“Press vs. undress” from the March 2, 1978 Door County Advocate
ALL GAST UP
Press vs. undress
By JON GAST, Sports Editor
It’s freedom of the press vs. freedom to undress.
That’s the gist of the latest court case under the lawful title of “unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex.”
Sex discriminations has now hit the sports writing scene as female sports writers are clawing at the doors of men’s locker rooms.
It all came about when female writer Melissa Ludtke last October filed suit against the New York Yankees; Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner; Lee MacPhail, president of the American League; Abe Beame, Joseph Davidson and Dennis Allee, who were respectively, mayor, commissioner of parks and recreation, and director of the Economic Development Administration of New York, when she was denied access to the Yankee dressing room during the World Series.
All the excitement prompted the Milwaukee Journal’s Tray Dobbs to comment: “Being unable to have the same access to athlete that male reporters have is, indeed, a handicap. It makes the job of a woman reporter just that much more difficult. It means that any story a woman reporter comes up with represents a lot more work, a lot more scrambling and a lot, more time put in.”
But what about men covering the ever-growing women’s sports scene?
In those situations men suffer the same barriers as the women reporters do and there aren’t any men running to the courts.
But if Ludtke is successful in court does that mean that men will have the same privileges of running through the women’s locker rooms that women would have in men’s?
Even though I’m a 24 year-old bachelor I don’t especially like the idea. In fact, my conscience bothered me for a month after l accidently walked into the women’s wash mom at the Green Bay airport 10 years ago.
Besides, the times I covered the Southern Door girls this past season I never had to look for Coach Duane Lardinois in the girls locker room.
What would happen to all the delightful stories such as the one that surrounded the Sturgeon Bay girls basketball team and Assistant Coach Bill Aune?
The Clipper girls have never had a man coach so when Aune came to assist Mary Higgins for the tournament opener last week at Kewaunee, the Clipper football coach was put in a rather embarrassing situation. After downing Mishicot, Aune proceeded into the girls locker room for a post game chat only to have to advise a couple of the girls that a man was in their presence and to stop undressing.
Red Smith phrased it right when in a New York Times article he wrote, “Some people, male and female, prefer not to expose themselves in mixed company. Indeed some guys have been arrested for doing so. And it says here that in this exceedingly personal area, every individual has a right to his own preference.”
GAST CAPS: Apparently boys basketball tournaments aren’t what they used to be. Tuesday night’s crowd (if you can call it that) at Kewaunee looked more like a gathering for an intramural scrimmage game. In fact, a week earlier the girls drew more.
Former Sturgeon Bay resident Wayne Fish, son of Mr. & Mrs. Bernard Fish of the city, was the overall winner in the 18-45 adult men’s division of the Three Lakes cross country ski meet recently. Fish, who now teaches in the Rhinelander school system, finished the seven mile course in 43 minutes.
Only on the Dechambre Hardware bowling team, of which I am a member, could five guys put together games of 232, 211, 201, 200 and 196 at the wrong time. The games came in the county doubles tournament. By the way, the highest average on the team is 152.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by Jon Gast
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/jon-gast