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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We've been celebrating Women's History Month here on the show with our Thursday series highlighting women working in what are traditionally seen as male professions. We've talked to women in STEM jobs, women in skilled trades, women in constitutional law, and to wrap this series up, now we're going to use this opening day of the baseball season to talk about women in professional sports and sports journalism.

It wasn't until 1978 when Melissa Ludtke won her lawsuit against Major League Baseball over not being allowed into the Yankees locker room to cover the World Series that women reporters had the same access to players that men did. To hear about some of the challenges women faced and what it's like today, we're joined by Newsday sports columnist and features writer, Barbara Barker, whose Twitter bio says as a Newsday sports columnist and features writer and queen of New York NBA writers, she's been around so long. I covered the Knicks when they were really good and you were 10, hahaha. Hi, Barbara. Welcome back to WNYC.

Barbara Barker: Hey, Brian, great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: The Knicks are really good again.

Barbara Barker: I don't know if really good, but they're pretty good. They have a good coach and a good point guard, and that's huge.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we want to hear from you sports reporters, coaches, or players. Were you one of the few women in the room, locker room, or back office, or maybe the first girl on your local little league team? Are you working in sports or sports journalism now in any capacity? Tell us your story and who maybe you've looked up to as pioneers in the women in sports and sports journalism fields. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Barbara, I guess we'd say you were in the next wave after women were legally allowed in locker rooms as journalists, but maybe before they were welcomed. Give listeners a little bit of history. Tell us the lay of the land as you started your career in the 1980s for this Women's History Month.

Barbara Barker: Sure. I graduated from Northwestern in '85 and I started my career basically at about '86. At that time-- I feel very fortunate. I want to say that my career has spanned an incredible period of growth for women in this industry. I wasn't the first wave of people, but the way it worked back then, someone won a lawsuit. It takes a while for things to work out. Just like Title IX was 1972 but my high school didn't have equal number of teams till 1977 because the State of Ohio fought it where I grew up. It took the same amount of time, really it was up to each individual writer.

Here I am, I'm a 23-year-old, fresh out of school. I look now, I have a daughter who's 23. I can't imagine, I would never want to have to go through this. On an each individual basis, if I went to a professional team, I'd have to look around. There'd be no other women. I'd go to the PR person. I'm like, "Here to cover the team." I had a little bit of coaching, not a lot from my editor. Back then it was I'm either going in the locker room or you have to pull everybody out. It was equal access. There are teams that pulled everybody out. Especially in college sports. I covered UCLA and USC, and college sports was very big.

I was in California and UCLA didn't care, USC did care, Southern California. Notre Dame cared a lot. I had a very unfortunate experience at Notre Dame where a guy physically threw me against the door, that was working for them because… my editor got letters saying that I was some sort of pervert for wanting to go in there. It was really tough. It was up to each individual woman to enforce the fact that she was going in there. It was tough, it was very tough.

Brian Lehrer: Who gave you the most resistance? Was it other sports writers, male sports writers, or who would you say treated you the worst coming up?

Barbara Barker: I would say generally not the athletes. Baseball was rough early on. There were some athletes but it's generally other sports writers. There's a lot of people that are back then, I'm not saying now, who were attracted to being in sports because it was an all-male world, I do think. I think that now, looking back at the age I am, I didn't realize that at the time. There was a lot of resistance to that. My worst me-too moment I ever had was from a male sports writer, a baseball writer.

It was generally other sports writers but that being said, I had incredibly supportive friends, male friends who were sports writers. I still do all the way through. It's a mix of people but some people were very resistant. I had agents that-- Anthony Mason who used to play for the Knicks. I called his agent up and the agent said, "I don't believe women should be sports writers." I said to him, "Well, I don't know what I can do about that, but can you answer three questions?" Then he was really nice to me, and it was fine.

Brian Lehrer: You've been a beat reporter covering the NBA and the NFL, I see. Did you find big differences across sports?

Barbara Barker: The NBA and I think that's why I eventually did a lot of NBA. Hockey was also really good with women, but I haven't covered that much hockey, but the NBA from the top down -- I had a friend who had a problem with a player. The next morning, David Stern, who was the commissioner, called her and apologized. The general manager of the team called her and apologized, and then the player called her and apologized.

From the top down, the NBA was very welcoming to women reporters. It's also been the League of social justice and everything else. They were the easiest league to deal with. I'd say baseball is the toughest. You'd think it would be football. Football depends on who the coach is because football players generally will follow the leader. Nowadays, it's a completely different animal. It's really nothing that tough. People still have their underlying prejudices and sexist viewpoints, but it's not--

Brian Lehrer: Before we go to some phone calls, do you think there's a difference between print and broadcast for women? I don't know if you've worked in broadcast as well, but there's a story of Ines Sainz of TV Azteca, who was hassled at a Jets practice reportedly for how she presented herself, and yet-- Well, you tell me, print and broadcast, different kinds of challenges?

