Melissa Ludtke, "Locker Room Talk" | Part 2, SportsLit S8E14 fan notes
Relying on a near half-century of deep research and reflection, Melissa Ludtke further recounts effects on her landmark U.S. federal case in “Locker Room Talk.”
(These are companion notes to a new episode of SportsLit, available wherever you get your favorite podcasts. All 78 episodes are catalogued at sportslit.ca.
(Part One of the notes is published more-or-less simultaneously.)
Let’s pick up right where we left off!
41:50 Per Locker Room Talk, in that first TV interview, after her lawsuit was filed, Jane Pauley asked Ludtke, “Now, why did you say that” — about a photo of a bare-torsoed Reggie Jackson — “lest we create the impression that you are after all leering at athletic bodies?” at the very end of a Jan. 4, 1978 live Today Show interview. Ambush question!
Five days later, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Red Smith took cheap shots at Ludtke in his syndicated column. Six days after that, Howard Cosell (a one-time practising lawyer) took it much more gravely on Super Bowl Sunday.
Digression: That Super Bowl 12 from 1978 (Dallas 27, Denver 10) has some pop-culture stickiness. Both relate to works by Mike Judge. The final touchdown was the first passing score thrown by a running back, from Dallas’ Robert Newhouse to Golden Richards. Richards is referenced in the King of the Hill episode “A Beer Can Named Desire.”
Newhouse’s name is also used for a small role in Office Space. It is the name of the personal injury lawyer who gets Tom Smykowski — the “I have people skills!!” guy — a huge settlement after he is mangled by an impaired driver.
A holds-up-great account of the 1977 Denver team is Woody Paige’s book Orange Madness: The Incredible Odyssey of the Denver Broncos, published in 1978. Okay, end of digression.
45:00 This part about Ludtke’s family is the craw-sticker with Kuhn lashing out at female sportswriters ’cause baseball was a “family game.” Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, bonded over baseball since the get-go.
I had to check on the three-game sweep the Red Sox took from the Yankees at the end of May 1951, which excited Ludtke’s grandfather as much as the arrival of a granddaughter. In the finale, the Yankees led until the seventh. A two-out error by Jerry Coleman opened the door for Ted Williams to rip a game-tying RBI double, followed by three run-scoring hits that blew open the Bosox’ 9-4 win.
Of course, the Yankees won the league pennant and World Series for the third consecutive year. That brought a nice World Series cheque for Johnny Mize, whose biographer Jerry Grillo was here two episodes ago. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra earned the first of his three Most Valuable Player awards — and, of course, his daughter Lindsay Berra became a sportswriter.
53:00 “Imagine the word ‘stationary forward’ in a basketball game.” It was essential to have Melissa share the dreariness of 6-on-6 basketball. Talk about an abrogation of James Naismith’s invention. Basketball is this beautiful bit of exercise that should flow, not stop and start like grid football.
In that era, when my mother was an athletic teenager in southeastern Ontario, the 880-yard run was longest track race for girls.
Sarah Spain and Jane McManus, several months ago, nailed what was going on with the limits placed on female athleticism.
Jump to the 2023-24 D1 college basketball season. Four women’s and six men’s teams averaged at least 85 points. Caitlin Clark and Iowa hooped 91.0 per, and Alabama’s 90.1 average led the men’s division.
59:00 When Billie Beat Bobby (2001, Holly Hunter and Ron Silver) is better than the higher-seeded, higher-budgeted Battle of the Sexes (2017, Emma Stone, Steve Carell). The TV movie pulls the upset: 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-3.
1:00:00 This is just a great anecdote about how Ludtke impressed Sports Illustrated. Henry Longhurst (1909-1978) was a golf writer who commentated for ABC, CBS, and the BBC.
Ludtke’s S.I. predecessor, Stephanie Salter, is now in the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. She became “a revered, ultra-liberal columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and post-merger Chronicle.”
1:07:00 So the baseball Establishment thought “separate but equal” was a good play two decades after Brown v. Board of Education. Surprising? Ehm, no. Author Thom Hartmann recently shared about the racist counter-programming post-Brown.
1:09:00 As of 2024, Mickey Morabito remains director of team travel for the wandering Oakland Athletics. He started there in 1980 when manager Billy Martin brought him there “mostly to save him from George (Steinbrenner).”
1:12:00 Diane K. Shah became the first female sports columnist at a major U.S. daily with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1981. Her legendary burn on Hall of Fame lefty pitcher Steve Carlton over his “ongoing silent war with the media” shines on.
1:13:00 Another reason why Tommy John belongs in Cooperstown.
1:25:00 Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority is the case Schwarz cited while counsel for Ludtke. It’s wild their precedent was a case where that Justice Constance Baker Motley argued successfully, and it was random.
1:33:30 RELAY Coffee Roasters (27 King William St.) is the café whose name slipped my tongue.
1:34:00 Put it on your list: Ludtke mentions Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Pantheon Books, January 2022). Motley’s track record with civil rights cases, described by Brown-Nagin, speaks volumes about how a judge functions.
It falls into that critical thinking everyone purports to want. And, of course, it flies in the face of some of the decisions by the Republican majority on the politicized United States Supreme Court. The sniffling symptoms of ideology-before-good judgment are creeping into Canada, with oligopoly bootlicks such as Ontario Premier Doug Ford stating a desire to have “like-minded judges.”1
Judges must be on a separate plane from party politics. Verily, all of us should do politics outside the creaky cronyism of party structures.
