As a young woman who loves sports, specifically baseball, it’s not always easy to be taken seriously. I don’t just love baseball; I live it and breathe it. I play for the club softball team on campus, I watch as many games on mlb.tv as I can to follow my team even when I’m at school, but it’s just not enough. In the future, I want to work in Major League Baseball, specifically for the New York Yankees. But for now, I just want to be able to talk sports with my girl friends.
All too often when I’m staring intently at my phone or jump upon receiving a notification, it’s probably because of a score change or roster update. But when my friend looks at me strangely and I proceed to tell her that Carsten Charles “CC” Sabathia wasn’t chosen for the playoff game lineup or that Brian McCann just hit a walk-off home run and the Yankees won, the response is always the same. My girl friends look back at me, raise their eyebrows, open their eyes really wide, nod and say “SPORTS!”.
In this day and age when women are fighting so hard for equal pay in the work force, comments like this do not help our cause. We should not have to constantly feel like we have to prove ourselves as equally capable as men. But, playing off an entire industry—one that is extremely multi-faceted and contains a ton of potentially well-paying jobs—is not acceptable. There are jobs in reporting, scouting, finance and so much more. And female-dominated sports, such as the WNBA, gymnastics, softball and cheerleading, do not receive nearly as much coverage as traditionally men’s sports. There is a stigma that women do not know anything about sports, and society is generally accepting of that. But for women trying to break into the sports industry, this makes it more difficult.
Enter Jessica Mendoza, who is helping to break down those boundaries for women.
Jessica Mendoza is a former collegiate four-time First Team All-American softball player, a member of the United States women’s national softball team from 2004–2010, and most recently, first female analyst for a Major League Baseball game in the history of ESPN. She also called the 2015 American League Wild Card Game on October 6, becoming the first female analyst in MLB postseason history.
Mendoza’s commentary was widely praised and accepted, yet she still faces a lot of criticism and sexism.
In a recent interview with Allure magazine, Mendoza said, “It would also be really cool to just get to the point where people think, ‘Oh wow, she knows her stuff. And he knows his stuff.’ It should be common knowledge that women and men can talk about sports.”
This is not to say that girls have to love sports, or love to talk about sports. This is an affirmation that if sports are your passion, then go for it. Don’t feel like your gender holds you back. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Do not give that consent.