How Baseball Shaped My Life and Taught Me Important Lessons

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My mother walked down the hall of our small apartment and poked
her head into the living room. It was 10:30 p.m. on a weeknight.
She looked at me and said, “Go to bed soon.” But she knew better.
She knew I’d be up for the next three hours until 1:30 a.m.,
watching my New York Yankees play a California team on the West
Coast. I watched every single Yankees game that summer because it
was the only way I could get through the sudden loss of my
beloved father, who died from a massive heart attack on the
Fourth of July.

I was only 13 when he died, about to enter high school. We used
to watch the Yankees together. He was my everything, the WWII
Army veteran who started all the youth sports teams in my tiny
New Jersey town, giving me a lifelong love of sports. If he
played catch with my older brother, Ed, Dad made sure to include
his little girl as well. When Dad coached Little League, he
brought me along, and I sat in the dugout with the boys.

Mom, who was only 40 and painfully mourning the death of her
husband, was so worried that her daughter was holding in her
grief that she let me stay up to those wee hours. She even took
me into the Bronx to the historic and fabled Yankees Stadium
later that summer for a game, hoping to cheer me up.

Baseball had become part of my life — not like a boy growing up
playing the game (because there were few female sports back
then). But baseball became a constant thread for me in other
ways.
In high school I kept score for my team, which I greatly enjoyed
because I had to go into the dugout of the opposing team to get
their players’ names. (As a teenage girl, I was also checking out
the cute boys.)

After college as I began my journalism career, I admired the
sports photographers who worked at the newspaper I was working
for. I bought a Canon camera, and in my free time, I’d use my
press pass to get into big sporting events. I snapped photos of
Björn Borg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, who were playing in
the Masters Tennis Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

One spring, I flew to Fort Lauderdale to attend Yankees’ spring
training. With my press pass, I got on-field access as I
practiced taking photos of the players. I was noticed by one of
them — superstar slugger Reggie Jackson — because I stood out
since there were no female sports photographers back then. Reggie
would walk over to me in between innings and chat, talking about
the team and himself, and asking me about my career. He was very
nice.

But it was that weekend where I got one of my first harsh lessons
in racism. The Yankees had an exhibition game at a Miami stadium.
Once again, Reggie came and chatted with me. But when he walked
away, several angry men, their faces red with rage, came down
from the stands and yelled at me from outside the fence, saying
“What did that Black bastard say to you?” “Why is that (n-word)
talking to you?”

Reggie saw and heard them and told me he faced this type of
racism and worse everywhere he went. Just last year, when Reggie
was at an MLB tribute game to the Negro League in Alabama, he
recalled not being allowed into restaurants and hotels when he
first started playing because he was Black. He called it a
painful time.

As for me, I faced sexism when I returned home. My dream of
becoming one of the first female sports photographers ended
because whenever I entered the darkroom to develop my photos,
those male photographers I admired would pin me against the wall
and try to kiss me. I could never go back.

Yes, there were fun times when the Yankees won the World Series,
even though I couldn’t go to the parade with my friends because I
had to work. But being the enterprising reporter I was, I knew
that a lot of the players lived in New Jersey and hung out at a
certain bar inside a nearby hotel. I drove over to that hotel and
sure enough, a chartered bus was parked there waiting to drive
the players to the parade. I boldly stepped right onto that bus
with my camera and snapped away at the unfazed players. (Not sure
I could get away with that today.)

Ironically, baseball would end up giving me the biggest regret of
my life.

My boyfriend invited me to a World Series game, but I stupidly
turned it down because I had to work that night. I was a
part-time stringer for a daily newspaper and wanted to make a
good impression. That night, my pal Reggie Jackson made baseball
history by hitting three home runs on the first pitch each time —
winning the World Series for the Yankees. It’s been called one of
the top 20 moments in baseball by sportswriters. My boss told me
the next morning he of course would have let me go, and it taught
me an important life lesson. Ever since, I vowed to never to pass
on an opportunity like that again.

I recently spent a weekend exploring Chicago with my two best
friends Brenda and Sue. It’s almost mandatory when you go to
Chicago to go to a Cubs game and visit historic Wrigley Field,
with its ivy-covered walls and vintage scoreboard that’s changed
by hand. We did, drinking beer and eating a Chicago dog topped
with bright green relish and a tomato! This month, I can’t wait
to be in the baseball stands again to see the A’s in Sacramento.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get lucky and see them play against the
Yankees.  

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