1:39:30 “It’s clear I lost this case in the court of public opinion; there’s no question.” It is hard to fathom how there was so much commentary in 1978 on Ludtke v. Kuhn but no one came to the courthouse.
I envy journalists who honed their ‘ocular block’ to cover courts, such as The Legendary Chris Thomas.2 They synthesize facts and arguments from both sides’ counsel and reathe judge, jurors, counsels and witnesses, and get it all turned in far enough from deadline for the media corp’s lawyer to pick over. That takes talents aplenty, and they have redeeming social value.
1:43:30 When Alison Gordon died in 2015, the first quote in her Toronto Star obit was from my childhood favourite Blue Jays player, centrefielder Lloyd Moseby: “A lot of women that are in the profession right now should be very thankful for what Alison did and what she went through. She took a beating from the guys. She was a pioneer for sure.”
Red Smith: ‘Reggie In The Buff’
1:55:00 Hindsight is 20/20, but 1978-vintage media fixating on the anatomy of one Reginald Martinez Jackson is so cringe. Red Smith, who was from Green Bay, Wisconsin, was a real dumbass, to quote his same-home-state fictional namesake.3
The pain within Jackson was much better story fodder. The legendary slugger brought all that to the fore in front of a big TV audience at MLB’s Celebration of the Negro Leagues game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., in June:
1:56:00 I made it 116 minutes without overdoing TV comedy tie-ins. The Michael Schur quote is sourced from an interview he did with David Larkins, who is now a top athletic department staffer at the U of Winnipeg. It might not be online.
Let that one marinate is a recurring phrase in Letterkenny, not Shoresy! Internal monologue: Nice execution, Sags. Yer doin’ terrific.
1:56:35 I learned a bit of what Jackson endured in Birmingham in 1967 via a paperback of his autobiography, Reggie, that was in the library at early-1990s Ernestown Secondary School.
Having those titles available at a rural public high school was invaluable for my younger self. I was middle class, but lived ‘out in the sticks,’ so cycling or walking to a public library branch was not always convenient.
So it bothers me that the Oligopolies Privatize Corruptario kleptocrats and Ford, their designated blitherer, eliminated protected funding for school libraries and library staff. This is a denial of resources to communities meant to slow-walk us to the Huxleyian dystopia where books are not banned, since no one feels they have time or desire to read for pleasure and perspective.
What else can I say about the obvious anti-intellectualism or slighting of public education? Reading for pleasure is a social obligation; never mind the passive resistance piece. Protect public and school libraries at all costs.
Note: I wrote this on Aug. 15. The next morning, Ontario no longer had an education minister.
The Hon. Todd Smith quit after only 10 weeks without ever taking a question in the legislature about the education file. The statement under the new of the name minister did not mention teachers or educational assistants. No worries; that is not sour grapes after the province paid out to teachers and other public employees after their wage-theft legislation was struck down in arbitration.4
At least those of us in Ontario can go double-fist White Claws in 7-Eleven after getting an MRI from a veterinary hospital, eh? Again, pardon the digression.
1:57:00 “Was that my name, Roger?” I will not flatter my ability to score a baseball game by drawing a comp with Roger Angell (1920-2022).
I just had to ask Ludtke about any tricks that Angell had for the ritual of scoring a game.
Serving the Hamilton baseball community by scoring and running the scoreboard at the IBL Cardinals’ home games is pure Seamhead bliss. Lefthandedness is finally an asset for someone who loves baseball, but was never had the territorial imperative to take up pitching. Up in the booth, I use my right hand to operate the scoreboard. I use my left to input pitches and plays into the live-scoring system, and alt-tabs between YouTube streams to update the league’s scoreboard page.
There are no bad days at a ballyard, even when it pours rain
2:04:00 We could have talked another hour! Ludtke was due to put paddles in the water and I had to skedaddle to a Guelph Royals-Cardinals fixture.
As she says, rowing in the Head of the Charles Regatta with Community Rowing was a bucket list item for her. And given that Baseball Bucket List brought her book to SportsLit’s attention, that’s a great endpoint.
2:08:00 What Ludtke says about “bad decisions” she made in her 20s is covered candidly in Locker Room Talk. The upshot is it keeps more meat on the bone for listeners who will read her entire text.
Again, Ludtke’s Let’s Row Together will have updates on where she is touring the book through the late summer and autumn, and who she does events with.
Relatedly on SportsLit
In the spring, Sportsnet Connected anchor Evanka Osmak appeared to discuss her début children’s book, Ali Hoops.
In late 2022, British scribe Suzy Wrack was on to discuss A Women’s Game: The Rise, Fall, And Rise Again of Women’s Football.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
June 17-Sept. 16, 2024
Hamilton, Ont., on traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas; Bath-Odessa-Amherstview-Storms Corners, Ont.
See Jessica Smith-Cross, “Retiring judge takes jab at Doug Ford's 'like-minded' remark,” Barrie News, May 14, 2024.
Christopher J. Thomas, 1946-2022; Simcoe Reformer, 1971-2006; Delhi News-Record, 1969-71. If you Norfolk, you know, folks.
It would hurt the if I put a reference to a certain sitcom franchise, that is a bigger letdown than most Toronto sports teams, in the body of the post. Obviously, this is a reference to Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith) in That ’70s Show and That ’90s Show. SKOL Vikings!
That was Bill 124. It limited many public employees, particularly healthcare workers and education workers in feminized fields, to a 1-per-cent annual raise — which is a mandated paycut as long as the inflation rate stays about 1 per cent. Tellingly, police officers were not subject to state-sanctioned wage thieving, since police uphold the status quo.
(Neate, sit down.)