Barbara Barker: It's a different kind of challenge, and it's really changed. It's odd enough that a lot of doors have opened up. That story is a couple of years ago, and women were really judged for what they wore. Now women have to dress. Dressing for success today is completely different than dressing for success before. Women are supposed to, on TV, look attractive and look sexy.

That's fine. That's just a part of the landscape, but there are plenty of women that look that way, that are incredible at their jobs, and it's a strange thing. When I came in, there were no women. There really weren't any women in sports broadcasting except for a handful of ex-players till about, I want to say 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 20 years ago, about the turn of the century.

At the turn of the century, things started opening up just a little, and then they exploded because a lot of teams wanted to have a woman on the sidelines, and that was a door opener to other areas. You look at Malika Andrews, who is 28 years old, is incredible at her job. She is on the NBA's biggest show. She started off at ESPN. She's also a print journalist but there's just a lot of younger people. A lot of doors have opened because of TV for women and it's incredible.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, listeners, we're talking about women in professional sports and professional sports journalism as part of our Women's History Month series on women working in traditionally male professions. Our guest is Newsday sports columnist and features writer, Barbara Barker, who's been at it since the '80s. We're inviting your calls on being a first or near a first in this field or who you've looked up to if you're younger and coming into it and actually have role models who were women in pro sports or sports journalism, 212-433 WNYC. Maureen in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maureen. Oh, did I get that wrong? Is it Manhattan? Our computer is messing up. We're going to have to fire the computers and rely on human beings. Is it Mary in Manhattan? Sorry. This is all the fault of our system. I think people don't know which caller I'm talking to. How about Trudy in Princeton? Trudy, is that you?

Trudy in Princeton: Here I am.

Brian Lehrer: Hi.

Trudy in Princeton: Hi, Brian. I have a little different experience. I'm 80 years old now, but back when I was 50, the league that the movie A League of Their Own was about, was started again. I was living in Michigan at the time. I have always been a lover of baseball. A friend of mine's husband started one of the teams again and we played with teams in the Midwest, Chicago, and so forth. We got an opportunity to go to Abner Doubleday field where the Hall of Fame is. I played in the first women's nine-inning game there.

Barbara Barker: Wow. That's so cool.

Trudy in Princeton: Yes, it was incredible.

Brian Lehrer: Barbara, did you want to ask Trudy something?

Barbara Barker: Trudy, I think that's an amazing story. When was that? When was it then that you played there? What year was that?

Trudy in Princeton: It was exactly 30 years ago. What would that be?

Barbara Barker: '90s. I'm bad with Math. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: '93.

Trudy in Princeton: Yes, '93. The thing that was incredible was that there were a lot of women that were really good players that had been softball players. I hadn't had any opportunities because I was 50 years old. When I was in high school and middle school, we were still playing basketball with three people on each side of the court.

Barbara Barker: Where did you go to high school? Did you go to high school in Michigan then? [crosstalk]

Trudy in Princeton: I was in Princeton, New Jersey.

Barbara Barker: It's amazing.

Trudy in Princeton: It was an incredible opportunity.

Brian Lehrer: Trudy, thank you. Thank you so much for your call. That's a great story, Barbara. What do you think as someone who covers sports about the fact that softball has become the women's game while baseball remains the men's game? Is that good, bad, or neutral?

Barbara Barker: Well, maybe this is not a popular opinion for people who play softball, but I think it's bad. I liked baseball when I was a kid. Well, they didn't even have-- when I was a kid, my junior year in high school, they added a softball team for Title IX. I was the starting pitcher, which was terrible just because I played around with my brother. We did not have softball leagues for little kids.

There was none of this stuff that everybody has now. That's what makes it so great. Title IX is dipped down to six-year-olds where fathers are cheering on their six-year-old kids where they have some training going through. Now, the whole softball thing, it harks back. I don't like the fact that in the US Open, women and men play a different amount of sets. I think a lot of women don't like it either. I think it just harks back to a time where women were supposed to be weaker. That being said, softball is an interesting game. It's not the same as baseball though.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that co-ed pro sports can or should be a goal? We hear about the occasional woman who plays in the minor leagues in baseball. I'm not sure about other sports. No one's made it to the majors. Should we care about that or do women's and men's leagues make ongoing sense for any reason being separate?

Barbara Barker: I think they mostly make sense being separate. When I always have this argument with people, people will say-- I get call or email and stuff all the time from people saying, "Well, when the best player in the WNBA can play for the NBA, then I'll start watching the WNBA." I mean, we watch college basketball all the time, and I know the NCAA tournament is so exciting only because it's single elimination.

