How a battle for locker-room access was about so much more

Posted October 28, 2024 at 12:20pm

Sports and politics don’t mix. In truth, that has never been the case. Sports, in fact, reflect every issue, every conflict in society from civil rights to equal justice.

Melissa Ludtke knows this from experience. In the 1970s, when she was trying to cover Major League Baseball for Sports Illustrated, her path to doing the job — which required equal access to the players — was blocked by a powerful and inflexible commissioner. The battle mirrored America’s burgeoning women’s movement, and ultimately ended up in federal court, presided over by a judge with her own civil rights experience. Ludtke tells the story in “Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside,” and on this episode of Equal Time.