Toeing the Rubber

At the Hall of Fame in 2005 with some of the Sistahs (and a "brothah"!). I've men many more women Red Sox/baseball fans than men.

Compelled to rant a little today:

The “sad” news out of L.A. today is that Frank and Jamie McCourt have separated.  I can’t remember ever reading about the breakdown of a marriage between two people I don’t know and being happy about it.  My first thought after reading about the separation, though, was “I hope this means she’s leaving the Dodgers too!”.

See, I don’t like Mrs. McCourt.  Sure, you could argue that I don’t know her, but what I do know of her makes me want to track her down and ask her why she thinks women are stupid.  It’s hard enough for women to be taken seriously in the world, let alone in MLB, without the likes of her making sure that we’re still seen as accessories to the sport and not intelligent fans.  I don’t usually do this but it’s a slow Sox day and I’m still not entirely ready to discuss the upcoming LCS games, so I’m going to re-post something I wrote about Jamie McCourt from July of 2006 just to give folks an understanding of why I hope this woman gets as far away from baseball as humanly possible.

She irritates the hell out of me. Reading the July 31st edition of ESPN The Magazine, I come across a blurb mentioning that the Dodgers are going to have a “lipstick” giveaway night. When I Googled this, I came across information that it was originally planned for the end of June. I don’t know if ESPN’s info is incorrect or old…or if the Dodgers have had more than one ‘lipstick night’ – and I don’t really care. How ridiculous a promotion can you come up with?

In Googling Mrs. McCourt, I found a Q&A with her on the Dodgers site from last year. Among the things she says in regard to her program to get more women to the park:

Specifically, it aims to provide women of all ages and backgrounds with
unique opportunities to learn about baseball and experience the fun of
attending a game at Dodger Stadium.

This would be great…except, in this same Q&A she says:

About 40% of the fans at a typical Dodger game are women. To put it
another way, of the 3 million-plus fans who attend Dodger games each
season, more than 1.2 million are women.

Does she think these 1.2 million women need to learn about baseball and experience the fun of attending a game at Dodger Stadium?

I know many women baseball fans. Lipstick and “Ladies Days” aren’t what bring them to the park. Their love of the game does that. And their appreciation of the players. Mrs. McCourt believes that one of the reason we women are ‘undeserved’ by MLB is because of the ‘demise of Ladies Day’. For those of you who don’t know what “Ladies Days” are, let Mrs. McCourt explain:

The practice dates back as far as 1867, when the New York
Knickerbockers encouraged their players to invite female relatives and
friends to the grounds. Despite their popularity, such promotions were
largely abandoned in the 1970s, on the grounds that they were
discriminatory.

Oh, to live back in the days when women couldn’t vote but at least they got invited to baseball games! Damn those women’s libbers of the 1970s who wanted equality instead of special treatment. CURSE YOU GLORIA STEINEM!

Now, I love the idea that we have a “Most powerful woman in baseball” IN Major League Baseball, even if it is someone who only has her job because of her husband, but it saddens me that, given her power, she chooses to continue to perpetuate the stereotype that women need incentives to go to the park and that they don’t know about the game.  (It also saddens me that she keeps being honored for this.  As if all we have been waiting for is a WOMAN to explain to the men in MLB that women need to be given pretty things to lure them to the ballpark and then they’ll be okay with their husbands spending so much time watching sports.)

Jamie McCourt likes to say that one of her goals is to let women know they can make a difference.  Maybe she could start by treating women like something other than “the weaker sex”?