I've watched some of it, some of the worst basketball I've ever seen. I mean, on a skill level, it's terrible. I mean, but it's exciting because of the heart, the soul. These people are competing against each other. I mean, I don't see why we cheer for college, which is definitely not at the same level as the pros. I mean, why can't we cheer for women which is a different league, which there's big inroads being made there? This whole comparison of people having to be exactly the same, I don't get.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, UConn Women, even though not this year.

Barbara Barker: Not this year.

Brian Lehrer: Helene in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Helene.

Helene: Hi there. How are you? I was one of the only women on a television crew back in 1979, 1980. I did audio and I worked with only men pretty much who were on television crews at the time. I can remember early on we were working, I believe it was with Marv Albert, and we had to get into the Ranger's hockey room, and we just went in with him. Nobody really said anything to me.

I can remember being in the room and the men were looking at me and they were all walking around. Some of them just dropped their towels in front of me. It was crazy. It was at the time when there were very few women doing any technical reporting at all. I think there was one photographer, actually Sarah Krulwich for The New York Times, who was doing photography. There were almost zero women doing camera work or audio work in technical crews out on the streets in New York City. It was an interesting time. [laughs]

Barbara Barker: It's so amazing that you did that. The fact that you went into the locker room, I mean, that's really what was the hardest part is not so much, I mean, you go in a locker room nowadays, nobody's naked or maybe once in a while. I mean, it is not even an issue. Back then, I mean, it was for me as a reporter, I didn't realize how much energy it took me to have to do that.

All right. I sometimes think it was a gatekeeping device, but as a reporter, you can't argue for less access, all right. When you cover the Supreme Court and they make a major decision, do you then go in where the judges are taking off their robes? I mean, it's just the strangest custom ever, but it is what it is.

Helene: It was interesting. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Helene: It didn't really bother me one way or the other but I have to say, I think our cover was because it was more of Albert. Marv led the way. I just followed, and nobody really even said anything. I'm not quite sure if anyone even noticed. It certainly wasn't a big deal. One of the men, I think it was Esposito, he just dropped his towel. He was like, "Oh, my God." He was like because they're all walking around with the towels around their waist.

Brian Lehrer:: That's so gross.

Helene: Well, I was just nothing I hadn't seen before. [crosstalk] That's just the way it was.

Brian Lehrer: I think maybe we should leave it there. Helene, thank you very much. Funny enough on that point, a couple of guys have called in with a version of the question, are men allowed in women's locker rooms?

Barbara Barker: Oh, this is my favorite question. All right. Yes, they certainly are. They're allowed in the WNBA locker room. Curiously enough, there's never anybody naked in the WNBA locker room. You don't have to be naked. The locker rooms, the way they're set up nowadays is nobody even gets -- well in a visiting locker room, it's a little difficult -- but I mean, it's your choice. It's more like an office interview area with lockers. All right. Nobody comes and sits by their locker unless they really want to talk to a reporter. All right. I mean, most of the time there's other rooms where there's TV, there's food. There's a million other things to do other than sit by your locker. All right.

Brian Lehrer: That's good to clarify that. How about before you go for management, the NFL I saw announced a rule about a year ago that all teams had to hire a "female or a member of an ethnic or racial minority" as an offensive assistant. The league would fund the position to improve the pipeline. The NFL seems to see a problem with the dearth of women in leadership roles.

Barbara Barker: I think everybody does at this point. That's doing a little something about it. I mean, it's oddly enough. I mean, you pick a team like the Yankees, the Yankees for years, put women into leadership roles and not just-- Usually across the board most teams what they do is the VP of Marketing might be a woman. That's the most logical job at the VP level that gets it. In a lot of operations, there weren't too many women.

Well, now you have the Marlins, their general manager is Kim Ng. She came through the Yankees. Well, she came through a bunch of other places. You have people knocking at their door. Well, she broke the glass ceiling, but you have people knocking at their door. You have women coaching in the NBA. Is a system. I think it's just the pipeline is important, and it's going to take some time. I think it's taken a little too long, but that's where it is.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we will have to leave it there. Barbara Barker is a sports columnist and feature writer at Newsday, as we've been talking about, on this last edition of our Women's History Month series on women breaking into traditionally male field some of the history of herself and others, breaking into pro sports and sports journalism. Barbara, thanks for this. This is great. Always great to have you on. Congratulations on your career to this point. Great to read you on Newsday. Happy Opening Day. The Yankees and the Giants are going to have to play in wind chills in the 30s in the Bronx this afternoon.

Barbara Barker: I’ve been to enough opening days to be so happy I'm not there today. [laughs].  I mean it’s freezing.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for coming on.

Barbara Barker: Okay. All right. Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, more to come.

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