Sports Biblio Digest, 6.9.19: The Puzzling Odyssey of Women's Soccer
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: Fernando Valenzuela; Negro Leagues D-Day Veterans; The Revival of Ash Barty; The Master of Basketball’s SOS Defense; Tom Terrific Trademark Tussle; The Tyranny of Dodgeball; The Wounding of Eddie Waitkus; Remembering Marc Okkonen
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In the 20 years since the U.S. women’s soccer team electrified a nation and carried the hopes of its sport forward with a championship in the Women’s World Cup, the game that women play has made enormous strides.
As a new Women’s World Cup kicked off Friday in France, it was in an expanded format with an all-time-high 24 teams. In addition to the defending champions from the U.S., the hosts are on a short list of other favorites, and across the channel, England is ascendant.
More television and media coverage than ever, along with a record purse of $30 million, are other features of what’s easily the biggest global sporting event for women.
This is part of the legacy of the ‘99ers—the American contingent of Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy and company—whom then-FIFA boss Sepp Blatter notably lauded as he proclaimed that “the future of football is feminine.”
His words would ring hollow, of course, as would most everything about his toxic regime as it came down amid a massive corruption probe that ousted him and sent soccer’s global governing body reeling.
For so much of the last three or four decades—as the women’s game began to emerge from its invisible past of outright bans to willful neglect—FIFA has proven to be an especially poor steward of the game.
It rakes in billions at the elite levels of the sport, mostly from the men’s World Cup, and does little to reinvigorate the game, in the poverty-stricken world and for the female grassroots.
So when FIFA announced on the eve of the Women’s World Cup it would be “investing” $500 million in the women’s game over the next four years, there weren’t many accompanying cartwheels.
Many in women’s soccer have been begging for such funding, along with greater female representation in the mostly-male FIFA hierarchy, for many years.
While I wouldn’t spurn such a serious infusion of cash, the lasting emotional commitment remains to be seen.
FIFA was scrambling to fix a ticket fiasco as the tournament unfolded, and it’s come under fire from the usual overblown corners of feminist whining.
Some people’s sexism is other people’s indifference, which is what the South American and North and Central American and Carribean associations have been accused of for allowing the Copa America final and Gold Cup final to take place on the same day as the Women’s World Cup final.
Not surprisingly, The New York Times takes the bait of those chuffed that the women won’t get this day all to themselves:
“‘It is very disappointing,’ United States midfielder Megan Rapinoe said. ‘Ridiculous and disappointing.’ Her coach, Jill Ellis, said that ‘playing three big matches in one day is not supporting the women’s game.’”
They’re conveniently ignoring the fact that they do get an exclusive time slot at the start of what should be a marvelous day for soccer in the Western Hemisphere.
This has been one of the more unappetizing byproducts of the growth of the women’s game—that the rest of the world’s biggest sport must somehow come to a halt so the distaff side can get what it deserves.
After all, that’s what the men get at their showcase. But for the players from the U.S., Australian, Spanish and other national teams currently demanding better salaries and benefits, the cold hard reality that their World Cup doesn’t come close to generating the revenues or television audiences is overlooked.
Sexism is the usual suspect, or a lack of investment, but the relative underdevelopment of the game worldwide to the men is a persistent culprit. If it weren’t for Bob Marley’s daughter, the Jamaican Reggae Girlz, who play the French today, may not have made it to France.
So much of that is due to culture, and in so many corners around the world women are deemed unworthy not just of playing sports, but of deserving any true sense of greater equality in their larger societies.
There’s not much that FIFA, for its many faults, can do about that. It’s important to keep in mind that the Women’s World Cup didn’t begin until 1991, and that we’re only about a generation or so into building women’s team sports as spectator sports.
More decades will be needed to continue that progress, including the nations where the women’s game is strong.
For those who’ve been spoiled by being treated to excellent women’s soccer for a couple of decades now, these next few weeks in France should be a real treat (minus the world’s best player, who’s sitting out for complicated reasons that aren’t clear to many).
They should also keep us mindful that the real revolutionary payoff for this sport may come when we least expect it, and in non-dramatic, rather gradual ways.
