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Articles by Melissa Ludtke
My Experience with an Episode of Clinical Depression / Hospitalization
Some things you just don’t talk about. Even with your closest friends. Until you are ready. For me, this verboten topic was clinical depression. Mine. I was in my early 40s when the darkness that descended on me felt as terrifying as it did shameful. Why couldn’t I rally myself from this helpless state that felt like my mental capacities were sinking into a quicksand all their own? I’d been through tough times before and figured out how to navigate through them.
Book excerpt: Dodgers' support once prompted MLB to ban female reporters in clubhouse
Former Sports Illustrated journalist Melissa Ludtke shares behind-the-scenes stories of her fight for gender equity in her new memoir, "Locker Room Talk." The Dodgers' support in 1977 triggered a backlash from the MLB commissioner and paved the way for her groundbreaking lawsuit to secure equal clubhouse access for male and female reporters. The following is an excerpt from her book.
WINNING PLAINTIFF
Relying on a near half-century of deep research and reflection, Melissa Ludtke recounts her landmark federal case in “Locker Room Talk.” In 1977 and ’78, as a Sports Illustrated reporter, Ludtke was the winning plaintiff in Ludtke v. Kuhn, a U.S. federal case that Time Inc. and lawyer Fritz Schwarz Jr. brought against Major League Baseball.
Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside: Ludtke, Melissa: 9781978837782: Books
Product description "This book by Ludtke focuses, in meticulous detail, on the landmark 1978 Ludtke vs. Kuhn case, the impact of the 14th Amendment, and the back-and-forth legal battles for equal rights across history.
Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside
(Author) FORMAT Buy new or used from an indie through our partner Biblio: Price Condition Seller Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world Description While sportswriters rushed into Major League Baseball locker rooms to talk with players, MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn barred the lone woman from entering along with them.
7 Inspiring Books About Women in Sports Who Defied Expectations
I was a reader in a family of runners. With pre-teen grumbles, I reluctantly participated in summer track leagues, always bringing up the rear, always slowing things down, until one day under the blazing Tennessee sun I got my legs moving and earned my first ribbon. My dad puffed me up saying, “You were so fast out there, you could have been a Tigerbelle.” In my family, the Tigerbelles were legends. Being compared to the elite team made me feel like a winner, even with my 3rd-place yellow ribbon.
blog - Melissa Ludtke
February 11, 2022 February 11, 2022/ Melissa Ludtke By Melissa Ludtke I knew my friend Robin was battling ovarian cancer. I just never thought she’d die. Of course, I knew her odds of beating this disease weren’t good, but I was unwilling to accept that one day I’d wake up to hear that the first of our groundbreaking crew of women sportswriters from the 1970s was gone. I didn’t want to face this gaping hole. Last week I clicked on a personal note in Facebook messenger: “I heard Robin Herman died.
Simone Biles' Competitive Glory Will Fade. But Her Message About Mental Health Will Endure
In June, after winning her seventh national gymnastics championship, Simone Biles tattooed Maya Angelou’s words “And Still I Rise,” signifying Black pride and self-confidence, across her left collarbone. This tiny cursive message rests just above her heart, hidden from public view unlike the Olympic rings etched into her right forearm, as if to preserve this poem as her private reservoir of strength.
A Climate Solution: How Mothers Out Front Won A Green Roof Requirement in Cambridge, Massachusetts — Living Architecture Monitor
Mothers Out Front formed as a grass-roots climate action group powered by the volunteer efforts of moms. Photo courtesy Mothers Out Front I arrived at our Cambridge Mothers Out Front meeting on November 19, 2018 with an idea: to figure out how to turn our city’s black roofs into green ones.
We can’t afford green roofs law to stay dormant
By Melissa Ludtke Wednesday, December 2, 2020 Mothers Out Front use the image of a green roof meadow on Chicago’s city hall in its campaign for a revised law in Cambridge. (Photo: Roofmeadow) We cannot keep wasting opportunities to mitigate the predicted effects of climate change, as Cambridge’s city’s leaders are doing. Consequences of our climate crisis show themselves to us now and scientists tell us that the window to act against ever-worsening climate impacts is shutting, fast.
Greater Investment in China’s One-Child Daughters
Books By: Melissa Ludtke | July 26, 2015 Credit: Jocelyn Ford One-child daughter Yuan Mengping with her parents and grandmother at Lunar New Year (WOMENSENEWS)–Strangers found my daughter on Sept. 13, 1996 in Xiaxi Town, a collection of villages where farmers harvest flowers, grass and trees. Police were called and they drove her, as they did other babies abandoned in this town, to the orphanage in the nearby prefecture-level city of Changzhou.
