New York, I'd be happy to introduce you to folks at ABC Sports. Oh. So I write about it in my book. I'm not going to do the long tail, but let me just say that I entered from that point on. I did move to New York after that visit to ABC Sports. I had caught the bug. I was absolutely determined this was going to be my life, even if I had no roadmap to it. So what I entered into was what I didn't have a word to describe then, which was really networking. I hung out. I got to know the people in sports, and one of them introduced me to the man who hired at Sports Illustrated. But let's go back a little bit before we go forward, Melissa Lucky, who was a grandparent, a mother. What was the sports? Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother. What triggered it? Oh, my God. My mother was the fourth of four children in her family that grew up in the suburb of Boston. And she became the one who became the seatmate for my grandmother, who loved, loved, loved the Red Sox and Fenway Park. My grandmother did too, but she didn't go to as many games. My mother became as much of a fan as her father, and they bonded over this. When the team was on the road, she had a cornice in which she had pinned up all the pictures of the team members. She scored every game. She kept scrapbooks. I didn't really know this. When I was starting my journey at Sports Illustrated, I came to find it out. And then when I was about to start writing the book, my mom died, and I discovered a box she'd kept of all the things that letters that had been written, the amount it cost to send a telegram about my birth, being the first of five children, your mother keeps everything. So I had letters, and I saw this envelope postmarked four days after I was born. It was sent by my grandfather. He spelled my name wrong. He was assured that I was going to be a sweet girl, but that wasn't what mattered to him. He had waited four days because the Yankees were in town to play three games with the Red Sox, and he had to report to his dearest Jean who was in Iowa City giving birth to me how that series had gone. So with a rat-a-tat-tat of his typewriter, he types out most succinct, wonderful, kind of summary of that game, Ted Williams, of course, was evoked, et cetera. When I discovered that letter, it told me that I was born with the DNA of baseball. And then I would come to love it through my mother's incredible attention to the game, whether it was radio or TV or taking me to the ballpark when I was seven years old. Here you are with the Yankees at a time that they were just such a powerhouse. Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, George Steinbrenner was the mercurial coach, Billy Martin, all that. Oh, and a rather, and Billy Martin was there. Set the scene now. You're covering them for Sports Illustrated. So what happened? You know, you use the word powerhouse. I would also use the word powder keg. They were a soap opera in the locker room. I mean, the idea that Reggie had arrived as the highest paid free agent at that time and said that he was the straw that stirred the drink before the season even began. That set up the tension between the captain Thurman Munson. And then you had in Fenway Park, the infamous fight that took place in the dugout after Billy Martin pulled Reggie Jackson from the outfield and embarrassed him, showed him up. And then you had George Steinbrenner in the mix. It was explosive. So yes, I did cover that team in the sense that I was probably at almost every game, home game, some of the away games, but you know, I couldn't be in the place. I could watch the powerhouse, but I could not be in the powder keg. I could not be in that clubhouse reporting of what was happening there. And that really informed a lot of the stories that were happening at that time. But that changed, at least with the Yankees. What was the... Why did that change? It gradually changed because I worked beneath the radar. I did not want to go public with my struggle, just like I didn't want to go back to the folks at SI and whine about what I couldn't do. So I was always trying to find, you know, kind of detours around it. I worked with Mickey Morabito and it really helped. He was the PR guy, first year rookie. And he was my age, which made such a difference, because he understood what was happening in the larger world. He and I had many private conversations. And after the all-star game, you're right, Jim. He did surprise me and came to me with what he thought of as a gradualist solution. He knew I was a gradualist as well, and I was very happy with it. He said he would enter the front door, as he always did, of the clubhouse. He'd go around through a side passage. I would wait for him in that side door, and he would let me in after every game. Not to the locker room, but to the manager's office. And I said, "Mickey, great deal. I'm happy. Let's just do it this way for a while." And that led to Mickey leaving two passes for me for the last two games of the series, of the season, to go into the clubhouse. I went out in the field when I got these passes. I said, "Mickey, did you really mean to leave these for me?" He said, "Yeah, absolutely. I know you'll handle it, you know, in the way that you will. I mean, it's fine. You choose how you use it." And so I just want to say I only used it for those two games going in before the game. Because what your listeners are not going to know, because they've heard about the nakedness of ball players, my immorality for wanting to see the naked bodies, that's how this story has been told through the ages. During that time, precious 50 minutes of time to report that the men always had, and I didn't, those men came in wearing their