Women in Sports All Have Stories
The Mets fired their newly hired general manager Jared Porter today after reports surfaced of him sending unsolicited texts and explicit photos to a female sports reporter several years ago, when he was a Cubs executive. He repeatedly texted her and sent her lewd pictures, despite her ignoring him.
Nobody should be surprised.
Surprised that Porter, specifically, did that? Maybe — I’ve never had any interaction with Porter, to my recollection. But surprised that someone in power in baseball did that? Definitely not.
I’ve been out of Major League Baseball for more than a decade, but I covered baseball for six years as a beat reporter, first covering the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and later the New York Yankees for Newsday. I hope things have improved for women working in all areas of baseball since then. I know they had improved dramatically by the time I broke into the industry compared to when pioneers such as Melissa Kudtke, Claire Smith and Lisa Saxon did so.
The immediate rush to judgment on the Porter situation — thankfully, the vast majority of opinions I saw were that he needed to be fired, though there were some who called it old news and questioned why she hadn’t come forward sooner — brought all kinds of memories to mind. And I felt like putting some thoughts down, even though I no longer work in journalism, and even though many women I know faced far worse.
Why didn’t the female sports reporter who Porter sent explicit photos to come forward? Mind you, she was a reporter who had moved to the United States for the job, and was new to American culture and by far the more junior person in the situation. I can only surmise, but for fear of losing her job, for fear of being blamed for his actions, for fear of being blamed for any repercussions he faced. At least those were my reasons.
I think back to being 21, 23, 25, 27 and some of the things I ignored, blushed and moved on, pretended they meant something else, or avoided a person to avoid their words and actions. I wasn’t yet at a stage in life where I felt secure and confident enough to stand up for myself against a Cy Young Award winner/coach/player/executive/All-Star player …
So I pretended it was fine and didn’t make me feel nervous and uneasy for a coach on a team I covered to nickname me “Legs” — not because of my marathon running, but because he thought I had great legs.
So I fumed privately to a couple non-reporter friends when someone accused me of getting my job because I had slept with a team executive. I did not, and I had not. But what recourse did I have?
So I laughed it off when players suggested I meet them in their hotel room. But then I avoided those players, even if it meant losing them as sources for reporting, and sought out corners of the clubhouse where I felt safer, where the players at least seemed to realize there were lines that shouldn’t be crossed, that I was there to do my job and not to get a date.
So I dreaded traveling to games where the team (and manager) had a blow-up doll that they would simulate sex acts with.
The one and only time that I did say something to another reporter — after a player pressed me on sexual preferences and then had porn playing in the clubhouse in full view of media (when I was the only reporter present), I was terrified that that would become public news and impact my ability to do my job. That reporter told a team executive about the incident, without my consent, and while I was grateful to that executive for taking swift action, I also was petrified when a gossip columnist heard rumors and nearly wrote about it for a national publication, but for not being able to confirm the details.
I made the same choice as the unnamed reporter in the Porter incident. I remained silent, fearful for the impact on my career. And like her, I ultimately left not just baseball writing, but sports journalism.
A note:
Certainly there were many upstanding individuals who would never have acted or spoken in an offensive or harassing way, and some who would have been aghast to learn someone on their team was acting that way. Yet it was common. I shared just a handful of stories. And every sports organization and every individual working in sports should think about what their organization is doing to be inclusive and make people feel welcome, what they as individuals are doing to either push people out of the industry or allow them to find their footing. Not just with women, but minorities, LGBTQ, immigrants, disabled — anyone who tends to be seen as other.