We stood on their shoulders. As balance shifts, we wonder if they are strong enough for us now
By Melissa Ludtke Saturday, September 26, 2020 Official court portraits of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Constance Baker Motley. In the late 1970s I took Major League Baseball to federal court and won. The charge: gender discrimination. The remedy: equal access for women reporters to interview teams in the same place their male peers did. As a baseball reporter with Sports Illustrated, I’d watched male reporters troop into locker rooms to talk with players, coaches and managers.
MORE THAN A PRETTY FACE
In a medium swarming with pretty faces it seemed inevitable that Phyllis George would reappear on television. Viewers first saw her on a September evening in 1970, when she came on the air as Miss Texas and went off a few hours later as Miss America. Still, her debut was not entirely auspicious; no sooner had she received her crown than it fell from her head, and she had to bend down in front of a TV audience of millions to retrieve it.
The circle game: Covid-19, climate and change
Home»Opinion» By Melissa Ludtke on Thursday, May 14, 2020 By Melissa Ludtke Thursday, May 14, 2020 Our sick Earth. (Image: Sarah Grice via Flickr) The Covid-19 pandemic has called on each of us to respond in ways that most of us never anticipated. Similarly, there will be little about our gradual return to our daily lives that will feel normal. Nor should they, since medical experts caution that a return to normal endangers all of us. We know this about Covid-19.
We Stood on Their Shoulders: Are they strong enough for us now?
In the late 1970s I took Major League Baseball to federal court and won. The charge: gender discrimination. The remedy: the federal court mandated equal access for women reporters to interview teams in their locker rooms. As a baseball reporter with Sports Illustrated, I’d watched male reporters troop into locker rooms to talk with players, coaches and managers. Being a woman kept me out by the conventions of baseball, not the law.
40 years on: Ludtke v Kuhn helped change the face of sports coverage forever
Melissa Ludtke, a writer for Sports Illustrated, is shown on the job in her office in New York, Jan. 23, 1978. She was involved in a court case to allow women reporters in sports locker rooms. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff) Forty years ago, Sports Illustrated, on behalf of writer Melissa Ludtke, sued Major League Baseball to allow female sports writers access into clubhouses like male sports writers.
The fight for women sports reporters' access to locker rooms is history -- or is it?
Forty years ago today, on what was the first night of the 1977 World Series, Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn forbid me from reporting in the teams' locker rooms. In April 1978, the commissioner and I faced off in federal court. Just before the 1978 World Series, Judge Constance Baker Motley ruled in my favor, and the rest is history. Or is it?
The Coffeehouse, a.k.a. the Quiet Car – Melissa Ludtke – Medium
I walk into a local coffeehouse in Cambridge, MA. It could have been an Amtrak quiet car. What I hear is silence. Heads down, screens up. Empty cups set to the side. Missing are overhanging signs to declare a silent zone. Oh, and the conductor’s voice reprimanding the errant phone talker. On trains I sit in the quiet car, even when I’m with a friend.
It’s Not Locker Rooms @DonaldTrump
Now Donald Trump is invading our political space with his nonsensical, excuse-laden notion that bragging about sexual assault is usual “locker room banter.” It isn’t. But like sports columnists from my bygone days, Trump uses code; his language stands in for the protected boys-will-be-boys zones he might be recalling from his younger years. Perhaps in military school? There and then, he wants us to believe, men bragged of sexual conquests and were assured no one present would object.
It’s Not Locker Rooms @DonaldTrump – Lake Waban Blue
Now Donald Trump is invading our political space with his nonsensical, excuse-laden notion that bragging about sexual assault is usual “locker room banter.” It isn’t. But like sports columnists from my bygone days, Trump uses code; his language stands in for the protected boys-will-be-boys zones he might be recalling from his younger years. Perhaps in military school? There and then, he wants us to believe, men bragged of sexual conquests and were assured no one present would object.
Emotion + Intellect + Civility = Longed-For Social Media Oasis
In a fit of pique at a girlfriend’s rejection, Mark Zuckerberg coded “Facemash” in his college dorm room in October 2003. A few variations later, he’d invented Facebook, which went public nearly a decade ago (September 26, 2006). It wasn’t until last Saturday that I glimpsed its full potential. That’s when a serendipitous digital hand-off of my Medium essay landed me on Connie Schultz’s Facebook page. There I discovered an online oasis where civility, if not always attained, remains the goal.
Feeling Unhinged: Discovering I’m Not Alone – Melissa Ludtke – Medium
By Melissa Ludtke “I’m feeling unhinged,” I tell my friend. We’re on the phone. I called to talk. Perhaps I needed to hear her voice as comfort food for my soul. Texting isn’t the same. Yet as we’re talking I can’t quite explain why I used the words I did to describe how I feel. They must have bubbled up from within me. Now I was releasing them without knowing quite what I really mean. It’s like I’m adrift, a feeling I know well from sailing. It’s like the wind is shifting.
