Meet Sportswriting Pioneer Melissa Ludtke (and read her new book, Locker Room Talk)

Pastrami a go-go and Other Rye Tales #32

Thanks to Melissa Ludtke, I and many other women were allowed equal access into the New York Yankees and other baseball locker rooms.

Let me first say that locker rooms are far more sophisticated than the high school gym locker rooms that many of us remember. Who recalls changing into polyester gym uniforms in front of each other, the clanging of metal lockers closing and combination lockers clicking as we headed to basketball, track, archery, and other sports. As teenagers, we pretended not to look at each other and anyone shy would scurry off to change in the privacy of bathroom stalls.

In baseball locker rooms and with other professional sports teams, players face the media before and after every game and the changing areas are far more sophisticated. Players come out dressed in something. In the years that I covered the Yankees and Mets, players had towels, street clothes, or uniform pants on. This wasn’t a show. It was business.

Melissa’s lawsuit enabled me to be on equal footing with my male colleagues when I reported for El Diario-La Prensa and other publications. If I didn’t have that same access, then I wouldn’t have been hired and would not have been able to produce the stories that I did.

I owe Melissa Ludtke a debt of gratitude for taking on Major League Baseball, a formidable opponent, and opening the doors for generations of women. And now, she’s written a book about her lawsuit, her life, her career, her impact, her legacy.

From Melissa Ludtke's Impact on Sports Journalism Continues

When Melissa Ludtke isn't rowing on the Charles River in Boston, she's reserving flights, booking Amtrak seats and toting bags of her books around the country.

Ludtke, 73, arranges her own appearances in bookstores and speaking engagements for her absorbing book "Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside."

She was 26, a reporter for Sports Illustrated in 1977 and the only woman in the country reporting baseball on a full-time basis. A few women covered basketball and hockey for newspapers and magazines with access to locker rooms for interviews. But not baseball.

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