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My mother walked down the hall of our small apartment and poked her head into the living room. It was 10:30 p.m. on a weeknight. She looked at me and said, “Go to bed soon.” But she knew better. She knew I’d be up for the next three hours until 1:30 a.m., watching my New York Yankees play a California team on the West Coast. I watched every single Yankees game that summer because it was the only way I could get through the sudden loss of my beloved father, who died from a massive heart attack on the Fourth of July.

I was only 13 when he died, about to enter high school. We used to watch the Yankees together. He was my everything, the WWII Army veteran who started all the youth sports teams in my tiny New Jersey town, giving me a lifelong love of sports. If he played catch with my older brother, Ed, Dad made sure to include his little girl as well. When Dad coached Little League, he brought me along, and I sat in the dugout with the boys.

Mom, who was only 40 and painfully mourning the death of her husband, was so worried that her daughter was holding in her grief that she let me stay up to those wee hours. She even took me into the Bronx to the historic and fabled Yankees Stadium later that summer for a game, hoping to cheer me up.

Baseball had become part of my life — not like a boy growing up playing the game (because there were few female sports back then). But baseball became a constant thread for me in other ways.
In high school I kept score for my team, which I greatly enjoyed because I had to go into the dugout of the opposing team to get their players’ names. (As a teenage girl, I was also checking out the cute boys.)

After college as I began my journalism career, I admired the sports photographers who worked at the newspaper I was working for. I bought a Canon camera, and in my free time, I’d use my press pass to get into big sporting events. I snapped photos of Björn Borg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, who were playing in the Masters Tennis Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

One spring, I flew to Fort Lauderdale to attend Yankees’ spring training. With my press pass, I got on-field access as I practiced taking photos of the players. I was noticed by one of them — superstar slugger Reggie Jackson — because I stood out since there were no female sports photographers back then. Reggie would walk over to me in between innings and chat, talking about the team and himself, and asking me about my career. He was very nice.

But it was that weekend where I got one of my first harsh lessons in racism. The Yankees had an exhibition game at a Miami stadium. Once again, Reggie came and chatted with me. But when he walked away, several angry men, their faces red with rage, came down from the stands and yelled at me from outside the fence, saying “What did that Black bastard say to you?” “Why is that (n-word) talking to you?”

Reggie saw and heard them and told me he faced this type of racism and worse everywhere he went. Just last year, when Reggie was at an MLB tribute game to the Negro League in Alabama, he recalled not being allowed into restaurants and hotels when he first started playing because he was Black. He called it a painful time.

As for me, I faced sexism when I returned home. My dream of becoming one of the first female sports photographers ended because whenever I entered the darkroom to develop my photos, those male photographers I admired would pin me against the wall and try to kiss me. I could never go back.

Yes, there were fun times when the Yankees won the World Series, even though I couldn’t go to the parade with my friends because I had to work. But being the enterprising reporter I was, I knew that a lot of the players lived in New Jersey and hung out at a certain bar inside a nearby hotel. I drove over to that hotel and sure enough, a chartered bus was parked there waiting to drive the players to the parade. I boldly stepped right onto that bus with my camera and snapped away at the unfazed players. (Not sure I could get away with that today.)

Ironically, baseball would end up giving me the biggest regret of my life.

My boyfriend invited me to a World Series game, but I stupidly turned it down because I had to work that night. I was a part-time stringer for a daily newspaper and wanted to make a good impression. That night, my pal Reggie Jackson made baseball history by hitting three home runs on the first pitch each time — winning the World Series for the Yankees. It’s been called one of the top 20 moments in baseball by sportswriters. My boss told me the next morning he of course would have let me go, and it taught me an important life lesson. Ever since, I vowed to never to pass on an opportunity like that again.

I recently spent a weekend exploring Chicago with my two best friends Brenda and Sue. It’s almost mandatory when you go to Chicago to go to a Cubs game and visit historic Wrigley Field, with its ivy-covered walls and vintage scoreboard that’s changed by hand. We did, drinking beer and eating a Chicago dog topped with bright green relish and a tomato! This month, I can’t wait to be in the baseball stands again to see the A’s in Sacramento. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get lucky and see them play against the Yankees.  

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