For Women Sportswriters, Harassment Is More Vile Than Ever
Melissa Ludtke: "We weren't jolted out of our passivity until we saw men discomforted by reading these words to women. Is this just a nano-moment of outrage on Twitter?" (Not Just Sports/YouTube) I know sports. I talk sports like guys do. As a 20-something reporter for Sports Illustrated in the 1970s, I was a rarity. Often I was the only woman in the press box. By 1977, I’d been named as the plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, Ludtke v. Kuhn.
My Daughter is My Daughter Due to China’s One-Child Policy
I adopted Maya in June of 1997, when she was nine months old. Three days after she was born in a rural area of Jiangsu province, she was abandoned in one of the 14 farming villages are known collectively as Xiaxi Town, with some 40,000 residents. They are sons and daughters of longtime villagers, many of whom married a son or daughter of one of their parents’ friends. My daughter’s abandonment papers don’t tell us exactly where she was found.
My Daughter is My Daughter Due to China’s One-Child Policy
The orphanage staff gave her the surname Chang. It is the same surname they gave to hundreds, if not thousands, of babies, nearly all of them girls, who took up residence in its second-floor rooms in wooden cribs arranged in long lines of light blue. Her given name became Yulu. Some babies shared a crib. Because my daughter was on her back day after day, she used her arms and legs as toys.
My daughter is my daughter due to China’s One-Child policy
I adopted Maya in June of 1997, when she was nine months old. Three days after she was born in a rural area of Jiangsu province, she was abandoned in one of the 14 farming villages are known collectively as Xiaxi Town, with some 40,000 residents. They are sons and daughters of longtime villagers, many of whom married a son or daughter of one of their parents’ friends. My daughter’s abandonment papers don’t tell us exactly where she was found.
I’ll Never Forget His Helping Hand
Frank Gifford gave me a chance. With it, I made my life. Frank Gifford was a friend of mine and he died yesterday. He was 84 years old. We hadn’t seen each other in at least three decades, maybe longer. But that’s beside the point: I will always think of Frank Gifford as my friend. Here’s why: Frank saw potential in me when I didn’t see much in myself and he reached out a hand to help me discover it.
Women's Voices For Change
Monday Night Football commentator Frank Gifford is shown posing for the camera while sitting in the end zone of a football field. (Courtesy ESPN) A friend of mine died yesterday. He was 84 years old. We hadn’t seen each other in at least three decades, maybe longer. But that’s beside the point: I will always think of Frank Gifford as my friend. Here’s why: Frank saw potential in me when I didn’t see much in myself and he reached out a hand to help me discover it.
Cushioning My Landing: When Emotions Collide with Rationality
My dad walked me down the aisle, but his advice a few years earlier built the foundation I needed for the life I ended up living. It’s the clanging machine I remember most, as though hundreds of fingers were tapping typewriter keys in unison. I was at my bank, about two blocks from mid-Manhattan’s Time Life building where I worked as a reporter, and this machine was imprinting the amount of a bi-weekly deposit, adding it to my others.
Chinese-American women abandoned at birth and adopted seek answers in their rural hometowns.
After the Lunar New Year in 2013, I asked one friend in China, Wu Nan, if she would travel to Xixiashu and Xiaxi to meet girls in these two towns. (I paid her for her time and assistance.) I hoped she’d find two or three girls in each town who wanted to spend time getting to know Jennie and Maya. If she succeeded, then we’d make plans to travel. Back in Beijing, Nan told us about girls eager to have this experience and sent us their names and photos of them, their homes and the towns.
China’s One-Child Daughters
Sixteen years later, in August 2013, Maya returned to Xiaxi Town. She went back so she could get to know girls her age whose families raised them as an only child. These Chinese girls might have been Maya’s childhood friends if their lives hadn’t diverged soon after they were born. Their companionship offered ground-level glimpses to Maya of what a rural Chinese daughter’s life was like.
Cushioning My Landing
It’s the clanging machine I remember most, as though hundreds of fingers were tapping typewriter keys in unison. I was at my bank, about two blocks from the mid Manhattan’s Time Life building where I worked as a reporter, and this machine was imprinting the amount of a bi-weekly deposit, adding it to my others. My dad, a finance professor, had urged me to start this account when I called to tell him about being hired as a reporter at Sports Illustrated.
Touching Home in China
We e-mail you a high-resolution photo that you choose from our "Touching Home in China" gallery. Wallpaper your phone or tablet with the image — a daily reminder of how you helped! Your name — and your child's, if you choose to — goes on our Website's donor page. Plus previous perks. It's impossible for anything on the Web to vanish, or so they say.
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