I’m watching the Giants game and our broadcasters just mentioned that the Yankees radio color commentator is a woman. Half of the radio broadcast crew for the New York Yankees professional major league baseball club is female.
I am no Yankees fan, but this fact makes me incredibly proud.
I mean, can you imagine that happening in football or basketball? In those sports, the woman journalist is 100% of the time stuck down on the field or on the court, looking very pretty and thin, providing little updates at the half or whatever. Never allowed to actually call the game. It doesn’t happen in nationally televised sports unless women are also playing the sport. Because apparently people with vaginas are only capable of reporting on sports played by other people with vaginas.
So I turned on the Yankees radio feed on the internet just to hear it for myself. There’s a woman calling the game! Cool.
Another fun fact: There is only one female ballpark PA announcer in major league baseball, and she works for the SF Giants.
Stuff like this makes me glad, but then reminds me again how the American media, especially in sports, is still really, really sexist. Women are still designated for certain roles only. We don’t do voiceovers for movie trailers. We don’t host nighttime talk shows, or game shows (British imports don’t really count, I am talking about the big ones that stay on TV for decades). On the radio, we don’t anchor the drive-time hours, we are the sidekicks, and god forbid TWO women host a major market radio show together, though two men is the rule rather than the exception. What’s so bad about a woman’s voice? Is it only supposed to be used to turn a man on, and sell something to him? Women’s voices are not considered authoritative or strong or funny?
We comprise over half the population. A qualified Presidential candidate with a vagina is considered a liability for that reason only (though that isn’t said *out loud*) — though in most cities and states, women politicians are now the norm rather than the exception. So it’s okay for us to be mayors, governors, representatives, senators, doctors, teachers, and lawyers, but I guess PRESIDENT would be taking it too far!
sigh. This was going to be a baseball post but the Giants are losers and I kind of stopped paying attention. And plus I’m a girl, I’m not supposed to be interested in sports.
Say, do you know which team had the first-ever female broadcaster? Way, way back in 1977, 30 years before the Yankees glommed all the credit? And on television, too, not radio?
Go on, guess.
THE CUBS?
Man, even her bio is typical Yankees bullshit:
the first woman to hold a full-time position as a Major League broadcaster
No.
The first woman to work on a nationally televised baseball broadcast
No.
the first woman to provide play-by-play for a Major League team
No. All those honors belong to Mary Shane, but you know the Yankees — if it didn’t happen in New York, it didn’t happen.
Wow. You should email mlb.com and ask them to fix that. Though I doubt Suzyn would let them.
I know you don’t watch much basketball, but there are now a bunch of female courtside reporters, and they do a damn good job too. I think I hear harder more insightful questions come out of those broadcasters than from their male counterparts.
Not that basketball players should have to answer hard questions after losing, but you know, it’s fun to watch some times.
Oh, I am well aware of female reporters on the court or field during the half. But that’s the equivalent of a glass ceiling. Let’s see them actually put behind the mic to call the game, during the game. That would be the revolutionary thing the Yankees are doing.
Of course it took this woman about 30 years of hard work to get to a color commentary spot on local radio. Meanwhile JT Snow has been retired from baseball for a year and they threw him right on the air. No broadcast experience, no journalism degree. Not that he doesn’t do a great job and add his own experience as a popular player to the game. But he did move ahead of hundreds of other people in broadcasting to get on the air.
It’s surely a very difficult business.
From the arena of healthcare, the established MDs are still roughly 75% male, but the admin/support staff is 99% female. As far as the new residents go, it’s 50-50 if not primarily female. Actually, my residents for this month (at one hospital are) 4 women and 1 man.