uniforms, and they stayed in those uniforms until the game started, and yet I was excluded. Okay. And then the World Series happens, and for baseball historians, even if you weren't born then, one of the great World Series ever, not just involving the great Yankees, but the former Brooklyn Dodgers, the series, and obviously, as we say, Reggie Jackson. So LA, Los Angeles, the players there, the team had not said it was okay for you to come in their locker room. What'd you do then? Actually, they hadn't ruled on it one way or the other. They hadn't had an opinion until I did my mother may I, and figured that because they hadn't had a woman covering them, I actually went to them with my press pass that said I had access to the clubhouse, explained to the player rep, Tommy John, that I had been in the Yankees clubhouse, showed him my pass, and that's when he, Jim, initiated the vote of the team. Which was? It wasn't unanimous, but it was a majority that said they understood I had a job to do, and if I needed to do it during the World Series, I was welcome to come inside. So that was fabulous until the fifth inning of game one. It was fabulous. So it lasted for five innings. What happened in the fifth inning? Melissa left. Yeah, I was elated. I mean, I thought finally, I mean, it's been two years of sort of laying the groundwork, and now I can actually participate fully in this coverage. And then in the fifth inning, I heard my name called in a scratchy little speaker behind the alternate press box, calling me up to the main press box. And to make it short, the final verdict is, and it's conveyed to me by the head of media. Commissioner Cune refused to meet with me, even though I asked him. Boy Cune. Boy Cune. And the, his left tenant told me that it didn't matter, that permission had been granted by the Yankees, by the Dodgers, and by the Baseball Writers Association. It didn't matter. He was the only one who could grant me permission, and permission had never been granted. For the series. And then they added, or forever. And Melissa Lucky, you know, I, I so felt for you, there you are, a young woman in your 20, I think you were 26, 27, something like that. When you're being lambasted from coast to coast, is some buxom blonde radios, or make talk shows going after TV commentators going after sports, calmness, Lorraine Newman on Saturday Night Live, acts as the girl reporter in the locker room interviewing a OJ Simpson, who the implication is he's naked, but he's going to towel around him, and she likes what she sees. I mean, how, that must have been just devastating. Well, I had to, I had to learn to laugh with some of it, Marjorie. You're right. But in, in essence, I think anyone who reads my book will come away with a far deeper understanding of how much it hurt me and what my reactions to that pain hurt and that pain were at what I was called. After all, I had agreed to put my name on as plaintiff only because I felt that I wanted to do this job that I had magically been able to do and love to the core of my being. And so that's why I did it. And then to have the case mocked and me be demeaned and laughed at, by the way, I did have blonde hair, but I wasn't buxom, but you're right. You're right that I was portrayed that way. Cartoonists had a field day and headline writers had never had so much fun as mixing the puns of baseball with sexual puns. They're cringe worthy if you go back and listen. So Melissa, before we talk about the lawsuit, SI and others filed and what happened with that, where were some of the, I mean, Howard Cosell, we talked about, arguably the most game-changing, I would argue, sports announcer ever, he actually introduced opinion, including political opinion, very close to Muhammad Ali when Muhammad Ali was going through it. Where was Howard Cosell? For whom I read, you had to bring a martini once when you were a young kabat over there at ABC. Yeah, ABC hadn't hired me, but I hung out there all the time. I might as well have been hired. So a producer one night Howard was sort of due to come and do an audio layover for some of the videotape they'd edited and Howard was the best at it, the absolute best. But the producer said, hey, you know, Howard's on his way. It was a Sunday night. I'll never forget it. He said, there's a bar on the corner. Can you go over there and get two martinis and describe them to me just perfectly? I didn't drink martini, so I had to take notes. And I went over there. It's not easy to convince a bartender to let you carry two martinis out of a bar. So anyway, yes, I had carried martinis out for him. But Jim, like you, Howard was a lawyer. And that made all the difference both in his, the way he saw the Muhammad Ali case with the draft dodging, et cetera, and the way he saw my case. He saw it as a lawyer would. And that's how I'm finally getting to portray it in my book because, you know, the men had the cameras, the men had the microphones, the men had the typewriters then. And their stories were about what was below the belt in men and above the bra strap in women. And that was it. That was it. Speaking of pioneers, so S.I. Sous, and sports illustrator Sous, and the case goes in front of the first black woman to hold a federal judgeship in a district court, Constance Baker, Motley. In the whole country. In the whole country. In the history of the country. Yeah. Well, she gets chosen because they spin the wooden box that's still at this mother court of our country. I remember that box. And a clerk pulls out the card from the available judges. I just want to add to that description of her being the first black woman judge in the country. This is the mother court of our country. The only one founded before the Supreme Court. Yet when I arrived, my case arrives in the end of 1977, beginning of '78, she is still the only woman judge who was ever served on that court. And through that process. Southern District in New York, right? