Melissa Ludtke

Just as Paola Boivin experienced verbal harassment inside the clubhouse, Melissa Ludtke became a trailblazer with her own experience.

After she was prohibited by MLB Commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn from interviewing players in the locker room during the 1977 World Series, Sports Illustrated (SI) publisher Time Incorporated filed a lawsuit against Major League Baseball (Grubb & Elliot, 2010).

Kuhn, Major League Baseball's commissioner at the time, "had an unwritten, but understood, policy with all the teams in baseball against women reporting from the locker room"(Swanson, 2009). Unfortunately, he believed women should not be allowed in men's locker rooms and was quoted saying: 'To permit members of the opposite sex into this place of privacy, where players, who are, of course, men, are in a state of undress, would be to undermine the dignity of the game. (Fornoff, 1993)' (Swanson, 2009).

The court did not agree with his ideals and in May of 1978 they ruled: 'The court holds that defendants' policy of total exclusion of women sports reporters from the locker room at Yankee Stadium is not substantially related to the privacy protection objective and thus deprives plaintiff Ludtke of that equal protection of the laws which is guaranteed her by the Fourteenth Amendment (Motley, 1978)' (Swanson, 2009).

This case essentially was the stepping stone for other professional sports to change their opinions on women entering locker rooms. Although the ruling technically applied only to the New York Yankees, most of MLB followed the ruling (Swanson, 2009).

Although it took until 1985 for the new commissioner to require all teams to provide equal and open access to locker rooms (Thomas, 1990), the NBA and NHL had made this an official rule before the ruling. Not only that, but many other MLB teams had issued this rule into effect by 1982 (Swanson, 2009).

Below, Melissa Ludtke describes what it was like being a woman working in sports journalism and reporting on MLB, when women were usually given the opportunity to report on hockey or basketball.

This profile, done by Emma Baccellieri for Sports Illustrated dives deep into Ludtke and the legacy she created for herself and women in sports media.