A Few Good Reads
At The Kansas City Star, Vahe Gregorian writes about Negro Leagues legends who also have another distinction: Serving in segregated military ranks during World War II without the fanfare of their Major League brethren. This week during the 75th D-Day observances, Willard Brown and Leon Day were recognized for their service on the day Allied troops invaded Normandy;
From Los Angeles magazine, Jason Turbow on the rookie pitcher from Mexico who led off the strike-altered season of 1981, in which the Dodgers netted a World Series championship and the phenomenon of Fernandomania was born, an excerpt from “They Bled Blue,” published this week;
Clubs in the English Premier League, League One and League Two will be required to interview at least one black, Asian and other minority ethnic candidate when they have managerial openings, in what’s being called Britain’s Rooney Rule. Only four minorities managed teams in England’s 92 soccer clubs in the top four divisions this past season;
New French Open women’s singles champion Ash Barty almost gave up the sport as a teenager, and took a break to go fishing and take up cricket. From 2017, Konrad Marshall writes in the Sydney Morning Herald how that sabbatical revived her passion for the game. Barty, now 21, rose from being ranked No. 325 in the world in 2016 to become the first Australian woman since Margaret Court in 1973 to prevail at Roland Garros;
The reigning WNBA champion Seattle Storm has been devastated by injuries to stars Breanna Stewart and Sue Bird, and coach Dan Hughes has been sidelined with cancer treatment. In his stead is longtime league assistant Gary Kloppenburg, who’s being aided his 91-year-old father Bob. He’s the patriarch of a coaching family that includes his granddaughter Carlotta, a women’s assistant at San Jose State. The former Sonics assistant is the architect of an “SOS” pressure defense that’s been used at virtually every significant level of basketball there is;
Tom Brady is applying for the “Tom Terrific” trademark, which caused quite a backlash among Mets fans of the pitching great Tom Seaver, as well as former teammates, including Ed Kranepool. In response, the Patriots QB said he isn’t planning on using the trademark to sell gear, but to prevent others from doing so. A Boston University law professor who admits to being a big Brady and Pats fan concludes that he fumbled this one, big time;
It doesn’t get more ridiculous than this: A tiny handful of educational theorists has concluded that dodgeball—yes, dodgeball—reinforces what they call “the five faces of oppression.” Those would be marginalization, powerlessness, helplessness of those perceived as weaker individuals through the exercise of violence, exploitation and cultural domination. I can only imagine what they’d make of Red Rover, another classic of the elementary school recess period, as I ponder my supposedly vanquished youth.
Baseball’s Stalking Annie Oakley
Sports Biblio reader and retired Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bill Christine wrote in after last week’s newsletter lead about Bill Buckner to recall another baseball player known for a single unfortunate incident.
Eddie Waitkus was a first baseman in the 1940s and 1950s who played for the Cubs, Phillies and Orioles and also appeared in two All-Star games. His claim to infamy was totally off the field. On June 14, 1949, Waitkus was shot at a Chicago hotel by a 19-year-old woman named Ruth Ann Steinhagen, who was infatuated with the engaged then-Phillies slugger.
The incident was recreated in novel and film form, with Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs character “at the wrong end of Barbara Hershey’s pistol” as the disturbed Harriet Bird in “The Natural,” but I’ll let Bill fill in the rest of how he came to the story:
“I read a copy of Steinhagen's psychiatric report and she said that if she couldn't get to Waitkus, her second choice was shooting Harry 'Peanuts’ Lowrey. I ran into Lowrey one day, when he had become a big-league coach, and told him the story. He was flabbergasted. He had never known. Then he told me where he was the day he heard on the radio that Waitkus had been shot.
“Many years ago, I was in Albany, New York, doing a story on the Yankee farm club, managed by Buck Showalter. The team was something like 50-3 at the time, and threatening to break all minor-league records. Their pitching coach was Russ ‘Monk’ or ‘Rowdy’ Meyer, who was Waitkus' roommate at the Edgewater Beach. Meyer told me that he wasn't around the night Waitkus was shot because he was engaged to a woman from Elgin, Illinois, and had gone out with his fiancee and her parents.
“When Waitkus died, I wrote a column about him for the Chicago Daily News. I threw in a reference to an old, bawdy joke as an analogy, and there was much discussion among the editors whether to leave that part in. I didn't tell the whole joke, but there were editors who thought that enough people would still know the off-color punch line to make it offensive. The verdict, by a close vote, was to leave in what I had written, without the punch line. There were no letters complaining, but maybe that was because few people read my column. (It's a joke about an internationally famous architect who built dozens of buildings, but complained that he was never called a famous architect--he committed just one social indiscretion and was forever referred to by the three-syllable gutter expression for that).”
Here’s a 1989 story about this by Christine, adding more color to Steinhagen’s obsession with Waitkus. After shooting him once in the chest with a .22-caliber rifle, she ran out in the hallway and shouted out what she had done, likely saving his life. The bullet went through a lung and was lodged near his spine, and Waitkus needed six operations before he could begin recovering.
Steinhagen never went on trial but spent some time in a mental institution, living quietly without incident until her death in 2012. Waitkus played for the Phillies’ Whiz Kids World Series team in 1950 and died of cancer in 1972. There’s also a 2006 biography of Waitkus and this excerpt by Rich Cohen in Sports Illustrated of his Cubs’ history of ignominy.
Passings
Marc Okkonen, 85, author of several baseball books, earned the prestigious Harry Chadwick Award from the Society for American Baseball Research. A native of Michigan, he made his living as a public relations consultant and was a freelance artist. In 1991 he published “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century,” which has been designated an official book of Major League Baseball. His other books include the first history of the Federal League and another volume on players with very short big-league careers. A nice remembrance can be found at the SABR website, with more links about Okkonen’s work and his legacy.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 169, published June 9, 2019.
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