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So spinning the box, the clerk pulling it out, there is her name. So I think that my lawyer certainly, you know, understood that and understood then how to use precedents that she had set in her cases, arguing the 14th Amendment cases for racial discrimination cases for her black climate clients as she had dismantled Jim Crow in education in the South. So for our standpoint, the legal arguments were strengthened by her knowledge and her precedent setting of them. From baseball, my understanding is, from reading now clips from the time and talking with people, I think they believed that because she was a black woman, they thought her decision would be potentially weak and that they would overturn it at the appellate level. But when three white male judges on the second circuit of the appellate court ruled three nothing and had nothing to say but compliments for her order and her decision in this case, that's when baseball dropped the case. I love it. I just love it. We're talking with Melissa Lucky. The book is "Lock a Room Talk, a Woman's Struggle to Get Inside." We're going to tell you about the events that she's going to be appearing at in just a couple of seconds. But so Roger Angel, the probably premier baseball writer I think for decades and a lot of people's minds anyway, wrote for the New Yorker, he wrote a piece talking about your case called "Sharing the Beat" that wound up getting you in a little post-suit trouble. What happened? Well, it did. Let me first say that when Roger Angel went to the famous editor Bill Sean and told him he wanted to write about women's sports writers, Bill Sean's answer to him is, "Be sure it's funny." Roger didn't answer him, and to his credit, Sean came back to him after sharing the beat was published in 1979 and said, "I'm sorry." He said, "Now I get it." But to your point, yes, I ended up in a squeeze play. I had just left CBS News where I had gone to thinking I wanted to move into TV with Walter Cronkite and the rest and found that it wasn't well-suited to me. So I'd actually tried to return to Sports Illustrated. They were very happy to have me until, coincidentally, that week Roger Angel's piece came out and they called me in for a meeting and they read a paragraph from it in which I was quoted as saying that I believe that Time Incorporated filed a suit because women had sued them earlier in the '70s in 1971 and they had to sign a conciliation agreement for gender discrimination. And then I said I didn't feel that the basic workings of the magazine had changed. And essentially, I was told, because I actually hadn't signed the official papers with the human resources, so they had me in the squeeze play, they told me that if I didn't recant what I said and refer to that in speeches that I was still giving or interviews that I was not welcome back. And so holding back tears, I left that office, got down the elevator as soon as I could. And when I got outside, I burst forth in just sobs and sobs of tears and walked home as though I had windshield wipers on my eyes. It was horrible. How has it changed for women in the sports-friting business in 2024? Well, I would say it's changed hugely and powerfully in favor of seeing women's bylines and not thinking twice about how they get their stories or the fact that they're writing these stories, but I would also caution us with that because when you look at something like what the AP did, the AP sports editors does a report every two years looking at diversity in newsrooms, and that includes now digital newsrooms and operations. And for the last two reports, they've given an F on gender diversity in sports. So what you're finding is that there are still maybe one or two women who sort of lasted out in newsrooms and stay with sports. What's interesting is there are a lot more women in sports journalism classes today. I'm observing that. It's why journalism professors from around the country are calling me and asking me to do zooms with their classes because they don't have a lot of materials that really speak to women's lives in this. And I'm delighted that they're asking me, I've been doing it for years. So your answer, it's complicated. Yeah. One of the things we do notice, and this is really to the good, is that women are off the sidelines and they're in the broadcast booth, and they're in it in powerful ways. They're doing play-by-play. They're doing commentary. And yes, on X, you'll see the usual tropes about get this woman off of my sport. I can't stand her voice, get her away. It's ruining the game for me. You still find that. But they're there, and the good news in baseball is that there is a heck of a bench coming along in minor league baseball where women are doing it. I mean, the sea dogs, the two women from there were just invited up to do the broadcast with the Fenway crew. Is it all women broadcast crew on the radio? Yes, it was. That's right. They're great. Oh, listen. So I mean, it's fabulous. So that's coming. Coming attractions. Thanks for listening to the Best of Boston Public Radio podcast from GPH. Our crew is Zoe Matthews, Aiden Conley, Nicole Garcia, Hannah Loss, our engineer is John "The Claw" Parker, our executive producer is Jamie Bologna. You want to hear the full show, download our full show podcast, or tune in to 89/7 GBH 11 to 2 each weekday. Today's episode was produced by Zoe Matthews. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)